Ep 8: Help We've Fallen and We Can Get Up | Introduction to Aging in Place
We have some huge news to kick off this week’s post: How to Handyma'am has officially hit the Apple Education Charts (Top 30!) and we went viral on TikTok for the first time!
We are blown away by this community. We talk a lot about "building the village," and you guys are showing up with your toolbelts on.
Speaking of the village, this episode is dedicated to our favorite villager, Kayleigh (aka "Guinea Pig Numero Uno"). Kayleigh proves that you don’t have to know how to use a circular saw to be essential to the crew. She’s the friend who drops off soup when you’re sick, texts you to check in, and brings you a neck fan at hot yoga.
That is the energy we are bringing into today’s deep dive: How to take care of your village by making your home accessible.
It’s Not Just About "Getting Old"
Today, Emily takes the lead. As a Certified Aging in Place Specialist (CAPS), she is breaking down one of the most misunderstood topics in construction: Aging in Place.
Here is the truth: Making your home accessible isn't just for the elderly. It’s for your friend who broke their leg skiing, your sister with a stroller, or your parent recovering from surgery. It’s about dignity and independence.
The 5 Levels of Home Design: What Grade Does Your House Get?
In this episode, Emily walks us through the 5 categories of home accessibility. We put our own homes to the test, and let’s just say... Samantha’s 175-year-old farmhouse did not pass.
Here is the breakdown:
1. Universal Design (The Gold Standard) This is a home designed to be used by everyone to the greatest extent possible. Think: Zero-step entries, 36-inch wide doors, and open floor plans. We talk about our friends Jan and Dave’s "Forever Home"—it has a concrete ramp that looks like a beautiful walkway and a flush threshold so you can roll right in.
2. Livable Design Can you live entirely on the main floor? This means you have a bedroom, a full bathroom, and a kitchen all on the entry level. If you broke your hip tomorrow, could you come home?
3. Visitable Design This is about hospitality. Can a friend with a disability get into your house and use the bathroom? If your bathroom door is only 24 inches wide, the answer is probably no.
4. Adaptable Design Your house isn't accessible yet, but it has the "bones." This means you put blocking (wood supports) in the walls before you tiled the shower, so you can easily screw in grab bars ten years from now without tearing out the wall.
5. Non-Functional Design This is Samantha’s house (and Arly’s apartment). Steep stairs, narrow doors, lips on every threshold, and zero bedrooms on the main floor. If an injury happens, you’re in trouble.
Quick Fixes You Can Do Now
You don’t have to renovate your whole house to make it safer. In this episode, we discuss:
Recycled Tire Ramps: An affordable way to smooth out a bumpy threshold.
Offset Hinges: A brilliant piece of hardware that can add two inches of width to a doorway without any construction.
Smart Home Tech: Using Alexa or Google Home to control lights and locks for those with limited mobility.
Free Resource: The Home Grading Guide
We know this is a lot of information, so Emily did the homework for you. She condensed 600 pages of study material into a FREE 63-page "Aging in Place Guide & Home Grading System."
It includes a construction glossary, a medical glossary, and a checklist to see if your home is a "Forever Home" or a "Never Home."
Grab your tape measure, check your door widths, and let’s build a village where everyone is welcome!
Listen to Episode 8 now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
Transcript
Welcome to How to Handyma'am, the podcast where we have fallen, but we can get up. That's right. Today we are going to talk about Aging in Place and being a good villager, and our favorite good villager, Kaylee. That’s our girl. She is guinea pig numero uno for y'all listening to this right now. But also, she is incredibly handy and is talented at her job, hence why we employ her. But also, she is just lovely and a ray of sunshine. I work in a basement and I refer to myself as a basement troll, and she brings the sunshine to this little basement troll. She shows up for you. If you need an example of how to be a good villager, Kaylee should write a book on how to be a good villager.
