Episode 1395
Designing for Aging in Place and growing old in your home
With so many families having multiple generations living there taking time to design the home for everyone is something that is very important. What are the big things you should be paying attention to? What are the tricks and tips that you can do to make life easier? Tune in and catch them all right here!
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Monument Grills
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Transcript
[00:00:16] Caroline Blazovsky: great. Yeah. My mom got sucked in. She's like, I want one of those. And I'm like, do they leak? I mean, what's the real true story on those things.
[:[00:00:22] Eric Goranson: well, but here's what you have to worry about one, you know, you've got that door. You need to get a good brand. That's gonna hold up. Cuz yeah, if. Gonna leak. And usually what they do is they have a, a seal there or a seal that inflates kind of, once you get in there, it pressurizes itself and locks itself in there.
[:[00:01:01] Eric Goranson: How you doing today, Caroline? Hello
[:[00:01:06] Eric Goranson: Good. I thought this was a great topic for us today, cuz we both feel like we're getting.
[:[00:01:19] Eric Goranson: Everybody is right. That's the only constant that moves. We're all just kind of aging at the same rate day by day. I'll tell
[:[00:01:36] Caroline Blazovsky: Like you might
[:[00:01:52] Eric Goranson: Just trying to help parents.
[:[00:01:55] Eric Goranson: moving in. Oh yeah. You know, and, and these multi-generational households are in [00:02:00] right now. Lot of people are doing that the same way,
[:[00:02:04] Eric Goranson: So one of the things, you know, my parents thought I had, we, I grew up in a house like at 1972 house that had like seven levels.
[:[00:02:34] Eric Goranson: We had 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 different sets of stairs in the house. Ouch. So that was tough. It
[:[00:02:45] Eric Goranson: climbing. It is for any age. Yeah. So when my parents sold that house, we designed a house that would help them age in place. And one of the first things we did, which I'm so happy was we designed the front of the house.
[:[00:03:11] Caroline Blazovsky: ramp. Is it like a ramp?
[:[00:03:21] Eric Goranson: The, the garage is only just, you know, 10 floor. There's only about 10 inches. You have to go down to get that, you know, it's like the difference between your garage floor in your house, you know, that kind of foot that you have there when you step into a garage, it's about that distance. And so you, when you do a winding walkway, you don't even notice.
[:[00:03:59] Caroline Blazovsky: what, I'm a ramp. [00:04:00] It always looks like a, and then you say, oh, I know somebody lives there.
[:[00:04:06] Eric Goranson: Well, and I think also, also it also says, Hey, you know, there might be somebody a little more vulnerable here, go here. You might have, have an old, an old person or somebody that's in their eighties, nineties or older in there that, that, that might be able to not defend themselves correctly.
[:[00:04:39] Eric Goranson: If you're doing that tree model bathroom model, try to slide in as big a door as you can,
[:[00:04:52] Eric Goranson: Yeah. That's a big one too. The tubs. Yeah. Well, you can do tubs, but you can do the, the, the more of the, the door.
[:[00:05:17] Caroline Blazovsky: great.
[:[00:05:24] Eric Goranson: well, but here's what you have to worry about one, you know, you've got that door. You need to get a good brand. That's gonna hold up, cuz yeah, if not, it's gonna leak.
[:[00:05:51] Eric Goranson: Think about taking a bath, you're taking a tub, you're chilling out. You're having a great time and you're like, all right, time to get out. You get out of the top [00:06:00] on these. You wait, you can. So you have to wait for the water to go all the way down the drain. What happens? You're freaking cold. The time the water gets down, you're cold, you're shivering, you're shivering and, and the, and the walls on these are higher.
[:[00:06:37] Eric Goranson: Yeah. Like a condensate pump almost. Yeah. Almost. Yeah. It's almost like that, but it's just, it helps it drain faster. So now you're not waiting like seven minutes for the tub to drain. You're like two minutes. That's a lot better situation. That's a good point.
[:[00:06:54] Caroline Blazovsky: You'd be shivering freezing.
[:[00:07:09] Eric Goranson: So I'm gonna wrap up. No, that doesn't work. so that's one of the things, and then here's another trick too. If you're doing a bathroom model, whether or not, if you think you're gonna be there for any length of time, put the blocking in around the bathtub or shower. So you have places down the road to put, grab bars in.
