Riet’s mantelzorghuisje

My aunt Riet has been living on a park for decades. She has lived there happy and comfortably in a nice, spacious wooden house, alone and very content.

But even my tough and strong aunty is not immune to the counting years, and so she started thinking, plotting, planning, sketching and designing on a plan to keep her living on her beloved park by putting a smaller house in her yard. She would have to sell her old house to a party who would be allowing her to spend her old years there, meanwhile also functioning as caregiver, in Dutch “mantelzorger”.

A perfect plan

Everything went as planned. A buying party appeared on the scene in park neighbor Marco, who really helped further the plan. Riet began sketching and measuring on her computer, meticulously using the available space to make the new house practical and cozy and with space left for her huge organ. A party to pre-construct the house was found in De Bruijn in De Meern, after the company she initially approached could not deliver. Everything came together, fell into place and worked out, and Riet will never stop telling you how God blessed and helped her in every way with her plan.

But how do you move a house
through a small path?

So the house had to be moved from De Meern to the park, and put into place next to a small path, surrounded by gardens with trees and fences… That was not going to work. The house would have to be flown over the park to be put into its new place. And so it happened. With many bystanders watching how a huge crane lifted the house over the park and how it was neatly put in its final resting place.

Next steps: Sandra is going to build in the custom-made kitchen, and then: moving into the new home. What a great and smart plan for an older lady to work out all by herself to safeguard her future and stay out of any nursing home.