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 tackle the bathrooms. So many people do not give enough attention to the bathrooms during the design stage. If you stop and really think about it, you spend an awful lot of time in one, so shouldn’t it be as comfortable and as easy to accomplish your tasks, as possible? Let’s start by listing all the things you do in the bathroom. Well, not all the things, but the general ones.
- Taking a shower
- Taking a bath
- Using the toilet
- Accessing towels, hand towels, and wash clothes
- Brushing your teeth
- Shaving
- Dealing with your hair
- Facial care (from lotion to makeup)
- and my personal favorite: Cleaning
We’ll start with No. 1, obviously, the shower. As shower is a shower, right? Wrong. If you are like me, you were raised with the fiberglass tub/shower combos that start of shiny and white and ends up yellow and dull. Growing up, we did have one house that had a concrete block add-on shower in it, with a center drain hole. I hated that thing. Always felt creeped out by it, like I should be in a horror movie, something unspeakable would emerge from that drain, I just knew it. So, when considering the best way to make a shower easy for me to access, I had a very definite idea of what I DID NOT want. My husband wanted something that looked good, again - the re-sale hang up. It needed to BE a handicap shower, just not look like it. So, first things first. The ADA guidelines say you need a minimum of 60 inches for a turnaround space. That is a 5 foot square. That’s huge. I think the master bathroom in our first house was maybe that big. To be honest, I didn’t do it. The 5 foot square. I went with 4 foot square, literally, square and butted it up against the back corner walls so that there was a 4 foot wide entryway. Since the trench drain eliminates the threshold, I figured you could count the extra foot from which ever direction you were going.
The shower happens to have been one of the most difficult ideas to get through to the contractors we interviewed. None had ever heard of a Trench Drain shower before, at least inside a home; around a pool or in a driveway, sure, but IN a house? No. A trench drain allows a shower chair (wheelchair designed for shower use) to roll in and out without difficulty by eliminating the lip. It’s also more enjoyable for non-handicapped people. My husband noticed the difference right away, because it’s one less step in your daily routine and the floors are not slopped as dramatically. The way a trench drain is plumbed is different than a traditional stand up shower, so this has to be planned for in the framing and roughing in stage or you will be tearing out the work and re-doing it. You can find more information on Trench Drains at Http://www.ncsu.edu/ncsu/design/cud/pubs_p/docs/trench_drain.pdf.
This picture is from the company we bought ours from. We liked the idea of putting our tile into it, so that it matched the rest of the floor. There are a lot of options available, they even have ones with LED lights in them.Keep in mind turn radius inside the shower also, and building in a shower with a hand shower component is easier than attempting to add one later.
I highly recommend you choose a decent quality shower faucet handle and a hand shower that is installed separately. It’s easier to do during construction than it is tearing out shower tile later. Try to pick out ALL the faucets with easy to use handles, sinks, tubs, and showers. Lever style works well for people with arthritis because they don’t have to actually grab it, they can just push.
To the left is a standard faucet. While it does have lever style handles, this faucet is still not a great option. The space between the handles is so narrow that you cannot stick your finger between them. That means it will be much more difficult to clean. The design is such that it will collect dust and humidity in every little ripple and bump.
This faucet is a ‘wide set’ faucet. As you can see, getting between the handles is not an issue. The lever handles are longer, making it easier to use and the design is clean and simple. No extra ridges or bumps to collect humidity in, making wiping it down simple and easy. It’s amazing how simple changes can affect the usability of an item.
Bathtub. Bathtubs are also a factor. I love taking baths, so not having one was not an option. I do not care for jetted tubs and didn’t really want one. I find them difficult to get into and out of and cleaning is a nightmare. In our case we opted for a free standing solid copper tub with a pedestal base. Before you freak out, it’s not as expensive as you might think. We were able to order ours and have it delivered for slightly less than a cheap built-in jetted tub costs. Why Copper? Copper is naturally antibiotic and antiviral. Bacteria and viruses simply cannot survive on its surface. When you have a compromised immune system this is handy. It’s also very easy to clean. Use the hand shower to rinse it out when you are done, let it dry and wipe it down with a rag that has oil on it, done. No chemicals, no scrubbing. Free standing allows for placement of grab bars, the pedestal eliminates the pesky dust bunnies associated with claw footed tubs. Personally, I think claw foots are a hazard, one slip and your foot goes under it, you’ve got a problem.
