When Susan Unfer bought a 1950s ranch-style home in Des Plaines three years ago, she did not intend to live in it. Instead, she viewed the purchase as both an investment and an outlet for her avocation as a home remodeler.
Previous owners had installed several features to improve accessibility for the disabled, including sloping sidewalks, hand rails in the tub and a ramp from the attached garage into the kitchen.
Unfer has watched her parents’ health decline and now she has a new vision. She’d like to pick up where the former owners left off and make the entire home accessible for those with physical challenges. She and her parents will reside there. Eventually, she will sell or rent to someone whose life can be made easier by her efforts.
One of the first projects on Unfer’s list is to remodel the full bath. A pediatrician, she has collected boxes of information on suitable products and obtained recommendations from patients and colleagues. Now, seeking architectural and design assistance, she wrote to Home Improvements. In turn, we called in Ellen Bailey Dickson of Bailey Edward Design in Chicago.
The red brick home, which faces east, has three bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths, an eat-in kitchen, a combination living/dining room and a finished basement.
The full bath is wedged between the master bedroom on one side and the half bath and coat closet on the other. Long and narrow, it is configured with the vanity, toilet and tub along the south wall. The east wall, a short one, has a window overlooking the front yard.
When the two women met to discuss the project, Unfer told Dickson that she would like to add a walk-in shower with a low barrier to step over. She is willing to gut the space and start from scratch.
There are many levels of accessibility, Dickson told her. The extent to which Unfer cares to go is up to her and her budget, “but you can make the home much more sympathetic.”
Dickson studied the bath, which measures about 5 by 11 feet, and concluded that a tub and separate shower will not fit within the existing walls. If the tub were moved against the window wall, a shower would fit against the south wall but it would also extend 3 feet into the middle of the room. That would leave a mere 2-foot passageway to the tub.
Moving the walls would accommodate some improvements, but it wouldn’t provide enough room for both a tub and a shower, Dickson noted. “We’d get more wheelchair turning radius.”
Five feet are needed to comfortably turn around a wheelchair, she explained.
“The room is so long but not long enough,” Unfer lamented.
The half bath, behind half of the south wall, has no inches to spare. But the coat closet does. It measures 40 inches deep, spacious as far as coat closets go.
Dickson had an idea for that space. One of her concerns is the narrow hallway leading past the bath and into the three bedrooms. Here, wheelchair accessibility is quite limited. Enlarging the hallway would mean sacrificing the linen closet and a bedroom clothes closet, something Unfer is unwilling to do and the architect did not recommend.
However, Dickson pointed out that the clothes closet could be moved into the linen closet and the clothes closet eliminated to provide more turning radius in front of the bedrooms. The extra depth taken from the coat closet could be used to provide linen storage in the bath.
“You’d make the hallway more open so someone can get into all the bedrooms,” said the architect.
Without the option of a tub and a shower, Unfer must decide which one she would prefer. She favors the idea of a shower, “but I think for resale, a house without a bathtub is a little awkward,” she said.
“It usually is,” agreed Dickson. “You could get rid of the half bath but that reduces the value of your property. It’s more marketable to have 1 1/2 baths even if one has a shower only.”
Easy does it
If a tub is the best alternative, Unfer wants one with a thick front side so someone can sit down and swing his or her legs over, she said.
Dickson suggested either installing a whirlpool tub or building a false wall in front of a standard tub.
Additional suggestions from the architect included installing high and low hand rails onto the tub surround and by the toilet, putting in a cutaway vanity so a wheelchair can slide underneath and providing some type of seating in the tub.
The cost of the project depends upon many variables.
“It seems a bathroom costs $15,000 no matter what people want,” Dickson said. “The fixtures are the wild card.” She estimated that Unfer’s tab will run in the $20,000 to $25,000 range.
