Challenge: My elderly mother now uses a wheelchair, and I need to make our old family home more accessible. The brick house is a two-story "Colonial Revival" style, with all the bedrooms and a tiled bathroom upstairs. The central hall stairs are a major feature of the house. Downstairs, the living and dining rooms are nicely finished with wood paneling, and the large old kitchen and pantry have not been remodeled. There is only a small powder room downstairs. The ground floor is approximately 3' above grade with a grand front porch entry flanked by symmetrical mature shrubbery, and a large screened side porch.
The front entry is used by guests and for mail delivery. My mother always used the back door off the driveway. The back door is 3' above the brick terrace and garden, where my mom loves to be. The house is full of memories for both my mother and me. We both want her to continue to be able to live in the house. Can you offer any advice?
Solutions: In your description of the house, you may have the solution. For many older multi-story traditional homes, making the whole house wheelchair accessible could involve a major remodeling that might alter many memorable features of the house.
For instance, you could make the upstairs wheelchair accessible by a stair lift. But, the landing area at top of stairs may be too small. You also need a wall at the top or bottom landing to "park" the lift. A small residential elevator might be a better solution, but is more expensive and difficult to fit into a traditional central hall "Colonial" house plan. If you resolve the vertical access problem you will then probably have to enlarge and reconfigure the old tile bathroom, widen the hallway and bedroom doorways, and revise the closet layout to make the upstairs wheelchair accessible. A sensitive remodel would leave as much of the old fabric as possible in place and match the original appearance in new doors, wood trim, floor and wall tiles, etc. From a memory viewpoint, both you and your mother may not be quite comfortable with the substantial remodeling changes typically needed to make the upstairs fully wheelchair accessible.
Downstairs, the more spacious living and dining rooms may already be wheelchair accessible without extensive remodeling. The wider doorways downstairs, typically left open, may already permit wheelchair passage or only require rehanging doors on offset hinges for wheelchair passage. A "large" traditional kitchen should already have sufficient open space for wheelchair maneuvering. Instead of countertops, a traditional kitchen table could provide an ideal work surface. Reorganizing storage in existing kitchen wall and base cabinets, and pantry can put frequently used items more conveniently within your mother's lower reach range. High wall cabinets can be lowered. The kitchen sink and drainboard can be made accessible by removing the cabinet doors and installing a shallower sink. But making a large traditional kitchen more wheelchair accessible does not necessarily require a total remodeling of a room full of memories.
Most important, your mother needs a wheelchair accessible bathroom and bedroom with closet, and to minimize the impact on your home's memories. The best solution might be an addition on the first floor, rather than an extensive remodeling of the upstairs or downstairs.
Enclosing the screened side porch with a new raised floor level with the first floor might work if the area of the side porch is large enough for an accessible bathroom and bedroom with closet. You can retain the light blue beaded board ceiling and exposed brick walls, and provide lots of operable windows to maintain some of the old porch atmosphere and memories. You should consider retaining the front half of the screened side porch as is, but raise the porch floor. The addition could be located at the rear from the back half of the side porch.
With the first floor of the house 3' above grade making the house accessible would require a ramp with an intermediate landing 41' long. This length may be difficult to negotiate for an elderly manual wheelchair user. The ramp would also obliterate your mature shrubbery and visually dominate the house's front entry.
A platform lift could be tucked behind shrubbery on one side of the front porch, but the step up at the front door would still have to be eliminated. You do not have to make the front entry accessible. Because of the side driveway, and your mother's love of the rear garden, making the back door the accessible entry is probably more practical and useful. A platform lift will take considerably less space from your brick terrace than a series of ramps. If you construct ramps, however, the ramps could more easily be integrated visually to the rear of the house.
From Paraplegia News, published by the Paralyzed Veterans of America
PVA accepts no responsibility for any errors or omissions in the information published herein and does not endorse any company or any of the products or services advertised on this Web site.
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