[:[00:07:54] Eric Goranson: My dad
[:[00:08:10] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And that's smart.
[:[00:08:33] Eric Goranson: She was kind of the, one of the originals I've heard of her. She's like famous, super. So she was my teacher for this. And you know, it's one of those things before we go out to break here, I wanna talk about you think about what it takes to turn a wheelchair around in a bathroom that is five feet. So think about a five foot circle.
[:[00:09:07] Caroline Blazovsky: can't? No. And what if you can't afford that? Like, what if you're in like a moderate income and you can't afford to have something like that or, or even have that accessible, you're never gonna be able to turn your chair around
[:[00:09:24] Eric Goranson: The cool thing with this is you don't have to meet ADA code. It's not like it's a commercial bathroom where you have to have meet that. You just wanna give some space. And when we come back, I wanna talk about that. Some of the tricks that you can do to give yourself a little bit more room, cuz somebody has to be able to get in there with a, with a wheelchair, get over into the toilet and get back out.
[:[00:10:05] Eric Goranson: Welcome back to the round, the house show. Now, Caroline and I are sitting here talking about you. Aging in place and, and creating a space that's good for maybe now or later, whether or not for people with all different abilities. And, uh, Carolyn and I were just joking around here, but she was visualizing me in the last segment talking about having a five foot space for, in a wheelchair.
[:[00:10:45] Eric Goranson: And. I was in a wheelchair, cuz I got tired of going around and crutches all day at the home improvement store. So I was like, ah, put me in a wheelchair. They're like, well you can't be over there selling doors and windows doing that. I'm like, ah, throw me in kitchen design. I'll I'll design kitchens and I've done it for crutches are
[:[00:10:59] Caroline Blazovsky: We were just saying [00:11:00] like, I can't do crutches to save my life. Like if I tried they're too tall, they're too short. I fall down. I slip on stuff. I'm way better in a wheelchair, like forget crutches.
[:[00:11:20] Eric Goranson: I got in there like day one. I'm like, yo, no, no. So I literally had a wheelchair in there and I even rented one cuz I, it wouldn't work with my knee being out. So I rented a wheelchair that had the right thing for my knee and I rolled around there for a month in a wheelchair until I could put some weight on it and stuff.
[:[00:11:58] Eric Goranson: Alright. You [00:12:00] had to go down three steps into the floor to go up three steps. And then there was a ramp that went into the bathroom. He had steps get into the area. I'm like, what am I supposed to do? Like helicopter drop into this floor, cuz there's no ramp. So it was, there was a lot of stuff like that.
[:[00:12:33] Eric Goranson: So maybe there's a space there where somebody could roll the wheelchair up and slide over onto the BA onto the.
[:[00:12:47] Eric Goranson: Yeah. So creating that space is, is really big. And, you know, I was talking about the, the access with ramps, one thing that I've learned, and it's cool that I've seen this when you're getting [00:13:00] into this, you know, designing for people with multiple abilities is.
[:[00:13:17] Caroline Blazovsky: I see it a lot more
[:[00:13:25] Eric Goranson: This is gonna be my forever home. I would always have them design a closet by the stairs. That would go up into the hallway above. And there was a closet on the exact side of things. No utilities, nothing above that. So you now had a place, you could cut the floor out and make that into an elevator shaft and put an elevator in Ms.
[:[00:14:09] Caroline Blazovsky: What else can you do? Like, so you can do an elevator, you see the chair lifts, right? The, the ones that go up the stairs, what else is,
[:[00:14:23] Caroline Blazovsky: I guess still stuck to
[:[00:14:28] Eric Goranson: You know what? One of the first steps, if we dial it back, one of the first steps that I do is think about bathroom and kitchen faucets. The rule is, can you turn that faucet on with a closed fist? Hmm. So when you look at a single handle faucet, I can turn it on sideways, do that where you run into a problem is like the cross handle, right?
[:[00:15:19] Caroline Blazovsky: Well, the toilet seats are too, like how about the height of a toilet seat?
