Monmouth County Handicapped Kitchen Design & Remodeling
The world has come a long way in terms of accommodating those with disabilities. This includes the area of home design as well. Architects and home builders are increasingly looking at aspects such as single-story floor plans and wide, wheelchair accessible doorways, hallways, and rooms to make houses more accessible for those with disabilities.
In addition to designing homes with disability assistance in mind from the outset, there are also certain home remodeling ideas that can make an existing home more convenient and livable for the physically challenged. If you are a homeowner who is handicapped, you will find that there are more options than ever for making your home easier for you to enjoy.
General Principles of Remodeling for the Physically Challenged
When you are handicapped, this will typically take the form of having less mobility and flexibility. This means that the conveniences that are easy for most of us to reach or use in a home must be made more accessible.
You may be confined to a wheelchair in which case you need wide hallways and doorways and a wheelchair-accessible bathroom. If you have crippling arthritis, you’ll want to have any twist faucets replaced in the kitchen or bathroom with handles you can more easily push back or pull forward to operate. A shallow sink would also help, so there will be space underneath for someone in a wheelchair to pull right up to the sink to reach all parts of it.
Ensuring that cabinets in the kitchen, bathroom and any other rooms are low enough to be reached is also important. The problem of reaching to the back of deep cabinets can be solved with pull-out shelving. Your kitchen can be equipped with countertops at various heights to accommodate people of different disabilities in your home.
Important Handicapped Kitchen Design Elements
To begin with, you will need space underneath countertops and other surfaces in the kitchen, so you or any disabled family members can pull right up to the surface in a wheelchair. Also, we realize that these surfaces may need to be positioned lower down for optimal comfort. This need to have space underneath a surface for someone in a wheelchair is also critical when it comes to your sink. We’ll incorporate a shallow sink design that doesn’t come down as far underneath into your handicapped kitchen design.
When offering our kitchen design services to those who need an accessible kitchen, we also know that cabinets need to be lower to the floor. It can also help for you to have us install pull-out shelving in the cabinets, so you can still have a decent amount of depth for storage space in your cabinets and yet still be able to get to items in the back of the cabinet.
In addition to making parts of your kitchen more accessible, there’s also the matter of making items you can reach more usable if you have limitations in your mobility or flexibility. If you have crippling arthritis, for instance, you’ll want handles you can simply push or pull to operate the faucet in your sink instead of twist knobs that you may have trouble gripping or turning.
As a final point, appliances, as with cabinets, would need to be low enough to be conveniently reached from a wheelchair. One example of this might be having us install a couple low-height refrigerators instead of a single full-height one. This way you’ll still have plenty of storage space but can easily access all of it. Ensuring electrical outlets are in an accessible location is one more touch that will make your kitchen far more comfortable for use by a handicapped family member.