Lexi Poer, a full-time content creator, always knew she wanted her mom to live with her family.
When her dream of combining households became a reality, she wanted to ensure her mother could maintain her independence.
Poer, her husband, and her mom decided to build a second home connected to their main house, fulfilling everyone’s needs as they embraced multigenerational living.
Lexi and Jordan Poer bought their forever home in 2017.
Lexi Poer, 35, and Jordan Poer, 40, bought their home in Roswell, Georgia, in 2017, intending to make it their forever home for themselves and their two daughters, Kennedy and Addie. They also have two dogs, Baby and Paris.
“We purchased the house from the original owners, and it was built in the early ’70s,” Lexi Poer told BI of the four-bedroom home. “Everything was well-maintained and updated as needed, but we were able to come in and spend what we call the fun money on bringing it up to date aesthetically.”
They did some initial renovations on the property before moving into the house in March 2018.
Poer had always dreamed of her mom moving in with her family, and in 2023, it felt like the right time to make the move.
Poer told BI that she and her mom, Sandra Vassell, 64, have always been close. Vassell raised her as a single mom, and Poer said she was clear with her husband in the early days of their relationship that she always planned for her mom to live with them someday.
“As a child, I always imagined having a compound with several houses in a cul-de-sac so we each had our own space but lived near each other,” Poer said. “My mom was just laughing, thinking I was crazy.”
In 2020, Poer and her family started thinking more about having Vassell live with them, as COVID made seeing each other difficult. Shortly after, when housing prices skyrocketed, it seemed like a sign that they should consolidate into one space.
“We figured out that she would be able to sell her home for far more than she purchased it not many years before that and invest that money into our home and building her own space,” Poer said. “That was the piece that made the dream a reality.”
It was important to the Poers and Vassell that everyone maintained their independence.
As the Poers started thinking about creating an in-law suite for Vassell in their home, maintaining her independence was a priority.
“She very much wanted to make sure that she had all of the things she needed to live independently in her space, like somewhere to park her car and enter her home without having to come through our house, access to the outdoor space without having to enter our house, her own laundry room, her own kitchen,” Poer said.
Likewise, the Poers liked entertaining friends and didn’t want their social life to disrupt Vassell’s routine.
They decided to build a separate house for Vassell that attaches to the main house.
Rather than building a separate guest house in a different area of their yard, the Poers and Vassell wanted the two homes to truly connect, both for curb appeal and to fit their lifestyle.
“We imagined when the girls wake up on Saturday morning, they always want to run down and go into Nana’s house and watch cartoons or have breakfast with her,” Poer said, as her daughters often spent weekends at their grandmother’s house when she didn’t live with them.
They didn’t want the kids to have to think about grabbing a jacket or rain boots to run across the yard, and they also wanted their dogs to be able to wander through the spaces.
The houses form one structure, though the new addition has its own driveway and garage.
The homes connect through a walk-in pantry in the Poers’ house.
The new home is connected to the main house through a walk-in pantry that Poer and her mom use.
“It’s where we put the things that neither of us needs daily but both want access to, and we didn’t really feel like we needed double of everything,” Poer said, pointing to items like a stand mixer or Christmas china.
The space, which sits off the main house’s kitchen, is lined with cabinets and counters. At the end of the hall, a door leads to Vassell’s home.
The connected entrance opens to the kitchen, mirroring the big house.
Vassell’s home is 1,000 square feet in total. From the exterior, the houses look like one building, though her area is completely self-sustaining.
The door connecting her house to the main home doesn’t have a lock, so the Poers and Vassell can come and go from each other’s homes as they please.
The kitchen features a large island and built-in cabinetry, and Vassell has her own butler’s pantry in addition to the one she shares with the Poers. Her house features 16-foot vaulted ceilings that make it feel open and airy.
An open-concept floor plan makes the home feel spacious.
Vassell’s living room is open-concept, and she has an exterior door that leads to a shared patio outside the house.
Because the house was customized to fit Vassell’s needs, it has areas designed just for her, like a craft closet.
“She’s a big crafter, so she has this dream craft closet that unfolds and can fold back up and holds all of her crafting storage,” Poer said.
Vassell’s house also has its own washer and dryer, so she doesn’t have to share with the rest of the family.
Vassell’s home has a special room for the girls.
“We call it the snug,” Poer said of the 50-square-foot room, which is painted a soft pink and features a twin bed, toys, and keepsakes that belong to Poer’s daughters.