[:[00:15:53] Eric Goranson: I get it what you're saying. But as far as on your knees and somebody having to get up out of a [00:16:00] chair over to that, it's just a little bit easier than to be six inches lower. I mean, I'm
[:[00:16:14] Eric Goranson: Yeah. So why not create that of the house that you're in, right? Yeah. Just make it a little higher. And then the other thing to do too, and we'll, we'll get into kitchen design and the next segment, cuz that's its own little thing about what you can do within your kitchen. But there's other things that you should be thinking about lighting control as you get older.
[:[00:17:04] Eric Goranson: To be able to control the dimming on that. Because for one person's gonna be too, too bright or too dim or vice versa. That's the same
[:[00:17:12] Eric Goranson: you're always cold. Oh my gosh. oh, that's that starts out. Usually spouse to spouse. Right? Somebody's not happy
[:[00:17:21] Caroline Blazovsky: You go into every older person. So am I go into I'm like sweating? I'm like, what tap is it in here? It's like 81.
[:[00:17:40] Eric Goranson: And we'll talk about the, a little bit more as flooring. When we come back, I want to talk a little bit about flooring, because think about, you know, think about when you're at the, when you're rolling around in an airport or you're going into a hotel and you're pulling your luggage, right? Mm-hmm going across the hard floor, man.
[:[00:18:17] Eric Goranson: When Caroline she'll be back at just a second. See ya. That's me in my wheelchair. Yeah. I was gonna say she's outta here. She's got the turbo mode.
[:[00:19:13] Eric Goranson: Welcome back to the round, the house show, Caroline, just sped back into the studio here. here you go. There we go. well, we've been talking about keeping, you know, designing that home for aging in place or, or, you know, maybe grandma's coming to live or, or you've got kids. Coming into an older adult home.
[:[00:19:56] Eric Goranson: No cutoff slack, you know, just that cheapy office [00:20:00] carpet. Like, and
[:[00:20:18] Caroline Blazovsky: And most people go, I can't believe you'd recommend carpeting. And I do, if you're a fall risk, cuz I don't wanna see you fall on tile. You'll break a hip. Yeah.
[:[00:20:35] Eric Goranson: And especially if they're in a, if they're in a Walker, you know what I mean? You could actually push the Walker around. Like my mom would have a hard time if she had, she's got tile in most of the place and some of the rooms have carpet in them, but she's got tile. She can get around in the kitchen and the, in the hallway much easier when she gets in the bedroom because the bedroom, she has a hard time getting around, you know, in her eighties.[00:21:00]
[:[00:21:02] Caroline Blazovsky: Well, I think if you're in a wheelchair, then you're less. I mean, I would think, I would hope you're less of a fall risk because you're not. Yeah. I worry about people who are like, say 75 and they're walking around all the time and they move too fast and then they're like hit the tile. Yeah.
[:[00:21:19] Eric Goranson: Hips. Yeah. Yeah. It's bad. It's crazy. So that's one of the things. And then when you're thinking about tile too, always wanna pay attention to that co slip coefficient on there. There is a little number on.
[:[00:21:44] Caroline Blazovsky: people out there, why would you not though? Why would you put in a completely slip, like gloss?
[:[00:21:50] Eric Goranson: people want would be the better marble floors in cuz they wanna make it look like that high end hotel might as well put an ice skating rink down. You're gonna eat. I'm gonna eat it when it [00:22:00] gets wet. Oh my gosh. You know what I mean? I mean, that's just how you get hurt. So making sure that you've got something, that's got some texture to it.
[:[00:22:25] Eric Goranson: Mm. So it's something to te it is, it's a fall risk. It's a fall risk fix your
[:[00:22:34] Eric Goranson: Yeah. So something to consider there. Now, one of the other things that I think is really important. Is we'll dive into the kitchen here for a minute, because this is an important one. And there's different levels within the kitchen.
[:[00:23:18] Caroline Blazovsky: And even like the sensors, just for your hands mm-hmm, making sure that they have all the cabinetry now where you can have the heavy pots, like centrally located for you to grab. And there's so much more than we used to have back in the eighties and nineties. Oh
[:[00:23:39] Eric Goranson: You could roll up and actually get your knees under. When it's designed out correctly, and then you can work within that space and have it down where it's a safe level. Now, the worst appliance that you're gonna run into is a microwave in this, because that has to be low. That can't be a microwave range of that will get somebody [00:24:00] hurt.