I know that we film these ahead of time, but I just think it's fun to celebrate our wins. And this week we went viral for the first time on TikTok. And we freaking charted, guys! We charted. We might chart higher in the future, here's to hoping, but as of December 19th, we are number 26 on the Apple How-To Education charts. Which is so exciting. We're charting with big companies like Slate's How-To podcast and other podcasts. So guys, it's you, the listener, who did that. So thank you.
We started this for two reasons. One, we want to bring in-person education to women. We are so excited about it and this is the fastest way we could think of to build a community to attract the sponsors to make it affordable. The second reason is we like being together and talking. We enjoy each other so much. Even if none of the other things happened, we still would love to do this and enjoy sharing the information. But if we can also turn it into something really meaningful where we can impact people in person, that will be amazing.
I have a chatting topic. Can you guys describe a time where someone was a good villager for you?
Your dad. I have 30 years of examples of him being a good villager. But since he's a guy and we're talking about empowering women in this particular space, my best girlfriend Lisa has been there for me dedicated. She's just the epitome of a girl's girl. It doesn't matter, she will come sometimes and we'll be like having fun and go out to dinner and chat. And sometimes she comes and I'll just cry. And just everything that I need to share just spills out and with her, I don't have to rearrange the words. I don't have to make it pretty. I don't have to make it make sense. She just takes it and translates it into something that flatters me in ways that I did not create.
What's your villager story?
Two people come to mind. One is my mom because she's the villager of all villagers. She is my pit crew. She's always there for me and she always is nice to me even when I've messed up. But also our crew member Kaylee comes to mind too. Because Kaylee owes us nothing. It should be standard that your mother loves you no matter what. It's sad that it's not, so I try not to take that for granted. But Kaylee owes us no love, no gratitude, no grace, nothing. And she just has adopted our good villager mentality and developed it into something on her own on a whole new level. She dropped off soup for one of our coworkers when she was sick. She drove 25, 30 minutes to do that the day she wasn't feeling good. She texts Emily every single day if Emily is still in the parking lot at work. She'll be like, "If you don't go home, I'm bringing you food. So you either need to take help or you need to leave."
She checks in with all of us. She knows things about everybody. She's just there for everybody and she lets us talk about what we need to talk about. She's a great villager. And she's vulnerable, especially about the suck in life. She's willing to share what's going on and what's happening. I think that makes the best villager. To be a good villager, you have to embrace the suck together. It's not when life is gonna be rough.
I have a charge for our listeners. Be excited about something someone else is excited about today. Like I love Taylor Swift. There is not another Swiftie quite like me in the office. A few people dabble in her music, but I'm an addict. And Kaylee was like, "Did you see the new docuseries?" Does Kaylee like Taylor Swift? Not really. But she was asking me about it knowing I would have watched it. So if there's one of your friends who are in a group talking about this book they liked and no one else seems interested, be the one who's interested. Amplify their joy.
I wanted to bring up villagers for two reasons. One, because I'm grateful for you two to be part of my village. But also, because we're building a damn village online right now. Which is crazy. The impact you all have had on our lives, if this goes nowhere but where it has gone, it has been the trip of a lifetime. And second, to be a good villager, you might want to learn about today's topic. So today we are talking about Aging in Place. Which I would like to reframe as Accessibility for everyone. I'm a certified aging in place specialist. So for the first time, I am leading the episode today.
When I think of Aging in Place, I think of old people in a nursing home. Which obviously is not all it is. So who is Aging in Place for?
It's for everybody. I think the best way for me to describe Aging in Place is how I got to Aging in Place and why I became certified in it. So I am a licensed builder. But I felt like I was missing something to be able to offer to our clients. And something that really impacted me as a child is my Grandpa died from Alzheimer's at 91 in his own home. And especially with the cognitive diseases, being in your own house really adds longevity and joy to your life because you're not in a new scary environment. And then, we just passed the two-year anniversary of me fracturing my hip at the ripe old age of 24 years old. My home is as we'll go through what makes a home accessible... my home is not. The only bathroom is on the second story. My steps are the steepest steps known to man. I slipped on some steps and to stop myself I put my leg out and that fractured my hip. That could have gone a lot differently. I could have not been able to be in my own house while I was recovering. So Aging in Place, not to scare you guys, is one bad thing away from happening to everyone.
Some of the things that I thought about when we learned more about Aging in Place is, this might not be information that you currently need. But like my parents are in great health, but my parents' parents had somebody walk through their house and make sure that it was safe. And this was many years ago. Their house is still safe, it's just too much for them. But also like if you have kids who one of their friends might be disabled, or you have a friend who is disabled and you want them to be able to come over to your house. Or if you need to help your parents figure out how to make their house work better for them. Those are all things to consider and it's never bad to have this kind of knowledge.
If you're thinking, "I'm not old" or "I don't need Aging in Place," maybe stick around and you can learn why you might need it. Or staying in your own darn home. There's a lot to get into, but I think the way to break it down is there is five types of design in homes. So we're not talking about what makes a home pretty, but basically the functionality of a home.
The first one is the creme de la creme of accessibility, which is called Universal Design. This means that your house is basically ready for any visitor. So anyone with cognitive disabilities, vision impairment, hearing impairment, physical, wheelchair, all the things. It basically anticipates the need of anyone. This means someone can visit your home, they can enter easily, they have a toilet and a sink to use.
The next one is Adaptable Design. So say you gut your bathroom, when you redo your bathroom you might not add grab bars, you might not add these things, but you add blocking in your wall so that when you do need to add a grab bar in the future, if you do, you can do it in ten minutes. You don't have to worry about anchors or anything. So we have Universal Design, which is chef's kiss, anyone can visit. Adaptable design, which means you're just keeping one eye on the future.
The next one is Visitable Design. Which means that someone can visit your home. They can enter easily. They have a toilet and a sink to use. Basically they can come for a visit.
And then Livable Design is kind of similar to Universal Design, but it's that you could live there. So my Grandpa is a great example of Livable Design. He had a two-story house with the steepest steps known to man. Basically as he aged, the upstairs was no longer accessible to him, but on the downstairs he had a full bathroom, a full bedroom. So he needed a little extra help getting in and out of the house, but once he was in, everything on the main floor he could use.
And finally, Functional Design. This is actually what we do a lot for our clients. It's taking a home that isn't super accessible, it's non-functional, and making it functional. So this is building wheelchair ramps out front. This is adding a stair lift. This is adding grab bars in your shower. This is installing that within your home. So basically just making your home as accessible as you can without changing the layout, the design.
So friends, I have put together a guide for Aging in Place. It gives you a preview of the design types we talked about. And then, I have invented the My Handyma'am grading system for homes. So you can think about an A on my grading system is Universal Design, which means any disability can use your home. And an F, unfortunately, is that you have a non-functioning house. F isn't livable. F means if you're in a wheelchair or anything, it's not livable. And then there's like the varying degrees. Also in this, in the back, I put together the building codes for where you should put grab bars and stuff. And there's also a construction glossary and a medical glossary. You can download the free PDF resource and look at what it would be.
Now I will win this game. That is actually a test. Okay, friends. So, think about your home. Can this pass the first round? Do you have a zero step entry into your home?
Oh yeah, I flunk. No. I have five steps to get into my house.
It's five steps. If you give me a piece of plywood in 45 minutes, I will have zero entry my dude. And once you get past those first stairs, you can get around.
But yeah, so I just want to quickly say the modern way to handle this is a sloped sidewalk that goes all the way up to your door. So if you have like a new build or something, it means there is literally like a quarter inch to get into the house.
Main floor test. Do you have a full bathroom and a full bedroom on the first floor?
Yes.
Okay, I have a full bathroom and a room I could make a bedroom. So I am like a C minus.
The next one is Accessibility, which means that you're moving from surviving to thriving in the space. So do you guys know if you have 36 inch doors?
I do not. I do not have any 36 inch doors.
Okay. But your main floor does have those two French doors? So your main floor would be okay. You can travel between the living room, the den, and the dining room. You could not go to the kitchen. Or the bathroom. It's purely a 20 minute visitable. So it'd be okay for a visitor who does not need to pee.
So the reason 36 inch doors are important is wheelchairs. And also walkers. If you think about it, wheelchairs you're kind of enclosed, but walkers your hands are on the outside. So you have extra, you're trying to get through a narrow doorway. Or you have people trying to go through a doorway with their walker sideways, which is dangerous. And do you guys know if you have any blocking in your walls if you need to add a grab bar?
In neither of our houses do we have the thoughtful placement of blocking for accessibility.
No. We do have blocking I think to mount a TV. You can't get in, but if you did, you would be able to watch TV.
But the one thing about both of your homes, well yours is a little more accessible besides the doorways than hers is, cause you could live on the first floor. So to get to your home, like yours probably is a C, a D, C right now. But to get to B you just probably have to add a wheelchair ramp.
You know what? I think that in two slightly major renovations... putting in a ramp, which I think there'd be room for in the front, and widening the doors. Both are an option in my apartment. That would make both of those things... my place would be accessible.
Unfortunately your house would take quite a bit more renovation. Even our main floor bathroom has a walk-in shower, but in order to get to the shower you have to go, the door opens in front of the shower. So you have to go into the bathroom and close the door to be able to then access the shower. And it's pretty small in there.
Do you know a solution for your door problem?
I could do it so that it either opens out, or opens the other way.
I also have another one that we've done for a client. Can you remember?
Barn door.
Yeah you can. You can take your standard door out and mount a barn door. As long as you have the wall space outside the room for it to slide to the side. Pocket doors are also an option. They're quite a bit more invasive. But they're also an option and they're a little more private than barn doors. Barn doors do have like a gap.
One thing about pocket doors that I never really thought about until I was mounting things around pocket doors is they don't have traditional studs in them. So in your bathroom, one of the bathrooms that we just renovated, I was putting a toilet paper holder on there and it has just enough room for the anchors to go in. But if she wanted to mount a grab bar there to get up from the toilet, she wouldn't be able to and still be able to use that pocket door. Because if you mount it, then the fasteners that are inside the wall will actually scrape on the door as it opens and closes. Or go straight through the door.
So we have a Forever Home test. Do you have a curbless shower? Varied height counter tops for different disabilities? And if you have any smart automation. If you're hard of hearing or you can't see... there's a lot of really cool technology nowadays you can integrate into your home. Like neon duct tape to the different changes in plane in your house creates more contrast.
So the moral of this little test is that anything can be changed to be where you're at now. Or if you're thinking about moving or that you want this to be your forever home, these are just some considerations to think about.
One last thing I want to talk about with Aging in Place is one important thing about it is it provides dignity. It's important. Like when I was talking about privacy with the pocket door and things like that. Those are considerations you want to think about. What are things that make me feel safe in my own home and bring me security and dignity? And that is one reason Aging in Place is just very important.
Not to mention that Assisted Living is expensive. It's really expensive. It can drain your entire savings. Assisted Living can be $4,000 to $5,000 a month. So if you think about saving up for a renovation that makes your home accessible for any of the conditions we talked about today, it actually might save you money in the long run. In most cases it would.
Also, if you're going to replace your front door and you're like, "I don't know if I should get a 34 inch or a 36 inch door." And you know that you need a 36 inch door for it to be accessible. That's having this knowledge is nice when you're updating things. As you're already making decisions, you can just make minor tweaks that don't really even cost anymore usually if you're already doing it.
Can I give one product recommendation? One of the best things we found for accessibility for a house that can't... we have a customer, they live in the farmhouse. This is their family farmhouse. They don't want to move. But they have changes in height in different places in the house. And they're pretty minimal. They're like 2 inches, 4 inches, 3 inches. Not enough for a wood ramp. It's not something you would build a traditional ramp. But we discovered this product. I think they're made out of recycled tires. They're basically rubber ramps. They come in various widths. You can get them anywhere from like 2 feet to 4 feet wide. And then you can get different depths depending on how much space you have and then different heights. So basically what all you do is you just pick the one that has the height that exactly matches your threshold and you order it and it's heavier than heck. But then you just lay it down. Boom. Done. Because they're super heavy, they don't go anywhere. They don't move. And they're very durable. They last forever. They're super affordable. They're not slippery. They kind of have that texture that garage floor mats have. It's basically a thick garage floor mat.
So yeah, we can wrap up soon. But did you guys have any questions about Aging in Place or anything before we move?
I do have one more thought. Does Aging in Place also include like putting those stair treads on like your stairs outside? And like your handrails and stuff like that? Because I feel like that's just a safety thing for everybody. Yeah, our front porch has five steps and they're painted wood. We inherited that, we didn't paint them. Although I probably would now. But the first winter we were here, our poor mailman about died so many times. Because if you take painted wooden steps and then you put fluffy snow on it or rain, they're so slippery. So we just bought, they're kind of decorative, you know they make prettier ones and they make less pretty more functional ones. But yeah we just ordered like a five pack off of Amazon and you just screw them into your steps and then all of a sudden your mailman isn't in danger of dying. And you're not in danger of getting sued.
And what we're referring to is like this rubber bullnose stair tread. Basically you just set it on your stair and then you screw it in at a couple of places. And then they're super safe.
There is a lot of products for almost everything. And there's little things you wouldn't think of. Like the room I'm in right now has a door knob that's a circle door knob. And if you have arthritis, sometimes those are hard to grab. So you switch to a lever style door knob which takes very little effort to open because you can hit it with your elbow. If you don't have grip strength you can just use your hand to hit it. So for pretty much for every problem there is a solution in Aging in Place. Which I think provides an immense amount of help. Every client I've talked to has been like, "I think we're gonna have to move." Or "I think we're gonna have to do this." And I'm like wait, there's a solution for this. There is a solution.
And if you want to join this delightful community that we're building, you can find us basically at How to Handyma'am anywhere. Our TikTok is popping off right now though if you want to go there. I want to say that I've said this in a few other episodes, but this podcast has a purpose. So we feel like we have really learned everything the hardest possible way. And this podcast is so that you don't have to. And if we build a large enough community, we will be able to host in-person classes. Not just in Michigan where we're based, but in metropolitan areas all around the country. So if you are excited about that too and want to help, the single best thing you can do is watch the podcast on Apple Podcasts and rate, review and subscribe. And leave a written review. Pretty please with a cherry on top.
And I have one last thing. One last reminder. Handy is a skill to be learned. You may feel like you were not built handy. But girl, you can become handy. One small thing. Add it to your little metaphorical tool belt. Learn the next thing. Add it to your metaphorical tool belt. Before you know it, you're like Arly. You've got three or four tool bags. And you can't find any of your tools. But that's a different issue. That's a different issue.
One last thing. We call this a Midwest wrap up. If you don't know, Michigan, all of us born and raised. Y'all, we don't know how to shut up or stop a conversation. So welcome to the Midwest goodbye.
I saw somebody post on a Facebook group the other day and it was like this young woman and she was like, "I installed my ceiling fan." She was like, "It took me like four or five hours. I cried. I asked Google for help." And she said, "But I did it." And you know what? If you want to go on How to Handyma'am and say just brag and be like, "I did this." Please do that because we want to cheer you on. We want to see what you did. We want to give you props. Other people want to see it too. Like that's also what our page is for is not just asking questions but if you need to like... Yeah we're willing to hear it.
And my final final note. We want to be your villagers. We want that. And we want to build a community of villagers. But also, you can be other people's villagers. You can do it. It takes some discomfort. It takes some putting yourself out there. But friends, you can do it.
All right as the mom of this group I'm gonna say it's really time to bring this Midwest goodbye to an end. So we love you. Thanks for joining us. Bye!
