Disclaimer- I am not an Engineer, Architect or trained designer of anything. This series of Blog posts is intended solely for informational purposes, not educational.
Today we are going to discuss doors and floors. I put the two together because one very often is affected by the other. The type of flooring can greatly improve navigation through a doorway, or it can make it into something to be dreaded. The width of a doorway can also lead to some anxiety, as no one really wants to bang up walls or woodwork just trying to enter or leave a room. So we will start with doors.
Doors Having adequate width to roll a chair through is necessary, yes, but if you up that another inch or two, it’s even better. ADA requirements are a minimum of 32 inches wide, with no more than a 24 inch depth approach. Actually, there are numerous ADA rules, as this chart shows, and it doesn’t hurt to review them to gain a better understanding of the challenges a doorway presents. Our interior doors are all 36 inch width. I can roll through them with enough room to spare that I’m not panicked about scraping the wood work. Our exterior doors are 42 inches. Yes, wider doors do cost more, and it will add to the bottom line, but they make up for it with their ease of use. One added benefit of the extra wide doors is getting the couch and other large furniture items into the house, they just go right through. You need to also consider door placement. During the designing phase is the best place to try to avoid doors that would be awkward to maneuver through with a chair or walker.
Consider using Pocket Doors to eliminate tight or tricky spots. Pocket doors slide into the wall, eliminating the wide swing area that a normal door takes up just to open and close. Pocket doors are also easier on me, as I do not have to push it open while trying to move my chair, turn around and push it shut while driving my chair. With the pocket, you just pull up, slide it out, go through and do a simple turn to slide it back. In bedrooms, closets, and bathrooms they maximize usable space and make for easy access.
The utilization of Pocket doors requires different framework than a standard door. The opening is larger and must be braced sufficiently to handle the extra weight and movement. In this picture, you can see the pocket door frame going into what will be the master bathroom. It is twice as wide, with a larger header at the top. There are two types of pocket door hardware, standard and heavy duty. After asking around, we decided to use the heavy duty ones and a solid wood door. The extra weight of the solid wood door makes the sliding action smoother and easier. It also doesn’t ‘float’ as much, meaning that it doesn’t bang against the sides of the door frame and wall during both idle time and usage. We purchased solid wood doors from a local ‘big box’ store. They are maple veneer over pine and came unfinished.
This is what the finished pocket door looks like. It slides back into the wall behind the bathroom vanity and our bedroom, leaving a lot more usable space in both rooms. Look at your floor plan drawings and calculate how much unusable floor space you have because of swing allowance. Wouldn’t you rather be able to use that room? Using pocket doors for closet doors saves the space that a bi-fold door sticks out into a room also, so consider them there as well. With more usable floor space, furniture fits easier also.
There are different types of pocket door handles. Most are just dish shaped pieces of metal that give you room to hook your fingers into, but there are some that have lift out levers. They are available in locking and non-locking set ups. While they do lock, they do not lock as securely as a regular interior door lock. It’s not exactly easy to get around, but it is easier. We used locking ones on doors that lead to semiprivate locations, toilet, bathtub, etc. and nonlocking ones for closets and the laundry room.
One crucial step to remember for the exterior is Zero Entry Doors. Zero entry means that there is little to no step or lip between the ground outside and the floor inside. ADA rules say ½ an inch or less, ¾ an inch or less for sliding glass doors. This takes some pre-planning with the contractor to accomplish and needs to be done from the very beginning of the planning stages. The way the doors set in relation to the subfloor is different than the standard door frame. The door frames must be ordered with the zero entry option, as there is no easy way to modify a regular door set up. Zero entry is a great way to go, even if you are not using a wheelchair.
Flooring This is important and should be considered long and hard. For one, power wheelchairs, especially zero turn ones, will ruin carpet and pad very quickly. Don’t understand what I mean? Go watch a zero turn radius lawn mower in action. Pay attention to the ground in the places it has done a zero radius turn. That is what it will do to your carpet. Carpet and pad get pushed and pulled by the wheels turning in opposite directions, resulting in spots of wrinkled up and misshapen carpet. If you do want carpet, like we did in our bedrooms, then sit down and have a serious talk with someone at a carpet store. We ended up picking a high end commercial carpet. It has a very short nap, or fiber length, and is rated for ‘heavy traffic’, meaning it won’t break down and show pathways quickly. After looking around, we opted to spend the $1 more per foot to upgrade the pad to a solid rubber one. It’s one piece construction means it won’t pull apart like the traditional pads, and it will hold up better to the weight of the wheelchair. We’ve been here two years now, and so far it’s holding up nicely.
We opted for hardwood floors throughout the main living area of the house. Yes, this is more expensive than carpet, but you won’t be pulling it up and replacing it in a few short years.
We chose our hardwood based on the hardness rating as it is within the industry. Each wood has a different hardness level and some may really surprise you. We chose maple, it is harder than oak and we prefer its grain. We did opt to do a ‘raw’ installation, with sanding, staining, and finishing being done in our home, instead of the prefinished floors you can buy from big box stores. The reason we did so, after much debate, is that once it is sealed it is sealed over the entirety of the floor. With prefinished stuff (and yes I’ve installed this before, back before the wheelchair) you can only hope to get a tight enough seal between the boards as you lay them down. We felt that the seal was very important because of the weight of the wheelchair. The man we hired to do the installation agreed with us. Your choices will be influenced by your region, availability, and your personal tastes. Our home is considered ‘unusual’ in our area because we chose Maple. In our area, it’s almost always Oak. The funny part of this is, everyone who comes over just loves it. We’ve actually had people come through the front door, stop, and spend a good 5-10 minutes just staring at the floor. We coordinated the stain colors with the cabinet maker, floor installer, and the company that made our baseboards, trim and stained our doors. Each of the three elements is the same base stain with slight differences. I wanted them to look like they belonged together, but not all be the exact same.
There are two different types of finishes for hardwood floors. There is the traditional high gloss finish, and a newer satin finish. We opted to go with the high gloss because it’s been shown to hold up nicely to high traffic and wear. That, and to be honest, the satin always looks to me like it needs a sweeping. Like there is a fine film of dust everywhere. The seal is still going strong, after living here for two years. We’ve only encountered one problem, and that was not the floor’s fault. We had a pipe that had a defect in it, that shot a small stream of water down the inside of the wall and puddled under the floor. That we have had repaired. Everything else has been good. As usual, any questions, feel free to ask, I will try to answer. I don'to know everything, just relating our experiences, and am always willing to learn!
TH
