Traditional home builders have never really considered the needs of those who are disabled or elderly, and that can make life really hard to deal with at times. We understand these difficulties and Glickman Design Build wants to help you make your life a little easier and more productive. That’s why we offer handicap accessible remodeling and accessibility modifications in Maryland, D.C. and Northern Virginia. We have the solutions to your home accessibility needs and modifications to enhance and improve the safety and accessibility in your home. Let’s take a look now at the modifications that will be necessary for one very important room -the bathroom.

Your bathroom can be modified or redesigned for walker and wheelchair access. Modifications to the bathroom will help avoid injury and is one of our most requested services.

Let’s start at the bathroom door. Why do architects design, and builders insist on installing a 24″ door to the bathroom? Wheelchairs need a minimum 32″ door for a straight in approach. If the doorway is located in the typical hallway and requires turning a wheelchair, you’ll need a 36″ door.

Doors can be widened for wheelchair and walker access. We remove the existing door unit, relocate the light switch, widen the framed opening, install a new wider door unit and repair the finished flooring. A swing away door hinge is also an option and will increase the door width by 2″.

Bathtubs can be very hazardous. Transferring from a wheelchair to the tub can be difficult. The tub area must be carefully designed to provide maximum safety. Bathtub and shower grab bars can be installed to provide support. Tub transfer seats allow persons to sit in the tub and take a bath or shower without having to lower themselves to the tub floor. Many people find it difficult to use a tub. Bath tubs can be replaced with showers.

There’s also prefabricated molded acrylic/fiberglass shower units on the market. Some include built in shower seats. When remodeling, a 3 or 4 piece sectional unit can be used and assembled in order to get the shower through the door openings and into your bathroom.

Roll-in showers can be more difficult to install and use. We suggest a shower with a curb but, there’s times when a roll-in shower is your only option. We custom build ceramic tile roll-in showers using the same basic procedures as used for a shower with a curb. The tub drain is usually the same elevation as the bathroom floor, requiring jack-hammering and removing the concrete, centering and lowering the drain, installing a rubber shower pan and the new shower floor flush with the existing bathroom floor.

Toilet seat height varies from one individual to another, usually between 17″ to 19″. Toilets can be replaced with special units or raised seats can be installed. Toilet grab bars can be installed for balance and support and to allow individuals to safely transfer from a wheelchair.

Sinks can be installed to allow wheelchair access. Vanity cabinets can be removed from below the sink. This will expose the plumbing pipes requiring covering with insulation or boxed in to prevent contact with sharp edges and burns by hot water pipes. Pedestal style sinks can give you a little more room to maneuver, but can be difficult to use from a wheelchair and are usually a couple of inches higher than the standard vanity top. We suggest a wall mounted lavatory.

Faucets can be replaced with single lever controls. Consider the use of anti-scald temperature controls that prevent the water temperature from exceeding an established limit.

Finding a contractor familiar with handicap accessible home construction can be a real challenge for anyone. Glickman Design Build offers wheelchair accessible home remodeling and modifications in Maryland, D.C. and Northern Virginia. Our service begins with an evaluation of your home. Contact us today to see how our experience in handicap wheelchair accessible home modifications and accessories for the elderly, senior citizen, or physically challenged can work for you!

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The recent economic recession, which has caused job losses and home foreclosures, and the increasing senior population have fueled an upsurge of three or more generations living under the same roof. Today, an estimated 51.5 million Americans live in multigenerational households.

Both younger and older people benefit from sharing a home – babies to teenagers receive special attention from grandparents, seniors feel less isolated and lonely, and young adults sense more stability as they attend college and start careers. Shared living space can be ideal for closer-knit relationships and dividing home responsibilities, but not without some adjustments and compromise. Here are a few tips for successful blending of generations in one home:

•  Preparation – Evaluate how the home accommodates everyone’s needs. Seniors may need fewer stairs and a walk-in shower, while children need safe room to play. Work through the division of finances including mortgage/rent, utilities, food, home maintenance, etc. Those with limited finances may pitch in with more household duties to help share the load.
• Communication – Plan and stick to regular family discussions to address expectations and issues. Cover specifics on handling meal preparation, private and shared space, furniture use, television habits, entertaining, and shared family times. How much should the grandparents babysit and how will older grandchildren help with an elder’s caregiving needs?
•  Flexibility – Allow for independence and personal space and learn to give and take as individual needs fluctuate over time. Teens like to spend time with their friends, and seniors should not impose on parenting preferences.
•  Consistency – Hold to routines for mealtimes and bedtimes and maintaining exercise and social commitments. Schedule family fun times and be intentional about making memories through shared stories and photos or enjoying interests and outings together.

What tips can you share about successful multigenerational living with aging loved ones?

Original post by Rita Ude of Right At Home

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Want to see the Winscape Kinect in action? Check out the demo here and let us know what you think!

