Your story sounds like ours.
We aren’t totally ancient, I’m 81 and my bride will be 80 soon.
5-6 years ago, we decided to stay here. Our odd job contractor had redone his parents home, and he had great suggestions. From tearing out the old bathtub for the master bath an having a walkin shower with a bench to sit on. He removed every toilet and replaced them with the high rise ones. We have one area with 4 steps, and he put hand rails on both sides. Interesting on that, we know 2 senior citizen guys who are master carpenters. They are installing ramps for “senior” friends at cost of material. Our contractor put in a great ramp from our car port to the back hallway.
A big thing was getting of the old water heater and replacing it with an automatic or demand heater. I set the timer for morning, noonish and evening meal. Our water bill dropped in half.
Our home is about 2700’, and our engineer/construction son determined that two ac/heaters would be best. We basically live in about 1300’. At The other area is basically only used when we have . So we only heat and cool where we live/eat and sleep. At first they told us to keep the non livein area, at 62-65. Since. then the ramp guys discovered 52 degrees works well. The area where we basically live is controlled by a Nest thermostat. The other area has a standard thermostat.
Our PG&E bill keeps dropping instead of going up, and our PG&E monthly printout shows that we are doing great and so does the monthly nest.
When we did the recent retro for the home, our roofer put in very high R factor roofing and 4 new skylights. He recently replaced one of our older ones and he will replace the final 2 old sky lights this summer. Often we can control our inside temp by opening or closing the skylights. Our current contractor suggested a screen door at the ramp site. It works great in warm afternoons and evenings. We hear our neighbors’s ac going and we are comfortable without them. A few times we need to use our stand up fan.
Our house is a little over 2000 sq ft. We use every room. Den is hubby’s and I turned the living room into mine, tv, etc. He has his own bedroom with bathroom and I have mine. 3rd bedroom is an office and the she shed/4th bedroom is set up for the grandkids with a tv/ps4, etc. When they visit we never see them now. lol We use all our spaces.