Counters Counter tops in the bathroom need to be considered for height. The standard counter top height can be a hindrance for someone in a chair. Consider lowering the countertop to desk height, to make it more user friendly. You don’t have to do it on the entire cabinet. For instance, if you choose to have 2 sinks and mirrors, you can lower just the one side. It just depends on what you like and need. Keep in mind that this also makes it accessible to small children, so you need to have a plan to keep small hands away from things left out on the counter, such as medication. There is a significant difference in height from Desk to Counter, so grab a tape measure and measure it out for yourself, that way you can get a real feel for the difference. You could go with a custom height, but that will add to the costs. Desk height will make it easier to brush teeth, put on makeup and deal with hair from a chair.
Desk and Table height: 28 to 30 inches
Counter height: 34-36 inches
Bar height: 40-43 inches
The edging on a counter is important also. There are dozens of different configurations and you can choose what suits your design sense as well as what works for access. We went with a rather plain one, the Double Bullnose. It basically just removes the sharp edges on the top and bottom, which translates into less bruising for me when I run into them. And I do run into them. We could have gone with the Full Bullnose or several other options, but we found that the more complicated the edge the higher the price and we just liked the simplicity of the Double Bullnose. It makes it easier to clean, also, versus a regular squared off edge.
Toilets. Who really wants to talk about toilets? No one, really, except people who make them or sell them. There is a difference between a standard toilet and a ‘handicap’ toilet. Mainly it’s height and the bowl shape.
Everyone knows this toilet, it’s everywhere you go. The plain old round bowl shape and it runs from 14 to 16 inches tall at the seat. Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone would want a 14 inch high toilet seat, unless you are really short. If you have mobility issues and you try to use one, it’s a long way down and a long way back up. Besides the height and bowl shape, this toilet also has the standard floor mounts and porcelain shaped sides. We all know that these are a pain for the person that has to clean them. You can go with this style, they range from $150 - $200 each, and hope you don’t have problems using it in the future. 
Or….
You can go with one like this. This one fits the ‘ADA’ standard, meaning it has an elongated bowl, rather than round. This image has a button push to flush, which I wouldn’t recommend, but it was the only one I could find. The big differences here are that the bowl height is 18.5 inches. A full 4 inches taller than the standard size toilet. 4 inches doesn’t seem like much, until you have to use it with a broken leg or other injury. This style also features the ‘smooth sides’ option. The smooth option eliminates a lot of the cleaning headache by hiding the bolt downs and having a smooth contour. The lack of bumps and designs in the porcelain makes it easy to wipe down.
In the toilet area, you need to consider a few things. Turn around room, as we’ve discussed before, is important. However, there needs to be consideration as to the walls around it. Even if you don’t need grab bars now, you might in the future, so placing walls in such a way as to make grab bars easy to use is important. You also need to have the walls reinforced. While you can bolt a grab bar to regular 2x4 wall studs, it won’t be the strongest option, potentially creating problems down the line. It’s much easier to reinforce the walls during new construction than to have to go back and tear out drywall. Talk to the contractor, it’s as simple as adding additional stud width and height in that area. You must also consider the door. If it’s an open bathroom, the door isn’t that big of an issue, but if you close the toilet off as we did, it is. We enclosed the toilet separate from the rest of the bathroom for privacy as well as grab bar placement. We used a ‘Pocket Door’ to eliminate the loss of space caused by door swing, as well as ease of use.
Cleaning. Showers, bathtubs, sinks, toilets and floors, if you are the one doing the cleaning you tend to look at it differently than if you are not. I want things that are easy to clean and maintenance yet still look nice. We chose to tile our shower, tub surround and floors. Believe it or not, there is a such thing as ‘ADA’ approved tile. I found it quite by accident. Basically it rates the hardness of the tile and the ‘slip’ factor. An ‘ADA’ tile should have a low slip rating, meaning that it’s not polished smooth, like say a marble tile is. The hardness is very high, so that if things are dropped on it, it is less likely to crack and chip in a dangerous fashion. That doesn’t mean you will not slip, just that it is less likely you will. It’s also surprisingly easy to clean. The manufacturers are making sinks and toilets with more emphasis on cleanability now, so read the labels. They have ones now that are ‘mold resistant’, resistant to ‘hard water stains’ and have antibacterial properties. All of which make cleaning easier. The solid piece toilets with smooth sides are much easier to wipe down than the molded ones. The sinks tend to stay cleaner, especially if you give it a quick wipe with a paper towel daily.
Well, that brings this one to an end. I'm sure there are things I've forgotten, if you think of something, let me know. Thanks for reading!
TH
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