[:[00:24:14] Caroline Blazovsky: Yeah. How about refrigerators? Are there any issues that are worse? The same? You know?
[:[00:24:33] Eric Goranson: Yes. You've got pretty good access. You know what I don't like about it is with sometimes with. With the side by sides is that you can have a hard time getting up there because the doors are in the way. Right. And so when you open a refrigerator door or the freezer door, you have to really kind of get outta the way with it.
[:[00:25:18] Eric Goranson: no, but that's a, that's a big one. Mean you can literally change these things and if you can afford that awesome. But that's where you can create, like my mom's house she's living and now my dad's passed. She's got a lowered section in her island. So we've got the dishwasher in one section. I actually raised her dishwasher up, so she had a, I raised it up.
[:[00:25:52] Caroline Blazovsky: is it higher than everything else in the counter? Or how did
[:[00:25:55] Eric Goranson: I towered it. So it's almost like it's a corner that's raised with a top on it. So she's got plants and [00:26:00] stuff on it. And then I've got the rest of the, the, the large island down at a lower level. So that way it she's got something that she can cook on. Cuz my mom's, you know, five foot one, so I need to have something down.
[:[00:26:41] Eric Goranson: Horrible. You couldn't use it.
[:[00:26:51] Eric Goranson: You got, you got two different struggles there. Wow. So that's the tough part. And, and then the other stuff is, is you gotta start thinking about there's so many other challenges, [00:27:00] like electrical outlets.
[:[00:27:24] Eric Goranson: Cause if you can't roll around on the office chair, and if you can't reach it from the office chair, you might have a problem. Mm. So that's almost the perspective to have when you're dealing with this. A lot
[:[00:27:42] Caroline Blazovsky: Like when we can get into all the safety stuff you have to do, let's do that monoxide
[:[00:27:57] Eric Goranson: And the other thing is too, just think about cabinet hardware too. Before, as we [00:28:00] go out to break here, you wanna have something again that you can get a hand into little, tiny, hard knobs or hard to do. And I wanna have a contrasting color. I don't wanna have a white knob and a white cabinet cuz somebody that's with reduced sight.
[:[00:29:03] Eric Goranson: Hi everybody. I'm a man from Apolis band and you are listening to around the house with Eric G and the beautiful Caroline. Welcome back to the, around the house show. Caroline and I have been talking about well, aging in place and all the things you can do. And man, in this one hour, Caroline, we're not gonna even, we're gonna scratch the surface here, but we hope to be giving you some better information and, and really health, safety, welfare.
[:[00:29:38] Caroline Blazovsky: let's talk a little bit about safety tips and things that you have to, besides your design that you need to cover. And so one of that is making sure that all, and this is common sense, but making sure all your monitors.
[:[00:30:09] Caroline Blazovsky: So checking air quality is.
[:[00:30:32] Eric Goranson: Here's one of the things, right. You're gonna give it for grandma. You're not gonna get me one of those. I don't need one of those. I'm perfectly. Go buy her an apple watch. Mm-hmm mm-hmm she's gonna think it's really cute. But one of the things with the new apple watches are, if it detects a fall, you can set it up.
[:[00:31:07] Caroline Blazovsky: great.
[:[00:31:09] Eric Goranson: that. So that's the cool part. And you can do that and sneak it past grandma and grandpa or whoever you're getting this for. You can sneak it past them, cuz they're just thinking you're getting a cool watch. That's very star
[:[00:31:26] Caroline Blazovsky: So sh if she can call someone, you can actually call from the watch now. So I mean, it's not great it's quality, but she could call me and say, Hey Caroline, I need help the phone and I can't get,
[:[00:31:48] Eric Goranson: So making sure that you've got that air quality and, and humidity and all the normal stuff that we kind of talk about. Should be really dialed in. I mean, that's why it's in hospitals trying to keep things as good as possible for people that are trying to [00:32:00] breathe.
