Designing

Well, we've started the process of remodeling the downstairs bathroom.

The motivation is primarily to make it handicapped accessible. We were going to do it anyway, just as a general renovation, and also to make it more useable for my mother, but my brief period of being really aware of handicapped access made us push up the effort. We sketched out some ideas about what we want to do to the two rooms (a small laundry room which is adjacent to a small bathroom), and this is what we came up with:

New flooring, laundry and bath - nonskid rubberized floor
ADA compliant toilet with integral grab rails
New vanity, new sink, new medicine cabinet
Sit-in bath with shower handle and grab bars
Replace the wallpaper, paint the ceiling, paint the trim, paint the baseboard heater covers

?Pocket door into laundry room
?linen shelves next to bath
?shutoff valves for washer water supply
?Extend laundry room out onto slab

These are just concepts -- for example, nonskid flooring -- since its intended for use by someone who's infirm, and theres a good chance of water on the floor, we want something that will make that less dangerous, but we don't want it looking industrial. Similarly, we know what we mean when we say ADA compliant toilet -- that is, higher than normal for handicapped access -- but apparently there are multiple variants of that. The bath is the big thing; we have the standard five foot long bath in there, and we want to replace it with a sit-in bath that's got a door in the side, so that you don't step up more than a couple of inches, and then can immediately sit down and fill the tub. There are some other ideas related to the laundry room, including expanding the room out onto a mostly-unused slab (its under the kitchen extension); we likely won't do that, but I wanted to at least think about it.

We've called two companies; one didn't respond, which surprised us, because its people who've done work for us before, but the other was remarkable -- they were focused, they asked good questions, they impressed us with their professionalism. And, as it turns out, in about two weeks, the annual Homebuilders Show will be held, with a fair number of people advertising their remodeling skills there, too. So, overall, we're guardedly optimistic.

More as it happens.