Down-Sizing…A Designer’s Own Journey Chapter Two
New Front Door
Our New Old Kitchen in the House
Making the move downtown seemed like something we wanted to try for our next step. We went from 5700 sf to 2200 sf and it seemed doable. And our kids thought we would be “cool”. The loft sat right on Market Street above an art gallery! What could be more fitting than a designer living like this?! We had 2 BR 2.5 Bath (master with a soaking tub), a dining area, a nice kitchen with a gas range…my fav, a living space, a laundry, a coat closet, and a Gallery space for our nicer artwork. The walls were brick. The ceilings were open rafters that were pierced by a spiral staircase leading to a small roof deck. No elevator, but the stairs were just part of loft living. Even after purging our belongings from our house, we still needed 3 storage units. UGH! That was August, 2019. We “made our memories” for sure. The kids visited and we walked everywhere downtown. We entertained our friends with an Open House at Christmas time. On Christmas we walked to go ice skating in a nearby park. We had one larger tree instead of our half a dozen. And no live tree for the first time ever. Grand dogs visited. Family visited including my 81 year old parents…yes they survived the steps. We were “cool” for 6 months when my husband looked at me and said, “If I can get us out of lease early, are you interested?”. You see, the windows were the original single pane windows so we heard ALL conversations on the street…ALL the time. The space didn’t have enough lighting so it tended to be very dark…ALL the time. The HVAC ran…ALL the time due to the open ceiling. There was a 2 drink limit on the spiral staircase because coming down seemed too dangerous. We obviously bit off more than we could stand. We went from 2.8 wooded acres of privacy to living ON THE MARKET. We had experienced enough and chalked it up to being spoiled. So on Valentine’s Day 2020…just before Quarantine we moved…
Loft Living Kitchen
