The Perfect One Story Retirement House – Living Comfortable & Safe!

A video tour of our latest house on the farm, built with a one story, open floor plan that makes living simple, easy and safe!

At just under 1200 square feet, the house is big enough to not feel small, but easy to navigate and have everything you need close by. The double roof teared design allows light in through the top windows – and the high ceilings make it feel anything but small.

The floor plan for the main area is wide open. The L-kitchen design and the island open to the sitting area, with double doors from the kitchen that lead out to the screened in porch and patio area. It also happens to overlook the woods and a ravine below. One thing is for sure, it will be a perfect place to enjoy a dinner or evening without a worry of bugs!

The kitchen has wide 4’+ paths all around the island and the cabinets all have roll out drawers to avoid having to bend over to get to dishes and appliances. There are no transitions between any interior room. And even going out or in the front or back door, it is a minimal 1 inch elevation.

all right we are super excited today to share the what we like to term now the perfect retirement house here at the farm at Old World Garden this spot was originally going to be uh another Airbnb for us uh and Mary’s parents talked to us and decided it it was time to downsize and so we kind of changed its design and now they’re going to have a spot at the farm here to to live with us and hopefully a spot that’s really safe and easy and enjoyable for them um we built a lot of things into this design to Showcase uh easy living and Senior Living and we’ll kind of talk about those as we go through but let me just talk about the outside um again we used all metal siding this is Bard and Baton textured talk about that a little bit later too and then the stone very low maintenance we do some wood accents and they need painted you know every four or five years but much easier the majority of the house with the metal roof metal siding and then um the stone is is 50e plus uh maintenance so you got to love that uh we built this little Nook here off the front porch which I just absolutely love it’s going to be a great place for them to sit um either in the morning or night enjoy cup of coffee um and just a good area and if you look at this little concrete slab we built it so that you can actually drive up here whether it be a car or a golf cart and get out all on the same level and walk inside so really nice to turn around and really easy um all the Landscaping is long-term low maintenance um we’re just really uh happy with the way it turned out in the design so we’ll take you inside here and then I’ll show you around the back as well uh but let’s go in and see the details want to talk a little bit about the exterior of the home and why it also really helps out there’s the split AC unit uh and it’s actually running right now it’s kind of a hot day here in June as you can tell you can’t hear it at all about the only thing you hear is the uh bulldozers in the background but um all of the siding here is Bard and batten metal siding uh 50-year warranty um it’s textured people always ask this is an antique bronze collar but I’ll take you up close to it here and let you see it um it’s just textured uh most people think from a distance it’s w it’s really really long lasting and then the whole front of course is Stone so very little painting just a little bit of the window trim would be all there ever is so another nice part of this house that keeps it low maintenance the house was really built even though it’s got a small floor plan to feel very spacious um you’ll notice the height of the ceilings uh the openness uh really makes it good there’s a lot of echo in here right now because there’s no furniture we just finished the concrete polish floors I’ll talk about those in a second but uh aler wood ceiling here to really soften it up and to keep things quiet once there’s stuff in here it won’t be so much of an echo uh the main space here uh really all one level as we talked about but also there are no transitions into any room everything is level um even a small transition just for rainwater out to the back porches I’ll show you in the front porch but that’s about it all split AC cooled so you can control each room you see that up on the wall there above the double glass doors that lead to the back screen porch but the kitchen um all quartz countertops Uh custom drawers that actually come out and you can pull out again a great thing for anyone but especially as you get a little older um it’s nice not to have to bend over to get things um and just everything you kind of need in very one easy space there’s some space here for some bar stools underneath the uh main counter and then a double sink um gas fireplace the TV will go above that and can come out and tilt either way uh just nice to keep it warm so let’s talk about the floors and in addition to being low cost this is concrete believe it or not um we now acid stain our concrete before we ever build we put the slab down uh it has heat tubes through it so this is all heated with on demand heat um super efficient and super warm I know the in-laws are going to love this when it comes to having their feet warm in the middle of winter uh super efficient system but again no transitions uh you just basically stain the concrete we scored it and then sealed it and it’s so durable so over here we have a nice little area for it could either be couches for them they want to put their dining table over in that corner to kind of Outlook some really beautiful views of the woods here uh that Overlook they’re going to enjoy seeing all the deer and every other animal that comes through here um but this is where that will go and then let me just kind of pan around again the TV will be able to come out and rotate uh any which way uh that you need and