[:[00:32:06] Caroline Blazovsky: It helps you to actually breathe better and prevent disease states from activating. So get a HEPA filter for anyone over the age of 65 and put it in their bedroom,
[:[00:32:25] Eric Goranson: You need to do this. And then here's the other part I noticed this with, with my mom is as they get older, it's harder to maintain stuff around the house. So the maintenance starts to slide mm-hmm . Because, you know, I've gotta, I've gotta help my mom out with some stuff over there. My brothers do some landscaping.
[:[00:33:04] Eric Goranson: That you can hire out to have it done, because there's gonna be a point that it's gonna be hard for you to go out and do that. You can
[:[00:33:19] Caroline Blazovsky: And it's sad because, you know, from a safety standpoint, you're right. If somebody's driving by and senses, Hey, this is an easy prey. I can Rob this house. There's an older person here. So I think that's a common problem.
[:[00:33:39] Eric Goranson: I was dating her mom or grandma or something like that. One of the toughest things, and this is not really home improvement, but it's something you've gotta figure out and they don't make it easy on you. There's gonna be a point that someone's not gonna be able to drive. Right. Mm-hmm that those car keys need to get taken away and more often than not, it takes something [00:34:00] bad.
[:[00:34:22] Eric Goranson: And I wanted to report her to the state to have them test and check her license. There's no anonymous way to do it really.
[:[00:34:32] you.
[:[00:34:45] Eric Goranson: People to be on the road that, that the family members are going. Ah, I told her she shouldn't be driving. I think it, but nobody wants to stick their neck out and do it. I think
[:[00:35:03] Caroline Blazovsky: She said, that's it. I'm not driving anymore. She knew her limitation and she did her whole life. And I think it's important, even though we don't wanna seem weak or vulnerable. Knowing that limitations that we all ha have as we age makes you, you're gonna age more gracefully if you ask for help. Mm-hmm and you're
[:[00:35:27] Eric Goranson: These days, you know, 10 years ago there wasn't Uber left, right? Mm-hmm so now it's, it's really easy to, to have somebody come pick you up and drop you off at the grocery store doctor or whatever, call it when you're going through the register and have somebody pick you up and take you home a hundred percent.
[:[00:36:02] Caroline Blazovsky: It's just knowing your limitation. We all have to know it and it's gonna help you age better. I mean, you're just going to live longer. And that's why she lived so long. Cuz she was smart. She thought about these things and said, Hey, I can't do it. I don't, I'll ask for
[:[00:36:20] Eric Goranson: I'm gonna fight it. Tooth and
[:[00:36:32] Eric Goranson: so. I, I've also seen women that are like, you know, you're not taking that away from me.
[:[00:36:47] Caroline Blazovsky: die. You guys, I don't know.
[:[00:36:58] Eric Goranson: And you know, it's one thing to, to get [00:37:00] a house that's, you know, if you get that ranch house where you got the property and you could have everything on one level and it's got big hallways, Man you're already halfway there, but it's when you get into more of a city environment where maybe you got two or even three floors, now you gotta start thinking about, okay, for your model.
[:[00:37:21] always
[:[00:37:34] Eric Goranson: Yeah. It's well, it's, it's one of those things it's well, planned out a lot of new homes you'll see on a new home ad master on Maine. Right. Mm-hmm , you know, you'll see that and that's, that's a big deal, but anything below, you know, 2000, it's pretty rare unless it's a ranch, you know, it's usually living space downstairs.
[:[00:38:13] Eric Goranson: How are you gonna get downstairs? And if it's a little tiny old staircase. Someone's gotta be doing laundry for you, or you need to figure out a way to move that upstairs into a closet.
[:[00:38:28] Caroline Blazovsky: Yeah,
[:[00:38:42] Eric Goranson: They're, you know, they're not shaking the whole thing. And again, it's something that you've gotta think about and it's, I don't like adding more moisture and a can in a, in a damp basement with laundry and, and laundry will always add some moisture to that space. Oh, a hundred
[:[00:38:57] Eric Goranson: you even more.
[:[00:39:04] Caroline Blazovsky: they get moldy faster. You don't have humidity control down there. Your, your laundry, if you leave it in and you leave it in a basement, that's Dan, your laundry's gonna smell Dan.
[:[00:39:16] Eric Goranson: and that's it. All right, Carolina. Hear the music in the background. I'm Eric G I'm Caroline B. You had listened to Around the House! .
