Making A Home More Accessible Means You Can Live In It Longer

Suppose you’re a homeowner that’s gotten a quality job done by Maryland contractors on your kitchen and bathrooms. In that case, you may look forward to decades of reliable use. However, things change with time, including people. What started as a couple may turn into a family, then back to a couple again as children grow up and move out.

For the homeowners themselves, the aging process may make typical, everyday activities more challenging. If you don’t consider this, you may find yourself forced to move out of your home because it’s now too difficult for you to use. But this is where accessibility remodeling can come in.

Things Maryland Contractors Can Change

As time passes, there may be specific physical or health-related changes that will affect a typical, everyday lifestyle. Getting older, for example, may sometimes entail decreasing mobility as time passes. This may be as simple as being slower and requiring more assistance to get into and out of beds and chairs, or it may be as dramatic as using a wheelchair.

When these issues happen, a typical bathroom or kitchen can become difficult or even impossible to use. A wheelchair may no longer be able to reach for items stored in kitchen cabinets. At the same time, someone with arthritis may find it possible to sit on a toilet and use it but cannot stand up again. If these issues aren’t addressed, it may mean someone who has lived in a home for decades must now find a new living space to accommodate these needs.

The Kitchen

For people who want to continue living in the home they raised a family in, remodeling these living spaces can make all the difference between a forced move and continuing to remain at home. Kitchen counters and cabinets, for example, can be lowered to accommodate the new needs of someone using a wheelchair.

For people with mobility issues, installing items like pullout pantries can make it much more feasible to retrieve, use and store ingredients and cooking utensils. Changing the handles on drawers can also be important, as smaller pull knobs can be difficult for an arthritic hand to manage.

The Bathroom

Bathrooms are often one of the biggest reasons people are forced to move. Toilets, bathtubs, and showers, for example, all become extremely difficult to use for wheelchair users. There is no easy way for a wheelchair to transfer into a bathtub and then get back into the wheelchair once done. For the elderly, sometimes combine physical frailty with mobility issues; climbing into and out of a bathtub is agonizing. Still, one slip could result in broken bones and a visit to the hospital.

Bathrooms can now be remodeled to accommodate these needs. Sometimes, all it takes are grip bars by the toilet or shower to restore safety. Other times, shower stalls and bathtubs may need to be replaced with wheelchair-accessible versions that make it possible to transfer and bathe more easily.

Professional Maryland contractors should be entrusted to make these changes to ensure that the results allow an elderly resident or wheelchair user to continue to enjoy their home.