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The Cassidy project highlights the importance of remodeling a home to be more accessible while maintaining a tasteful exterior. The Cassidy family’s 23 year old, wheelchair bound son, needed assistance entering and leaving the home due to foldable ramps that were put down and put away after each use.  Glickman Design Build designed and built a wrap around porch with a wheelchair ramp, widened the sidewalk, and repaired the retaining wall.  The home is on a corner, so special considerations were made to ensure that remodeling was tasteful, blended well with the home, and enhanced its appearance.  The Glickman Design Build team understands the importance and functionality of accessible remodeling; as well as the importance of having such projects blend well with the home to maintain an aesthetically pleasing exterior!

You can check out the video showing the before and after, here!

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The designer and construction crew incorporated undiscovered spaces to expand and further the utility of the space. Incorporating numerous assistive technology devices (disappearing pocket doors, ultra-lightweight wheelchair, electronic-activation faucets, anti-scald devices, barrier-free shower entrance, and full-height body dryer), this bathroom makes the most of every square inch. Using luxurious materials judiciously, the homeowners can enjoy an accessible bath that improves their standard of living and quality of life. The bathroom is the opposite of institutional or sterile; it is warm, inviting and incredibly functional. With its variable lighting sequences, all on dimmers, it offers expansive shower space, improved storage closets, a compact jetted tub, and wide vanity countertop enable its users to experience signature amenities without expanding the room’s footprint.

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The owners had bought the home with the idea of adding a luxurious bath to the stately brick home. But, they did not want to add on an overbearing addition that would clash with the home’s quaint style.

They instead hoped to increase the size of the bath while keeping the integrity of the home. They also wanted a usable closet—the existing walk-in was too small for two people. Glickman found a solution by adding to the existing garage. A small one-story garage with a flat roof, it was perfectly suited to house a second story on top of it. The result is an addition with a dormer, which blends flawlessly with the house and looks as if it had always been there. Inside, the room is spacious with all the modern amenities of a new home, including a step-up tub and a roomy walk-in closet. Finally, the clients chose to have Glickman convert a screened porch (on the opposite side of the home) into a more functional sunroom.

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Kathleen was injured in a car accident about 1 year before we met her. Her house was far from accessible. An obtrusive platform lift from the sidewalk to the front stoop was unattractively prominent in the neighborhood. To make things worse, the lift was improperly installed requiring Kathleen to turn 90 degrees before exiting onto the porch. She used the living room for her bedroom. The hospital bed which offered no privacy, was not a pretty decoration especially when visitors arrived. Furthermore, Kathleen was separated from her husband, who stayed in the existing master bedroom on the top floor.

Kathleen could not access bathrooms safely. And the bathroom was inaccessible, small and difficult to use. There was a chair lift which had been installed as a stopgap measure when she first arrived home from the hospital. The chairlift allowed her to access the top floor (full bathroom), but she had to transfer at the bottom then again at the top. Those transfers were unsafe, time consuming and inconvenient. And, she could not get to the top floor alone; which caused her to be overly dependent on others.

Solutions:

We removed and re-installed the platform lift in a manner which would allow Kathleen to roll on and then roll off in the same direction. We built an artistically detailed front porch with a designer barrel vault ceiling. This porch served two purposes. It was built around the lift to conceal it from street view. The porch also offered Kathleen to socialize with neighbors and their children merely by hanging out on the front porch. From that vantage point she could enjoy all the happenings on the block.

We built a two-story addition to the rear of the house which housed a new elevator which exited into the new large master bedroom suite. The bedroom contained a vaulted ceiling and a large closet. An adjacent pre-existing bedroom was converted into a large, fully accessible master bathroom with designer tile, heated towel bar, curb-less roll-in shower, and accessible vanity with granite top. A stack-able washer/dryer was installed in the bathroom closet, allowing Kathleen to run loads of laundry very conveniently without having to schlep to the basement.

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‘Outdoor solutions win county’s top remodeling awards.’

‘Look at what local professionals have singled out for praise you’ll certainly come across the work of Russ Glickman.”

Glickman’s interviews with the owners revealed a patchwork of personal requirements. A perch for open-air barbequing wide enough to hold a crowd was high on the husband’s wish list. His wife wanted a breezy, bug-free spot from whence to view expansive, pasture-like suburban lawns converging behind the house. Glickman’s plan accommodated both of these wishes.

From the house, one enters a screened porch, complete with an open cathedral ceiling and latticework gable that evoke a faintly ante-bellum mood perfect for quiet, twilight suppers. The 360 square-foot sun deck, that exits the porch, offers ample space for gathering around the grill, or sunbathing in relative privacy. An L-shaped staircase at the end of the deck joins the new space to the yard, which—the homeowners maintain—has never seemed so appealing.

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When Julian and Anne W. relocated to Bethesda from Carmel, California they were hoping to find a house that satisfied an acquired taste for Tudor-style architecture. Carmel is, after all, often compared to the Britain’s Sussex or Kent, a reflection of the wealthy west coast Anglophile who settled the region in early twentieth century to hunt boar and play polo.