“That is the girls’ space within Nana’s house, and that was something they requested,” Poer said. “It was important for them to feel like they could still go over and have sleepovers with grandma because they love doing that.”
“Long-term, it could totally be an additional storage space or an office or a little exercise space,” she said. “It could be multiple purposes when the kids outgrow that space.”
The bedroom is spacious, too.
A hallway leads to the bedroom suite, so it isn’t right off the main living area.
“There’s a bit more privacy for both the bedroom and the bathroom, and then between those, she has her large walk-in closet as well,” Poer said.
The bedroom has high ceilings, adding to the spacious feel.
The Poers thought long-term when designing Vassell’s bathroom.
The bathroom was designed to be wheelchair accessible, so it will work for Vassell — or the Poers — if their mobility changes.
“We truly want this home to stay in the family,” Lexi said. “People don’t do that nowadays. But I definitely feel like, with home prices and the way they’re going, that is going to become more normal, especially when you have invested so much money into your home like we have.”
“We always say, even when Nana’s gone someday, my husband and I might end up moving into what is now Nana’s house, and maybe one of the girls will want to take over our home,” she said. “We’re definitely not forcing that on them but leaving the door open to explore.”
The Poers’ hope that they could pass the house down to their daughters is also part of why they didn’t build a separate guest house, which might have given the property a higher resale value than a connected house. They wanted to create the future that worked for them, not a potential buyer.
“We have zero desire to move again, and my husband and I would be plenty content just living in that 1000 square feet once the girls are out of the house,” Poer added.
The Poers gave their home a major upgrade during the renovation, too.
While adding Vassell’s home to their property, Poer and her husband also renovated the second floor of their house so it would better serve their family.
They turned their original primary bedroom into two massive his-and-hers closets and built out an additional 500 square feet that became their new primary suite and luxurious laundry room.
Poer said the original primary suite was dated, and although they had renovated it in 2017, it still didn’t feel like it flowed with the rest of the house.
“It just felt like we’re adding such an investment into this house that the primary suite needs to reflect that,” she said. “We felt making a larger, more modern-size primary bedroom and bathroom and then larger closets made the home value more what it should be overall, especially with adding the square footage.”
After the renovation, the house had five bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.
The renovation cost $350,000 in total.
Poer said Vassell’s home was built for around $200,000, and the renovations to the second floor of the main house cost around $150,000.
Although the renovation was costly, the project has saved the Poer family money day to day since they only have one household that three adults pay into.
“Sure, electricity goes up, but it doesn’t double,” Lexi said. “It’s still not you’re like you’re paying two electric bills. It’s just one slightly higher electric bill and the same with all utilities.”
Plus, the trio has three income sources they can draw from if something breaks in Vassell’s home, and Poer said they’re already saving money on groceries and wasting less food. Poer also said their living arrangements save her and her mom time.
“Instead of her having to clean her house and I have to clean my house, we can have a day where we’re cleaning up the house,” Poer said. “Now, that takes time off of both of our plates to then be able to garden together or go to get coffee together or something like that.”
Poer and her whole family are closer than ever now that they live together.
“We’re able to do things more often together than we did before,” Poer said, adding that it’s easy for her mom to be part of little “family moments” daily.
“She’s at every single sporting event because she just hops in the car with us and goes. Or if we’re watching ‘Harry Potter’ for the first time, she’s able to make popcorn and pop over,” Poer said. “She’s able to witness more of those core memory moments with her grandkids, and she and I are able to spend more time together when the kids are at school together.”
Poer and her mom’s close relationship helped make the transition to sharing a property easy. Still, she also credits their design process with ensuring the home and the in-law suite work for their whole family. She said combining households is smoothest when you balance people’s independence with “the value each person brings into the whole family dynamic.”
“Everyone wants to still feel like they have their home and it’s their safe space, their comfort zone,” she said.
Poer hopes more families in the US embrace multigenerational living.
“It’s not a new concept,” she said. “It’s been around in so many cultures.”
Poer said she is excited to see more people creating multigenerational homes, and she loves sharing her experience with it on social media to help others see how easy it can be to make it work for their families.
“I think as a society, one of our biggest things that we’re going to have to get through is this culture of isolation that phones and electronics and we’ve created for ourselves, and what better way to do that than just having your family surround you and love on you and be your built-in community right in your house,” Poer said.
The post A couple added a $200,000 in-law suite to their home. Independence and curb appeal were priorities in the multigenerational makeover. appeared first on Business Insider.