then as I pan back around here you’ll see we have this little area back here that is perfect for a couch or it could be a a eating Nook as well um but what I like most about it we talk about trying to keep it open and not feeling too um tied in we have these windows at the top they really let in a lot of natural light um that one light there could be a drop- down chandelier if you wanted to put it down here as a table but again the kitchen very very nice uh and very easy I’ll take you down the hallway as you notice one thing we built these hallways really wide that makes it easily accessible if there’s ever a need for a wheelchair a walker a cane anything there’s no trip hazards come past the front door entrance and you come right down here uh to the bathroom so this design we did specifically with um them in mind they wanted a walk-in shower we are still awaiting should be here this week the glass panels but as you can see a very low threshold there’ll be a simple glass panel we installed grab bars all around uh just makes it nice frosted window for privacy there in the shower and then there’ll be Shades in the other window a nice uh vanity we also have grab bars on either side or on the right side of the toilet as well and then the vanity and a nice mirror a large bathroom and it’s all they wanted all they need you could make a second bathroom in this house people vasus we talked about it but for them it just made sense to have that one nice bathroom this is the closet that we are using it’s actually got a barn door uh slot slide in slide out so save on space but this is where the control room is this could easily be a second bathroom in the floor plan if if wanted um but for this we also put the washer and dryer and then here’s the heat system which is just amazing it’s all on demand so it controls the hot water it goes also the heat it’s also the furnace in the winter time you can see all those tubes that go into the floor they heat the floor and then we are on well on sistern out here well actually sistern so we have a complete water system with the UV light that comes out uh to Triple clean the water it gets clean going in and then cleaned again with filters and then the UV light so a really simple system when you think about this is everything that controls the house um again nice tall we’ve talked about we could even put storage up here as well but this could also double very easily as a bathroom and just wall off that second area of the washer and dryer and the heat system but uh for ease of Maintenance uh one bathroom is what we went with on this one um two-bedroom however and uh very open and spacious so again we went with the skylights in here makes it really feel nice and open um and you got the ceiling fan again a split AC so if you want to close this room off and control the temperature in here you can uh very easy again no thresholds come in and then the closets for this closet they wanted a little extra storage so we had some built-in storage shelves put in it but one of the things I really like is we use magnet closers on these so when you’re closing these are solid wood doors you’ll hear it here it grabs it and it keeps them closed so solidwood doors are a nice touch uh for the closet so that’s the first bedroom and then you come right down again large open hallways no thresholds going into any room uh come in here and another bedroom privacy window on that side again and then another great view to the outside in the back patio uh this has its own AC split here split AC’s between our heat system and split AC’s we have to run zero through the wall walls as far as HVAC so that really cuts down on the cost too but it’s also cuts down on any dust or any worry and again that view of outside so in here uh the bedroom again quite spacious the overall floor plan I think I mentioned this just under 12200 ft TV Will Go On The Wall there um and then another nice size closet and you have plenty of extra storage as well in that bonus room or in the uh laundry room which is one of the reasons we just for this one did not put the extra bathroom in so as you come back out theall way you can see there’s the front um there will be shades on these doors as well uh and they can be closed down but it’s just nice when you want the view to look outside and have the light in and be very open but probably what they like the most and I think it was one of our favorite things as well is you know outdoor space is just as important to be able to enjoy and for them it was a screened in porch which really really makes uh this nice both of these doors can open going out from the kitchen so you have plenty of space uh comes out to a large back door porch That’s all screened in um overlooks the woods just finish putting the Landscaping in there you see the grass is starting to come in but what a great Viewpoint of the woods here and then in addition to that um as we finish out we put an exterior patio for a little fire pit uh with wood and they can put their gas grill out here and have plenty of back door private space if they want and then as you can see the do going into the kitchen so about 1,200 ft we always get the question what does this cost to build of course it depends on where you live and what you’re doing but you know with this limited floor plan and the way you do it depends on how much anywhere from $125 to $150,000 is usually uh a good guesstimate depending on how much you upgrade things but a really solid floor plan and a really easy floor plan to get around is one of the reasons we like to call it the perfect uh retirement house it really is um who knows I think we may end up back here someday uh at the farm just because it’s so easy to live to and so uh not having to worry about anything at all so there’s a look at it I hope you enjoy it um you can find out all you want at ard.com that has all of our websites and this will have a story on oldworldgardenfarms