When nothing close to these preferences materialized within their budget, the couple settled on a circa-1960’s Bradley Boulevard rambler and commenced a period of wistfully wondering if they would ever find their dream house.

Enter Russ Glickman, president of Glickman Design/Build, and a savvy 25-year veteran remodeler with both an inspired short-term solution and a compelling vision of the future.

“We’ve transformed homes into almost every architectural style,” Glickman reflects. “So the bigger issue here was to devise a forward-thinking master plan that would allow the homeowners to get everything they were looking for in distinct phases that unfold over time. This is often a great budgetary solution for realizing your dream house.”

The master plan concept, Glickman notes, is particularly well-suited for the current economic environment in which some owners are taking a cautious approach to larger-scale home improvement.

Phase One called for redesigning the façade in Tudor language while creating space for a second-level master suite. The new front elevation features decorative half-timbering, steeply-pitched front-facing gables and cedar shake roofing.

With its elevated perch above Bradley Boulevard, the expanded home presents a striking curbside presence; so much so, say the Wrights, that passing cars slow down just to take it in.

Phase Two calls for completing the master bedroom while introducing a more generously-apportioned first level space plan. The final phase envisions a hexagonal kitchen addition on the rear elevation that includes a spacious breakfast room.

Reflecting on the process, the Wright’s are especially enthusiastic about the plan’s flexibility.
“The plans, specs and contract captured the process and the pricing we were looking for,” Anne Wright observes. “every phase exceeded our expectations.”

Phase Three: construct a gazebo-style addition to the kitchen, providing a breakfast nook.

This master plan allowed the client to see the project more clearly and allowed the client and Glickman to prioritize and accomplish the project at a much more flexible and comfortable financial rate for the client.

“ You can expand foundations and shell-in rooms in one phase of the process, yet postpone the finishwork to a future date. The gives you the lot of time to think it through and look for buying advantages.”

“The Glickman approach and system have our highest recommendation. Our deepest appreciation to the Glickman team. They saw our vision and transformed it into the masterpiece we have today. The plans, specs and contract superbly depicted our goals at a reasonable price that we were able to manage. Every phase far exceeded our expectations. Cars stopped by to see what dramatic changes Glickman’s crew was accomplishing. I want to extend an ‘EXCEPTIONALLY WELL DONE’ to all the Glickman team involved in this project. All phases of our construction were completed on schedule and precisely on price.” – Julian & Anne W. – Bradley Boulevard, Bethesda

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Gazette: “Glickman Design Build project named best residential remodeling project over $100,000.”

Reprint from The Connection Newspaper: “ ‘Renovation Adds Light: McLean family adds skylighted offices, storage space where 600-square-foot attic used to be’

You might think Jane and William S. of McLean had their two-story kitchen, with its walls of mostly windows, remodeled just to garnish the pages of home decorating magazines. Especially when your eye drops from the two-story ceiling, along the hardwood floor, and up an open, spiral staircase, where there was once an attic. The new light wood staircase now leads to skylighted offices, computer workstations for the children and an end-to-end view of the woods outside.

In fact, the couple’s home has been featured in numerous industry publications during the last three years. But they chose the major remodeling – adding the high ceiling, staircase and offices above, and a hardwood floor dinning room and outside deck below—because of the lifestyle needs to their seven member family.

The family bought their 2.5 acres home 17 years ago. Through the years and with the addition of four children and their grandmother, the family needed more space with class.
The home’s award-winning appeal is due in large part to the quality craftsmanship of Glickman Design Build. Glickman, based in Rockville and headed by Russ Glickman, specializes in taking home remodeling plans from concept and design through all phases of construction. And it’s no surprise their motto is “designing Lifestyles,” according to Jane.

“They did a lot of talking with us, asking ‘what are you going to do in this room?’ They listened to our very particular needs,” said Jane, a community activist and former school board member.

Six months of meticulous tearing down and building up (“They didn’t leave spot on the floor or a drink on the wall,” said Jane) turned the McLean family’s 600-square-foot attic on Rockland Terrace into personalized offices and storage space.

Jane’s ivory-colored office – which overlooks the kitchen and is accessible by the new spiral staircase – is adorned with plants and family pictures. One entire wall however, is generous storage space, which also houses the mechanical equipment needed to heat and cool the new area.

William’s office, at the other end of the attic and overlooking the couple’s bedroom, holds and exercise bike and reams of paper from his work composing scripts and songs for the “Capitol Steps” performing group, which he founded and performs with. He also author history books from his spacious, light-colored home office.

In between the couple’s cream-carpeted offices are computer workstations for their children, ages 9 to 16. The computers are set on top of easy-to-clean, white desktops and floor covering. Recessed fixtures provide light at night, or whenever the skylights aren’t enough. Recessed lights, or “headlights,” as Jane calls the, also light up the kitchen/dinning room area below.

Working with Glickman allowed the homeowners to complete their remodeling desires in an aesthetic and practical fashion. “Glickman’s stance is that the customer is always right and that’s very refreshing,” said Jane, who has worked with other contractors in past remodeling efforts of her home.”

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