Owning a Vacation Home in Caribbean

Kitchen when we purchased... Then we got appliances and made do... We just installed a new kitchen in our home in the Dominican Republic, courtesy of IKEA. We had to decide if we were going to upgrade our kitchen in Michigan or the one in the casa.  Our Michigan kitchen had been 'upgraded' to a usable modern space after buying the house from my grandparents whose 1957 choices reflected a different world. Grandma was a full-time homemaker and appliances were completely different sizes. Our kitchen in the casa when we bought it consisted of a corner cabinet under a counter top with a shallow double sink molded into the material, weirdly off center of the window AND where a human can actually stand who would then also be blocking the area where a stove/oven would sit.  And there was also the other medium sized cabinet that also had no shelves built into it. So when you open the cabinet it is essentially a wooden box where you pile all your cooking ingredients and snacks, ...

nuestra casa View on April 10th from driveway Every time I am in the Dominican Republic I feel 'at home'. And then when we return 'home' to our house in Michigan, I feel relieved and happy to be there too...as long as I avoid looking at the cold gray sky...still, cats greet us at the door happy to have their humans back and the comfy couch awaits some uninterrupted Netflix binge watching and most importantly, my husband's slows down at that house...in contrast to the house repair machine he becomes in our casa. This probably due to his 9-5 job working for the 'man'.  (We wish it was only 9 to 5...sadly, my better half spends too much time fixing the leaks in a sinking ship.)  That's the other benefit of life in the Dominican Republic. The daily grind is simpler and focused on the necessities of a simple life.  NOT the multi-tasking, split-personality work haze that leaves me on auto-pilot for the part of my life that is actually important. My fa...