Handicap Bathroom Design

Handicap bathroom design is something I have had a hand in lately with my nephew’s place getting some cosmetic work done and that included his specially adapted bathroom. Now, I know folks are often curious to know what designing a handicap bathroom entails and for that matter what goes into one, so I’ll write a little on that and hopefully give you a better understanding of what it entails.

Ok, the first thing you have to bear in mind when putting together a working handicap bathroom design is the layout and that means you need to leave plenty of space for a wheelchair user to get around in there. They have to able to get in, turn around and get out as well as use the facilities without unduly needing to lean over stuff or stretch to reach anything.

If that makes sense, then the rest of this should all fall into place.

You need to start with things that cannot easily be moved, such as waste water pipes, hot and cold water inlets, electrical sockets etc. Those are things that are best worked with where they are if you can. So if you have a drainage point for a shower and a toilet that are far enough away from each other to allow a full sized handicap shower stall to be installed, that’s great. if not, you really cannot compromise on that one, as its no good installing a shower unit that a wheelchair user can’t use!

Same goes for the handicap toilet. It has to be in a place that is easy to get to and to transfer to and from a wheelchair using handrails fitted securely to the walls. So if it means having to move something major, like a water waste pipe, then you’ll probably find it easier to move the outlet for the shower than the toilet, which is a job you really do not want to undertake unless it is absolutely necessary!

Think about where you’ll install the wash basin or vanity unit too, as it’ll require water inlets and outlets too, although these are not too difficult to move if needs be.

When installing faucets, they had better be specially adapted ones so that a person with very little strength in their hands can still easily operate them. No point fitting a beautiful looking chrome mixing faucet that you can’t turn on or off.

Floor space is important of course, as a wheelchair needs to be able to get around in there and the handicap shower stall needs to be large enough to accommodate a wheelchair and handicap shower seat too. Hand rails need to be anywhere a person is likely to need to move around, for instance getting out of a wheelchair and sitting in a shower seat. Think about the best placement and for heaven’s sake if the handicapped person who is gonna use the facility is there, ask them where they want them!

Ensuring all the furniture is at the correct height is important as well, because a person in a wheelchair who wants to wash their hands will want to do so while sitting, for obvious reasons! Make sure they can get the chair under the wash basin so they don’t have to reach too far over to use the faucets.

Well, that’s about most of the main points about getting handicap bathroom design as right as you can. Smaller things like towel rails and stuff should all follow the same common sense placement as the furniture for height and distance and as long as you also fit a non-slip floor surface, you’ll have a pretty satisfied user.

That’s it for this post, so I’ll be back again soon.

Edwyn Prose

Mosquito Magnets

You know what I hate about this time of the year? Mosquitoes! They are a damn menace and have a nasty habit of getting out of hand in my neighborhood especially around late summer. Well, I have a nice surprise for those little blood suckers! I got me one of those mosquito magnets!

What, I hear you say, are mosquito magnets for heaven’s sake? Since when did those acrimonious little insects become magnetic? Ha ha. Well, its not quite like that, but the device works on attracting the evil little critters and simply vacuuming them up!

It is a marvel of simplicity meets a little technological know how. The device uses a mixture of carbon dioxide, plant chemicals and moisture that attract the female mosquito (that’s the one that bites you, not the male) by simulating the attractants given off by an animal that it would like to bite! when the mosquito gets close enough, the vacuum sucks it into a bag where it dehydrates and dies. Simple in its complexity, I say!

I got the device because I hate to use chemical sprays that for one I hate the smell of and two I’m convinced are extremely bad for a person’s health. And when you get to my age, you’re glad to have that health and don’t want some damn chemical cocktail messing with it!

Light traps are only so good and while I can keep them out of the house with mosquito nets up at the windows and doors, I can’t sit out on my patio and enjoy the late summer evenings and not attract enough of the nasty little things to cause me some damn itchy bites!

So a non-chemical alternative had to be found and I believe this device is the one. It culls the mosquito population in the area by attracting all the females and killing them before they can lay their eggs and make more mosquitoes. It also attracts them off my patio so they leave me alone and go for what they believe is more interesting several feet away!

So far so good and no bites in the last few evenings. So I’m confident that mosquito magnets are the clean way to go to beat these nasty blood sucking, disease spreading, flying insects.

Edwyn Prose

Small Bathroom Remodeling Time

That’s right, I was looking at the small bathroom I have on the first floor of my house the other day and was seriously thinking about how best to go about remodeling the room to get the best from the space available.

