Kary Wright, a C5 quad from Bashaw, Alberta, owned a farmhouse with his wife, Terry. Michael DiBiasio wanted a home he and his wife could safely stay in for the rest of their lives. After some haggling, they settled on a fixed price of $366,000 for an 1,800-square-foot unit modified to meet DiBiasio’s needs, a price the same or cheaper than similar-sized houses listed in the area. He stopped at the site and talked with the builder, who told DiBiasio he could build a unit however he wanted. Then, a few miles up the road he noticed a condo development under construction. “Then I’d use the grab bars or the counter, pull myself in to jump onto the shower chair or use the toilet.” He made do for years because he had to. “I used to transfer onto one of those rolling stools like they use in the doctor’s office,” he says. Michael DiBiasio, a schoolteacher with a T9 incomplete injury, was living in a two-level home with a broken stair lift too expensive for him to fix and bathrooms with 26-inch doorways too narrow for his wheelchair. They had a builder quote them $600,000 or more for a major renovation, “and we’d still have a 100-year-old farmhouse with a wet basement and a leaky roof.” Instead they decided to build a new home next to the old house, using funds from an insurance settlement Sawchuk received after her injury. “But I still couldn’t tuck my kids in at night,” she says. So, after a T4 spinal cord injury, she and her husband put in a ramp, did some minor renovations on the downstairs bathroom and moved their bedroom to the dining room. She loved where she lived, but there wasn’t anything remotely accessible for sale or rent nearby. Julie Sawchuk lived in a farmhouse on 10 acres in rural Ontario. Our home is open, accessible and connected with the outside because that’s the way we designed it.Īccessibility consultant Julie Sawchuk says that an accessible home can reduce the effort needed for daily necessities, giving you more energy for the things you want to do. I can roll outside with a diaper bag in one hand and baby Lou on my lap. Now I can keep an eye on Ewan and Lou chasing each other around the living room while Kelly and I are getting dinner ready in the kitchen. That night and a hundred other moments like it wouldn’t have been possible in the other houses I’ve lived in. Coffee grounds spooned into the pot, teeth brushed, Kelly kissed, and I was back asleep in bed before my body had a chance to realize it was awake. When I awoke, I slipped back inside just as easily. We had gone outside to read because it was easy - just two pushes through the open garage door that separates our main living area from the outside patio. The next thing I knew hours had passed, and the stars were out. But frogs were croaking in the pond at the bottom of the field, and a soft breeze was blowing in from the south. Kelly and I had been reading books with Ewan on the patio couch, and when Kelly piggybacked him off to bed, I flopped over and closed my eyes.
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