No. 5 Monday 13 June 2011
On a day-to-day basis I have, over the years, adapted my life to things I cannot change and have changed those which I can. The biggest example of the latter is housing. On leaving hospital Social Services found a house in Cheltenham which I could buy on a shared ownersship system. This meant that I bought 65% of the house and the other 35% remained with the company who sold it and to whom I paid rent for their part. I was lucky enough to get a grant from the Council to have a lift fitted (so that I could get upstairs) and to have the bathroom changed to a proper wet room. The guiding light in this was my O.T. (Occupational Therapist) who included things that I didn 't know existed such as a warm air blower in the corner of the shower to make drying after showering very much easier. This house served me well for four and a half years but its limitations (such as hinged doors of a normal width) meant that change had to come sooner or later.
When compensation made a change possible I started looking around for somewhere which could be altered to fit my requirements. I found what is proving to be ideal in Gloucester - a bungalow (therefore no upstairs to access) close enough to shopping and public transport, and relatively easy to adapt. It originally had three bedrooms but I had things rearranged so that the smallest became the front hall (where I park my other wheelchair). Other alterations meant moving the kitchen forwards thus making room to change what was just a toilet into a wet room (just like my previous one) with the original bathroom being downgraded into a utility room. All the doorways were altered to 4ft wide archways, and where doors were required they were changed to wider sliding or folding ones. Those were the main structural changes, but there were many detailed bits of work which I won't bother to list here.
The built-in furniture is of the same wood (beech) throughout and the curtains (except the kitchen) are all the same material - a fairly random pattern which I managed to find on the Internet. This consistency means that the house feels, to me at least, free from irritating differences. My personal adjustments take some thinking about, so they will come in the next blog. Meantime, on a brighter note, when I went to the club recently it was a Bingo evening and, on one card, I won £5. Must have been my lucky day!!
No comments:
Post a Comment