Accessibility: Making Your Home Fit Your Needs
Articles by Jerry
Subscribe To Our Newsletter
Upcoming Events
Serving all of Tidewater and Northeastern North Carolina including: Chesapeake, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Franklin, Smithfield, Moyock, Currituck County, and South Mills
Accessibility: Making Your Home Fit Your Needs
When we first started doing barrier free remodeling in the early 1990’s, most of the projects consisted of very specific items tailored to individual needs. Figuring out the best way to help someone overcome challenges their home presented to them was often very difficult and always challenging. It was just a simple fact that no thought of accessibility went into the design and construction of homes. Please do not take this as criticism because the way we lived our lives just twenty short years ago is different than today. The normal path, if you found yourself in a physical situation such that your home made life tougher, was to move. For the most part this move was to some type of facility; rarely to another house.
Things started to change with the establishment of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. This act, commonly called the ADA, addressed commercial and institutional construction methods to ensure everyone could use public facilities and spaces. Features that are now part of everyday life became required by law. Public buildings, restaurants, offices and stores now had to have ramps and larger bathrooms. When the ADA first came out the common thinking was that it was primarily intended for folks in wheelchairs but as time has passed and implementation has become the norm all of us have benefited. Have you ever walked up or down a ramp because of an injury? Have you ever received a temporary little blue card from your doctor that lets you park up close? Have you ever used the bigger stall in the bathroom just because it has more room? Today we can call them handicap ramp, handicap parking space and handicap bathroom but for a long while it was not politically correct to say handicap because, well I don’t know why. It just was. I think we all recognize that it’s not a bad word and that a one time or another it has or will apply to us.
While the ADA was not intended to address private single family homes, a lot of the information was very useful as our company began to figure out how to remodel houses that work. There was lot of questions like: How big does a shower have to be to be able to not have a curb to step or roll over but not have the water run out on the floor? How do we make a kitchen that everyone in the family can use? How do you set a bathroom up for future installation of grab bars? How much space do you need in a bathroom? How can you make a vanity accessible and attractive? How do you make doorways not be a hindrance? We were looking for solutions to two main situations. 1) How do we solve remodeling requests that need to tailor for specific situations? 2) How do we incorporate in our design and construction elements that can be beneficial at some future date? We are proud that over these years we have provided solutions that allow folks to stay in their homes by incorporating elements of universal design in our remodeling projects. Universal Design is the designation that has been given to the process of designing elements of homes so that you can stay in your home and overcome the bumps in the road known as life.
I have been fortunate in my career to have remodeled in some form or fashion over thousands of homes. I am proud of all of those jobs but the ones I am most proud of are the remodels that have really made a difference in someone’s life. As a construction guy, it’s not often that you are lucky enough to get a chance to feel what folks like nurses and doctors and therapists and dentists and police officers and EMTs and firemen and all the other folks that touch someone every day. I am very fortunate to have a partner that is one of those folks. My fantastic, wonderful and beautiful wife, Janet, is an Occupational Therapist and we work together to provide specific solutions to specific needs. We are always looking for the best products coming out on the market and have recently affiliated with a company that is providing products that will allow us to produce an even better remodel.
If you need remodeling in your home to address specific needs call us and Janet and I will come out to see you. If you are thinking about how to make your home work for you so that you or someone in your family can stay in it for a long time call me (master bedroom on the first floor, in law suite, larger bathroom, better working kitchen, elevator, easier access, outdoor spaces etc).
 |
 |
 |
|||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
