Home Sweet (Accessible) Home

We wanted to be able to come and go from every door in our home without having to think about accessibility and to be able to get into and out of our wheelchair van inside our garage, a necessity during Wisconsin winters. Our front entrance has a low maintenance, non-slip concrete walk that leads right up to the 36” wide door.

Wheelchair access to our backyard was important to us. Our back door, also 36” wide, leads from a basement family room to a large concrete patio.

The windows to our son’s bedroom are large and low. In the event of a fire, firefighters could use these windows to get our son out.

We wanted clear, spacious wheelchair pathways throughout the entire home. That meant no sharp turns coming in or out of doorways, an open floor plan, and lots of space.

Our front entrance and our garage entry are side-by-side off the main living area. No turns are required when coming and going from the house. A coat closet sits between the entry doors, and a pantry is off to the right.

The hallways in our home are 4 feet wide to make it easy for a wheelchair user to move around. We asked that our son’s room also have an extra-large door. At 3.5 feet wide, it is so big that even the ambulance stretcher fits down the hall and into the bedroom.

The main floor hall leads to the basement stairs and master bedroom on the left, our son’s room on the right directly opposite the master, and a bathroom at the end of the hall. Positioning his bedroom door directly across from ours ensures we can hear and quickly reach him in the middle of the night.

Pocket doors are used for the bathroom and our son’s bedroom, so doors aren’t in the way. It also solves the problem of the doors being scraped by wheelchair footplates.

We installed a ceiling track lift in our son’s bedroom to transfer him to and from his bed and wheelchair.

Every outlet in the room has four plugs for medical equipment.

A large walk-in closet in our son’s room allows us to easily store most of our needed medical supplies and equipment right in his room. We also installed several outlets inside the closet to charge equipment batteries. When his wheelchair is not being used, it also fits inside the closet and out of the way.

The main bathroom has a 6 by 3.5 foot roll-in shower with nonslip tile and a handheld shower sprayer. We chose not to add grab bars to keep the bathroom from looking too institutional. Since our son can’t use his hands, they were not necessary. They can, however, be added later if needed. The wall behind the tile is properly braced for them.

The toilet itself is ADA compliant, but once again we left it without grab bars. We also chose not to install an ADA compliant sink because it would take up a lot of space and not be used by our son. Instead we used a small pedestal sink with a tilted mirror above it. The tilt feature allows our son to see himself in it while we get him washed up and comb his hair. We also installed a bathroom fan with a built-in heater to keep him warm during showers.

The main living area also has several wheelchair friendly features, including hard surface floors, no area rugs, lever style door handles and windows low enough for someone in the wheelchair to see out of. The furniture is arranged to create space for a wheelchair. We particularly like the footstool pictured here. We have a pair in our living room and another in our family room. They are big and sturdy enough to pull up right next to our son’s wheelchair and sit on, so they are perfect for playing video games or reading a book together.

The kitchen is large enough for our son to be with us while we cook or do dishes. Again, we chose not to add expensive accessible features such as ADA-compliant appliances because our son cannot use them.

Like everywhere else in the house, clear pathways are provided to move a wheelchair throughout the living area, including one to a screened porch with an accessible doorway.

On the porch, the furniture is once again arranged so there is enough space for a wheelchair to turn around comfortably.

The idea was to provide access to every room in the house. With that in mind we installed an inclined platform wheelchair stair lift. It was very important for our son to get into the basement, not only for safety reasons during storms, but also to enjoy the family room and patio. The family room is carpeted with a short-looped pile that is easy to push a chair over. We had it glued completely down to make sure it does not stretch and bunch up under wheelchair wheels, which is a common problem with carpets that are installed with tack strips.

Less pretty to look at, but very important, are some safety features we installed. This whole house surge protector prevents lightning damage to our son’s expensive medical equipment.

In a power outage we have two generator hookups that provide heat and air conditioning as well as power to outlets in our son’s room and to the refrigerator.