The Nuts and Bolts of Building an Accessible Home

Building a home is exciting. It is easy to get carried away looking at floor plans, dreaming of all the pretty details, and picking out cabinets, flooring, and paint colors in your head. But if your child has accessibility needs, it is also challenging.

Selecting a Contractor

Most builders have little experience working with individuals with significant needs. There are two groups of laws that govern the accessibility of a building project, the ADA, which was meant to apply to public spaces, and Uniform Federal Accessibility Standards, which apply to apartments and other multifamily homes. Neither of these laws applies to constructing single family residential homes, nor are they likely to provide enough accessibility features to meet the needs of someone with significant disabilities. If you are lucky, you can find a builder or architect with extensive experience in accessibility issues or universal design, but in the end finding an experienced builder who is willing to listen, to customize things to meet your needs, and to research the details of how to go about that is your best option.

Ask around for referrals. Interview several builders. Look for builders who are licensed and insured, experienced in construction, and are willing to provide references. Tour some homes they have built or are currently working on. Have them explain the stages of their building process to you. Find out if and when you can make changes to the plans, what their fees are for changes, and at what point in time are changes no longer allowed.

A developer who only works with a few floor models and can only do limited alterations to the plans might not be your best choice unless one of their plans truly does meet your needs. A builder who does custom homes will likely be more flexible to work with. Find out who will be the project manager and be sure to meet him or her. It is crucial that you have a good relationship with them. After the interview, assess the person’s trustworthiness, their knowledge and skill, and their ability to listen and to communicate with you.

Determining Your Child’s Needs

Knowing exactly what you want and need in a home is crucial, but how do you figure that out? Start by asking yourself what is working in your current home. What do you like? What would you really miss if you lost it? What does your day look like? Keep notes on everything that frustrates you as you go about your daily life for several days or weeks. Likely bathrooms and stairs will be the big issues, but if you dig a little deeper you will find hundreds of other small annoyances.

Are there outlets where you need them for your child’s medical equipment? Do you find yourself going up and down the stairs constantly to do laundry or retrieve medical supplies? Does your child need help the reaching things in cabinets and closets? Are faucet handles frustratingly difficult for people to reach and operate? Are areas of your current home unsafe for your child?

Think about what your family does in each room and how much time you spend there. Are you able to fully include your child in all your family’s daily activities? How can you make it easier? Is there enough room in the kitchen for a wheelchair or walker? Is your flooring too hard for your child to comfortably scoot around on? Or too soft to easily push a wheelchair across? Can your child access the backyard? Do you ever use your basement family room? Would you use it if you could all get down there?

What kind of stuff do you need to store? Do you need space for a walker, a stander, and a mat table? What kinds of medical supplies need to be stored, and where do you use them? Would your life be easier if everything could be stored in easy reach of where you use it?

The list you have created will be unique. I know one mom who put a beauty shop sink in her daughter’s bathroom so she could easily wash her daughter’s long hair while she sat in her wheelchair. Another installed a built-in video monitoring system. Another needed door alarms to keep her wandering child safe. We put a heater in our son’s bathroom because he gets hypothermia after showering very easily.

Determining Your Needs

What do YOU want in YOUR dream home? It will be your house, too. As the list of your child’s needs grows longer, you may forget about your own needs. Write your own list.

Would you really love a soaking tub? A large garden? Quartz countertops? Did you always want a craft room or a movie theater? Write it down! Ask other family members to write their own lists, too. Include your children. Explain that they won’t get everything they want, of course, but it doesn’t hurt to let them dream a little.

If pets are a big part of your life, consider their needs. Would they enjoy a fenced yard? A better place for the litter box? Of course, many of these items won’t make the cut, but you may find you can incorporate more of them than you thought possible.

Prioritizing

Now that you have several rather long lists, it is time for the hard part. You need to prioritize. You won’t be able to have everything unless you have an unlimited budget. Think about what is important to you, to your child with special needs, and to each member of your family.

Are family meals important? Being close to school? Basic safety? Eliminating your back pain? Spending time outdoors? Compare the items on your wish list with what’s truly important to your family. Then assign each item on the list a number from one to four, with one being an absolute must have and four being something you would have in a perfect world, something nice but totally unneeded.

Once you have decided which features are priorities, you can start looking at floor plans. You may find an accessible house plan that fits the bill, or one you can modify to make it more accessible. Or you may decide, as we did, that starting from scratch is your best option. My husband and I designed our own home from scratch using Microsoft Visio computer software. It took a few tries, but we came up with a good plan. We then had our builder send our drawings to a drafter who made the official home plans.

