Accessible bathroom remodel questions for an aging parent

Nobody we could find publishes an average for the DC area, so we price the parts instead. Replacing the tub with a shower runs between $2,000 and $15,000 in HomeGuide and Angi data, HomeGuide prices a widened door between $300 and $2,500, and EZ Able and Lifeway Mobility price a pair of grab bars between $100 and $500. A wheelchair bathroom needs most of those at once, so expect it near the top of each.

Original Medicare doesn't. A few Medicare Advantage plans list bath safety items as a benefit, and certain long-term care policies refund the family once the invoices go in. Public programs help some households, among them DC's HAIP grant, Maryland Accessible Homes for Seniors, Montgomery County's HARP and, for veterans, the VA's HISA, SAH and SHA grants.

Taking out the tub, because the drain, the floor and the walls around it all get rebuilt. A curbless floor that has to slope to a drain can mean reworking the floor framing, and relocating the toilet or drain adds more. Bars, a handheld shower and a comfort-height toilet are the inexpensive part of the room.

Parts of one can be. IRS Publication 502 treats medically necessary changes, documented by a doctor, as a medical expense to the extent they don't raise the home's value, and grab bars, ramps and wider doors are the classic examples. That comes from our market research and isn't tax advice, so take the invoices to a tax preparer.

All four, sized to the person who uses the room. That means a curbless or roll-in shower with a seat and a handheld shower, a comfort-height toilet with a bar beside it, bars into framing wherever weight goes, and a door wide enough for the walker or chair. Add a non-slip floor, an anti-scald valve and good light, and for a wheelchair, a sink with knee room and space to turn.

At least 32 inches of clear width with the door open, the minimum in the 2010 ADA Standards for Accessible Design. Plenty of older bathroom doors fall short of that. A door rehung on offset hinges gains some width without moving the frame, and when that isn't enough, the frame itself gets widened.

Longer than a tub conversion, since the door, the toilet and often the floor change as well. The scope gives the number of days the room is out of use, written for your bathroom before you sign. Rot or tired framing under the old tub can add time, and the job only grows with your written approval.

Not on the days it is torn out, so plan for another bathroom or a stopgap. In a house with one full bath, the order of work aims to get the toilet back first, and the scope tells you which days the room is closed. A half bath downstairs or a bedside commode can cover the gap.

A full remodel or a shower conversion usually does. In DC the permit comes from the Department of Buildings, in Montgomery County from DPS, in Prince George's County from DPIE, and in Northern Virginia from the county or city permit office for the address. Your scope lists every permit before you approve the work.

The tub and the old finishes come out first, then any framing and the plumbing for the drain and valve. Blocking goes into the walls for every future bar before the walls close, then come the floor, the tile and the fixtures. The bars, the seat and the accessories go on last.

When the room fails the person in more than one place. If the tub wall is the only problem, bars and a conversion handle it. A walker that can't get through the door, a toilet too low to stand up from and no room to turn a wheelchair point to a full remodel, because each of those fixes opens the room anyway.

Building only for today when a wheelchair is likely next year, so the door and shower have to be redone. Leaving out blocking, so bars can't go where they'll be needed later. Picking a walk-in tub for someone who won't sit through the fill and the drain. And fixing the bathroom while the hall that leads to it stays dark, with a curled rug on the way.

Yes. A curbless shower with tile to match the floor looks like a modern bathroom, and a comfort-height toilet looks like any other toilet. Bars come in the same finish as the faucet, and the parts that look clinical, like a plastic safety frame around the toilet or a bench on legs, usually have a built-in version that doesn't.

We have no sales data to quote, so judge each change by whether it can be undone. Grab bars come off and the holes get patched, and a walk-in tub can be swapped back for a standard one. A curbless shower, widened doorways and blocking in the walls stay, and any buyer can use those.

Ask whether they'll watch your parent move through the room, because the plan should follow that. Ask for blocking in the walls for bars you may add later, a scope that names every fixture and surface, and a fixed price that holds. Then ask whether the door, the shower and the turning room will still work if a wheelchair comes next year.

It helps, because a good-looking bathroom can still be the wrong height, the wrong width or the wrong side for the person using it. Ask how they decide where bars go and how they plan for a walker or a chair. Aging in place construction is the only work we take on, and every bathroom we touch starts from the Livability Assessment.

Start from what your parent wants, which is usually to keep living at home, and present the bathroom as the thing that makes that work. Begin small with bars and better light, which change little about how the room looks. Have them at the assessment, and leave the final say on how they live in their house with them.

We remodel bathrooms for aging in place in Montgomery and Prince George's counties, from Bethesda and Silver Spring to Hyattsville and Temple Hills, inside 30 miles of the US Capitol. Maryland's DHCD runs Accessible Homes for Seniors for senior homeowners statewide, financing grab bars, railings and wider doorways.

The small fixes come first, and they are the fast part. Grab bars into framing, a transfer bench, a handheld shower and a non-slip mat can make the existing room far safer while a remodel is planned. We don't do emergency work, so call us between 7:00 AM and 7:00 PM, any day of the week, and tell us what happened.

Plan on two rounds, because a full remodel in two weeks is unlikely. Give us the discharge date and the equipment coming home, and the first round of safety fixes gets scheduled to finish before that day. The remodel follows once your parent is home and the plan is settled.

Some of it you can do today. Take up loose bath mats, put a night light on the way to the toilet and move everyday things to the shelf between hip and shoulder. Then book grab bars at the toilet and the tub edge, a handheld shower and a transfer bench or seat, the first fixes we make in most bathrooms.