Modern Life: Re -Thinking of Home Shape

Article content

If you listen to words Access, in place of age aging And Universal design Immediately the worst curves and style-global tanks, reconstruction and interior designers will prefer a word.

These days, the folding-down shower chairs, adjustable-urea kitchen counters, and easy opening cabinet doors include novelty, which makes homes more functional-without sacrifice.

Article content

“There is a real motivation towards the most stylish accessible design,” says Kaila Macginnis, co -founder of Ottawa’s configuable design + with her husband’s reconstruction. “It doesn’t have to be like a hospital anymore.”

When they started their company 11 years ago, they expected the most of their customers to be planned before they got older, but how things did not go out. “The majority of the people we are working on are actually younger customers with newly acquired shortcomings,” says Maggenis.

The design of everyone

The word “Universal Design” includes architectural choices, structural adaptations and fittings. For example, wide doors make it easy to navigate with a stroller and wheelchair around the house. A pull cabinet drawer is a step (according to space, Bluomal is made) kitchen counters and bathroom sinks, as well as helping children to reach the boxes over adults.

“If this is a truly thoughtful design … whoever wants to see you and they don’t know where they are accessible,” says Macginnis. “The full opinion of Universal Design is that no one can use it.”

Article content

Dynamics

The required mechanical devices such as staircase may distract from the appearance of the house, so the configuable often advises installing the vertical stage lift in the attached garage. This allows a wheelchair to move easily from their vehicle to their home, while avoiding the entry curve or staircase demand.

However, there is no need to hide mechanical devices. A lift installed with elegant glass doors in a sophisticated, four -storey house in Westboro.

Bathrooms like spa

Anyone who has tried to shout in a bathtub so far when wearing actors can appreciate the value of accessible bath devices.

The owner of the Ottawa Accessible Design Group, Interior Designer Angi Asbac said, “Every new home should be uninterrupted rainfall. In fact, he wants them hard for the vag-tanks because they are very useful for more people. Most people who use a vag-inap need help to move inside a caregiver, he notes. On the other hand, someone who uses a walker, wheelchair or crutches can enter uninterrupted rain.

Article content

An elegant towel bar structure is doubled as a grab bar, which is safer when maintaining a spa -like bathroom vibration, adding aspec as stylish, non -slip tiles.

Don’t forget the technology

Technology is often an unnoticed feature of universal design, says Aspec. Smart-home settings can be locked at night, turn off the oven after a certain period of time, or to ensure that heating and cooling systems are operated when needed.

Even the simplest of voice control lights can make a difference for many. “If they wake up at night, they should use the washroom or they are in pain … they can hear the lights (computer) to run the lights rather than walk through the dark room.”

Convenient kitchen

Kitchens can be a great pain point for homeowners. A common renewal involves installing counters fixed at low altitude for people who use the wheelchair. However, asbach says that a counterpart of a counterpart that can be raised and reduced for users with different needs, especially in a small kitchen.

Article content

Lucy Tretto, a marketing representative of Plum Canada Limited, said that the usual cabinet doors that are open to many users are complex.

Bloom’s Avendos’s upper cabinet doors swing upwards than the exterior, Trado explains. “If you are curved to die and die, then if you forget that the door is open, you are not going to demolish your head.”

People with talented problems such as arthritis are difficult to deal with door handles, so the Plum Gilles Cabinet does the doors and closes with electronic or smooth touch. The company also creates exhaust shelves, so you don’t need to climb a ladder or get down to the knees to see what’s on the back of your shelf.

An effective investment

Following the global design principles will increase the cost when creating or updating a home. Backed rainless rain requires more expensive sealing techniques, for example, wide doors are usually customized doors. Ergonomic kitchen devices are expensive than their basic peers.

However, the access lawyers point out that such shelters, when such shelter is done, point to increasing the value of your home by very attracted to a wide range of buyers. “This is not really thinking about the elderly population,” Tretto says about Bloom’s attitude. “Everything we do is going to work for every age.”

Article content

But a house is not just an investment; It is a place to live. Magginnis says that changing your home with more functional change will change your life. “There is such a huge psychological social factor for these home changes.”

She tells the story of a customer who lost a leg in a motorcycle accident. After he was rescued in a pension home that could not reach the bathroom from his wheelchair, he returned home, where the configuable accessible vanity was established. When he realized that he could brush his teeth easily, it immediately increased his determination. “This was amazing,” Kaila says about the moment. “We all cry.”

Article content