Finally we managed to get a video made of the adaptations to the flat – thanks to Felix Gonzales.
I will continue to add to it and explain the choice of some household things.
In comparison to an apartment – here’s the video of my friend, Donna’s, house and how her house is adapted for her and her family’s needs.
kitchen tap
Tomorrow is d day and Steve and co promised me that it will be all done tomorrow morning and I can move all my stuff. Move all in one day. I go to Paris the day after so it has to be all in one day.
The OT came today with her colleague – they are sure I couldn’t do the way I want it done. I find it a bit difficult to counter their persistence that they know best – they keep insisting on a plan to scale. So I have asked my architect friend, Gregory Cowan, to help me with a detailed plan to scale. And I ve received a document on guidance on direct payments – the onus is on them to prove how the way I want to do my wet room is not safe or useful for me not for me to prove how it would be.
Its time to go to bed now, tomorrow is the day I move into MY own flat.
I am beginning to panic a little. I have to move out by friday and there is still lot’s to be done.
They are now putting in the kitchen, I must say I may have gone over the top with the kitchen tap but I struggle with taps and with this I can do it single handedly.
I ve bought a sofa bed, a work unit, a fridge, bathroom sink and they are all in flat pack in the spare room. Yet to arrive is the induction hob and the combination oven.
“The ramps are hardly noticeable,”says one of my neighbours who came in for an inspection, “they feel integral to the floor plan.”
And they are. I am now busy looking at worktops, kitchen appliances and all sorts. I just found out that when I said I did not want the units, the builders got rid of the ceramic hob too! It went into the skip. Ouch! So I have to buy a new hob – ceramic or induction?
The IKEA units don’t quite fit the dimensions of my kitchen, the way I want the hob lowered for me. It looks like I have to commission Steve to build it for me. We are going to buy the worktops and the kitchen sink tomorrow.
Here is the stage where the flat is at now – with the pictures.
electric bed
It is really full steam ahead now with Steve and his team – he promised to be finished on Monday. I went to have a look today – the beginnings of the ramp
floor boards
deck
beginning of ramp
Today I went to see the progress on the flat – Steve asked me to choose colour to put on the floor boards. We chose dark oak, against Jacobean which has unhappy connotations for me.
Samilia was at hand to video the visit.
I have not written about my journey towards getting a disabled facilities grant (DFG) yet.
I filled in a form and applied, an OT came to assess me and my needs – they want to see exactly what you can do and that you are not shirking when you say you need a wet room shower. I was told the process can be quite lenthy but they will not look at the application till you are in possession of the property.
I have quite a nice OT who said she thinks I will get a direct payment but I will only get help with a wet room and a door opener (eloectric). A financial assessor came and looked through my financial status and he had a look at the said flat. After all his calculations, it looks like I have to put up a hefty sum/.
Now the OT said they have to make sure that my apartment will be accessible for me to get the funding for a wet toom. There is a slight twist in their thinking that I would pay out a huge sum of money to make my appartment inaccessible – or maybe they think I am making a folly by doing what I am doing. However they refuse to help pay for the costs to make the flat accessible. I cannot quite figure out the logic – I hope it will go through smoothly.
I sent off to my medical supplier in Strasbourg, Le Carre Medical, for their cataloque thinking that French design might be better – as I am looking for a nice shower chair. I wanted an aesthetically pleasing one to go with my nice new wet room.
But it looks like they are all supplied by the same designers. There are the wall mounted seats and there is a teak one that is really nice
mounted teak seat
however it didn’t look too comfortable. I think I will go for a free standing chair or stool even.
I already have a shower stool.
And just as I finished writing this post, my friend, Scott Rains, told me on Facebook chat about an article he just read A talk with Graham Pulin about Why prosthetics should be beautiful
The conclusion at the end of the article was:
Who would have thought that Charles and Ray Eames would develop an entirely new language of furniture design by designing a leg splint for the US Navy? You could not have predicted that path. It was a byproduct of being forced to think in new ways. I think that’s what’s so genuinely inspiring about it. It’s not a linear process, with a particular issue for a particular disabled group, where you can anticipate how it’s going to be relevant to the rest of us, and anticipate what that influence will be. It’s far more beautifully random than that.
Steve and co. has started on the joists. Here are the photos – he seems to be quite pleased with his progress.
To adapt an appartment 