Don’t rush the planning phase. Your home must work for your family, or you won’t be happy with it. Certain things will be non-negotiable. Know what these are and don’t compromise.

Popular Accessibility Features

Popular ADA items you may want to include are:

• kitchen cabinets with pull down shelves that can be reached by someone in a wheelchair
• low closet rods
• accessible kitchen appliances and roll under counter space
• automatic faucets
• rocker light switches
• lever door handles
• elevators
• stair lifts
• ceiling track lifts
• pocket doors
• a paint color for walls that contrasts with door trim (this helps those with visual impairments navigate the space)
• an oversized garage and garage doors for larger wheelchair vans
• any number of smart home features that aid in accessibility such as Wi-Fi enabled door locks, outlets, window shades, and lights

Spend some time looking on the internet for accessible products. Look at pictures of accessible homes on Pinterest. Ask other special needs parents what they put in their homes, and what they wish they had. Look around. See what’s out there. Ask your builder, “Can you do that? And what will it cost?”

Budgeting

Have a clear budget for your home and make sure your builder can build your planned home within the budget you provide. Your builder will give you a detailed quote. Know what is and isn’t covered in the quote, from drafting the plans right down to details like light fixtures, towel bars, and mirrors. Find out the prices for any changes and upgrades and get an updated quote that includes all your extras.

You will also need to set some money aside for surprises, probably around 10% above and beyond your official budget. There will be surprises. It is better to set the money aside at first than to have to cut or downgrade something halfway through the project. Determine what you can spend and keep your initial budget to 90% of that number.

The Building Process

You can avoid some surprises with careful planning. Select your materials early, so there isn’t a race to pick everything in the last few days. Find out when selections need to be made and keep on schedule. As you go through the process, get samples of everything you select. Keep them all together in an accordion file and bring the whole file with you each time you make another selection. This way you can make sure your selections all look good together. You will need samples of your siding, roofing, flooring, cabinetry, trim, and paint colors. For things you can’t get samples of like light fixtures, either take pictures on your phone or start a Pinterest page of items you have chosen. Try to get the model number and product name of everything you select. Verify that the names and numbers are correctly entered into your contract. Carefully check it for accuracy.

Once construction starts, visit the building site often, daily if possible. If you see something that is not right, contact your project manager right away. Remember that the workers who are there are subcontractors, which means that your builder is their customer, not you. You cannot expect them to make any changes without permission from your builder. Often, if you call the builder from the site, you can get things straightened out right away. One morning my husband stopped at our building site before going to work and found the framing for the concrete path to our front door included stairs! I immediately called our builder who asked the workers to reframe the path with a slope instead. Luckily, we caught the mistake before the concrete was poured.

Most builders want you to be happy with their work and will do anything in their power to fix a problem. If the subcontractors are doing something that is wrong based on your contract, it should be fixed at no cost to you, such as if they install the wrong countertops. However, if you need to change something that isn’t in your contract, it WILL cost you.

When your home is nearly complete, you will walk through the whole house with your builder, creating a list of items that still need to be done. This list, called a punch list, details the things that must be finished before the final payment to the builder is made. Inspect and test everything. Plug something into every outlet, try every light, turn on every faucet. Open and close every single door. Look carefully at all plumbing, heating ductwork, tile, paint, cabinetry and … everything.

Note every little thing that needs fixing. Does the paint need touchups? Was the cabinetry installed correctly? Are there gaps in your trim molding? Is any cabinet hardware missing? Do locks work smoothly? Bring a roll of blue painter’s tape with you while you go through the house and stick a small piece of it every place you see a problem. You may also want to take a picture of each item. The builder will give you a copy of this list. Check it carefully to make sure everything you found during your tour is included. Keep track of the items and cross them off the list as they are completed.

After everything is done, you will meet with the builder to settle the account, make the final payment and get the keys to your new home. With careful planning and attention to detail you will have a home your whole family can enjoy for years to come.

Bridget Rolek is a former librarian and stay-at-home mom, primary caregiver, and advocate for her son Sam, who has Schizencephaly, severe cerebral palsy and Lennox-Gastaut Syndrome. She believes that information and organization, along with a sense of humor and a full pot of coffee, are the keys to thriving as a special needs parent.

Bridget is currently writing an e-book about home organization strategies for special needs parents to be published in late 2019 or early 2020. She also serves on a joint committee to improve care coordination and outcomes for children enrolled in the complex care programs at the University of Wisconsin’s American Family Children’s Hospital and Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin.