Wheelistically @ Claire.NU

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These posts have been a long time in the mak­ing; over the years, many people have asked me what adap­tions I have had made to my home to acco­mod­ate my Dis­ab­il­it­ies. Whilst I have gone to some lengths via email to answer those ques­tions, I had always held off post­ing pub­licly until I felt that we’d “fin­ished” adapt­ing our home.

I have since real­ised that you never really “fin­ish” a home and you cer­tainly never fin­ish adapt­ing one — if it’s not your needs chan­ging (and let’s face it, some­times it is), then it’s the tech­no­logy avail­able in assist­ing you that changes/improves/evolves con­tinu­ously — and so, you are never fin­ished; there is always scope for improve­ment and forever someone with an idea of how to make some­thing work “better”.

So, con­sider this list a work in pro­gress and sub­ject to future change. Whilst not the most riv­et­ting of reads, I hope that the inform­a­tion within will at least go some way to make someone’s life a little easier.

Access­ib­il­ity at The Little Down­stairs House

The Little Down­stairs House is in fact, a bun­ga­low; a dwell­ing where all the living-space is on the ground-floor. There are no stairs and no first-floor, their is no “upstairs” to speak of, only a “down­stairs” — hence my home’s nick­name. Liv­ing in a bun­ga­low when you need wheel­chair access is a major plus point, obviously.

In addi­tion to its lack of stairs, The Little Down­stairs House also boasts:

• Level access thresholds  ¹
• Low level elec­trical switch­board  ²
• Low level ther­mo­static heat­ing and boiler con­trols  ²
• Low level light switches  ¹
• High level power out­lets  ¹
• Level patio area and reas­on­ably flat lawns both in the front and rear gardens

Adap­tions

Wet Room

When we moved into The Little Down­stairs House a little over two years ago, there were no access­ible bathing facil­it­ies. The bath­room was small and made all the more pokey by the over-sized ceramic bath suite (circa 1970s) that inhab­ited it. It took twelve months, a Dis­abled Facil­it­ies Grant and a Bathing Assess­ment con­duc­ted by Adult Social Care, but even­tu­ally with the assist­ance of my Land­lord and sub-contractors, the bath­room was gut­ted and ren­nov­ated. In its place is now a wet room with level access shower.

Manual Win­dow Openers

For the most­part, stand­ard win­dows are designed to be opened and closed by people who are of aver­age height and able to stand; I am neither of those things. Con­sequently, I couldn’t reach to open or close any of the win­dows inside my home. Fol­low­ing an assess­ment by an Occu­pa­tional Ther­ap­ist, my land­lord agreed to fund and install manual win­dow open­ers through­out; I can now open and close the win­dows using a crank handle loc­ated in each room.

Aids

Water Wheels

One of my most vital aids: without them, I could not use the shower in my wet room. “Water Wheels” refers to the manual wheel­chair that I use in the shower: a Manual Shower Wheel­chair by Chil­tern. This piece of equip­ment is on per­man­ent loan to me from my County Council’s Equip­ment Ser­vices; when it falls into dis­repair, the Equip­ment Ser­vices are also respons­ible for any repair/replacement, upon recom­mend­a­tion from an Occu­pa­tional Therapist.

Remote-Controlled Power Outlets

Although the power out­lets are at an easier-to-reach height, pesky things like fur­niture tend to have a nasty habit of obscur­ing access to them, espe­cially when your home is “cosy” like mine and you are not spoilt for choice as to which wall the sofa runs across; in my case it’s the only wall across which it fits, of course — regard­less of the fact a double-oulet is smack in the middle of said wall. The solu­tion? Remote con­trol plugs. These plugs act like a middle-man between the appli­ance and the power socket and allow you to switch the power to the appli­ance on and off via a little, handy remote con­trol. Isn’t tech­no­logy mar­velous? I have numer­ous sets of these through­out The Little Down­stairs House and rel­ish the abil­ity to switch of a lamp at the oppos­ite end of the room without even need­ing to get out of bed.

Grabby Sticks

Grab­ber, graspers, reach­ers, help­ing hands, lit­ter pick­ers, “Grabby Sticks”; whatever you call them, their uses are numer­ous, if not always obvi­ous. From hanging clothes on a rail to draw­ing cur­tains and retriev­ing objects fallen out of either reach or sight, these little blight­ers have become indes­pens­ible and I now have sev­eral sta­tioned stra­tegic­ally about the place.

Garden­ing

To make tak­ing care of the garden a pos­sib­il­ity for me, my fam­ily helped build a series of raised flower beds from wooden sleep­ers (a grant given by the Garden­ing for the Dis­abled Trust paid for the mater­i­als). To tend the beds, I use a vari­ety of “access­ible” garden­ing tools (also paid for by the Trust), which are designed for garden­ers with reduced hand/arm con­trol and “seated stature”. Both the NRG range by Radius and the EasiGrip range by PETA UK are ideal.

Com­ing in Part II: Wheel­chairs, attach­ments and accessor­ies…

1. These were exist­ing adap­tions in place, prior to us mov­ing in. [back]
2. These adap­tions were made by our land­lord, at our request, once we had moved in. [back]