Now let’s face it, the room is pretty small and at present most of the space is taken up by the old bath tub, which no one even uses any more! So that got me to thinking why not rip that bath tub out and replace it with a nice shower unit? That will provide a sudden gap where the toilet can now go, freeing up one whole wall for heated towel racks and a bathroom vanity unit with a big wall mirror right behind to further create the illusion of more space.

Well, I sat down and sketched it all out on a piece of paper, as is my usual way of putting some of my more enlightened ideas onto a medium where I can better explain it. It looked pretty good, so I went down to the local bathroom store in town and had a word with their designer guy, who happens to be a friend of mine going way back.

He came over and took a bunch of measurements and went back to the store to put my plan into action. The next day, he had four options for me starting with the least expensive to the most expensive. I actually went for the second most expensive option because I liked the look of it the best and it was just perfect for how I envisaged the small bathroom remodeling plan to be.

Well, a week later, the guys brought all the stuff over, ripped out my old bathroom units and had the whole job finished inside two days. Now that’s pretty good going! I say that if you get some small bathroom remodeling ideas in your head, then you should get them down on paper while they’re stiff fresh in your mind and that way you’ll be better able to express your wishes to a professional and get a really great job done.

So I was pleased as anything, my wife loved the new bathroom and it gets used a heck of a lot more than it ever did. So it was money well spent and time well used.

Edwyn Prose

Mens Wigs and Fashion

What’s this all about? Mens wigs? Well you’re probably wondering why I’ve picked on this subject for some of my unique insight and interesting views. Ha! Well, nothing so crazy this time around either as it just struck me while I was reading a magazine article about them that there is actually something interesting to write about mens wigs!

Its not so much the hairpieces themselves, but more the current fashion ideals that have changed quite considerably in the last 30 years or so. You see, back in the 60s and 70s when young fellers were growing their hair long in response to the fashion at the time, it became quite a stigma to be going bald prematurely as is more common in young men than you’d probably think.

Back then, it was seen as a slight to have thinning hair and to have to drop out of the fashion scene because you had to get it cut shorter because you’d end up looking like a freak with a rapidly receding hairline and long hair trailing down the back of their necks like it was a silly wig sliding off the back of their heads!

Well, to counter that effect, plenty of young guys bought and wore mens wigs to try to sustain their fashion sense and be appealing to the young women that they were naturally still chasing!

But fashions change with the times and the last 10 years or so has seen a shift to a much shorter haircut once more and also to the shaved head look as being seen as a more sexually aggressive look which has the effect of attracting women more successfully than most other things. This has been excellent news for young guys that are prematurely balding because it means all they have to do is shave the rest off and they are in the height of fashion!

That’s bad news for the mens wigs companies, but they won’t be hit too hard. There are still plenty of middle aged and older men who are trying to hold the clock back by covering their receding or thinning hairlines with matching wigs and hairpieces, often quite successfully I might add.

No, I don’t wear a wig myself and never would, as I think if you’re getting older, then hell, act and look your damn age! Ok, I guess I’ve been pretty lucky in that my hair didn’t all fall out, although its a lot thinner now than it was and of course its almost pure white! But them when you’re in your 60s, who gives a rats ass! Ha!

Edwyn Prose

Stair Chair Lifts

You know, plenty of folks who are getting along in years and those with disabilities, as my last post made reference to, have a tough time getting up and down the stairs in their homes. My own parents had just that problem until we had a stair chair lift fitted to their main stairway.

The transformation was incredible. The pair of them went from just sitting around dejected and waiting for something to happen to being active and happy again. It was all down to the sudden freedom they once more enjoyed in their own home. That’s because long before we had the stair chair lift fitted, they had simply lost interest in many things simply because they couldn’t easily get around the house.

It saddens me to say that they had taken to sleeping downstairs in their sitting room because it had actually become too painful to climb the stairs to go to bed in their beloved bedroom which looked out over the beautiful grassy fields of the golf course opposite. Of course, they were too proud to tell anyone about it so the first I knew was on a particular visit to their home where I’d stayed on later than planned and asked to stay over night. Then the truth came out and the next day I went and did something about it.

You know, I found a good local stair lift company and the guys came out that day to take measurements. The installers came a day later with all the equipment and fitted it there and then. It was up and running by the evening and at first my mother was a little wary of it but she soon got the hang of it and was cruising up and down like a pro!

My father took to it straight away too and they were soon fighting over who got to ride it first!

Now that’s the kind of happy ending I like to see! So if you have parents or loved ones who are keeping quiet about their ability to get around their own homes, for want of a good stair chair lift you can transform their lives for the better in one fell swoop!

Edwyn Prose