Show Notes:
Transcript:
Sarah: [00:00:00] You’re listening to Good Fit Poor Fit. Our podcast is part of The UD Project, a small business rooted in occupational therapy that looks at how the design of a home environment impacts how well people of different ages and abilities perform everyday activities. We chat about this unique perspective to boost your knowledge and help you consider what can be changed in communities like yours.
Learn more about our work at universaldesign.org.
Rebecca and I are back and excited to chat with Grant Todd about the outcome of his doctoral project in occupational therapy. It’s a pretty unique project in which he was actually able to transform a house to not only spruce it up a bit, but to add in some accessibility into the current structure and on a budget.
Grant: Yeah. Thanks again for having me. For those of you that haven’t heard of me in past episodes, my name again [00:01:00] is Grant Todd, and I just recently graduated from the University of Central Arkansas with my Doctorate in Occupational Therapy. So the purpose of this episode is about what was my doctoral capstone project.
My project was titled Universal Design in the Home Environment, and it is where I took a house that the OT department had on campus, which we also called the OT house, at UCA, and I just renovated and updated it while following the universal design code that Sarah was able to provide me.
So why did I do this? I grew up with both a mom, who’s an interior decorator and a grandpa, who was a carpenter cabinet maker and an overall handyman. So through my childhood, I was consistently helping both of them at different job sites all the time, helping my grandpa in the summers and learning all of this stuff that I ended up utilizing in the project without even realizing it.
So fast forward to my undergrad, I was taking an elective class called Universal Design [00:02:00] Concepts. This showed me the idea of what universal design is, what it can be in buildings, products, software, and just everything else. At that time, I was also working as a maintenance man for a set of rental houses and apartments in the city that I was doing my undergrad in.
Fast forward to OT school, we start talking about universal design within OT and how they’re related. Shortly after that, we begin talking about capstone, and that is when I realized that I could combine a passion of OT and solving problems. And I can do this through the idea of universal design.
So after a little deliberation with some professors, I ended up getting approval for my project and I was on my way to make it start happening.
Rebecca: Grant, this is one of the coolest doctoral projects in Occupational Therapy school that I have ever heard. It’s truly putting UD into action, which is unfortunately not a chance that everybody can get, even people who are interested in it and have relevant experience like you. So I’ve been waiting to hear all about this.
So can you tell us a bit more about what you did and some features that [00:03:00] you put in the house?
Grant: I was able to put a fair amount of stuff in this house. I had a $3,000 foundation grant from UCA and I roughly put in about a grand to $1,500 of personal funds in order to get everything that I wanted in this house and everything that was needed. Originally, I was trying to get this really big budget so that way it could do all sorts of different things. But as I really started thinking about it, a max budget of about $5,000, anywhere down to a low budget of about $1,500 is really what was realistic for someone that needs to do minor updates to their house after an injury, life change, or any other kind of unforeseen circumstance. So once I realized that this was the way to go about it, that’s when I knew I couldn’t allow myself to go over five grand, and I tried to keep it as close to four as possible. Now, the fun part was I was able to get that $3,000 originally from the foundation grant. So I was able to get some help from my professor, Dr. Ryan, who helped oversee my [00:04:00] project. And he ended up teaching me how to write a grant before we ever started the capstone process.
So we ended up writing one together, we got it approved, and then I started spending all the money on all the products that I could get a hold of, and all the products that I’ll be talking about today. So in the house, I focused on some of the more major areas, this included the living room, kitchen, the main bedroom and main bathroom, as well as just minor updates to the garage, the dining room, as well as the hallways.
Sarah: And before you jump into all of these details, because I know I’m looking forward to it, and I’m sure our listeners are as well, I do want to comment on how much you were able to do with a small chunk of money. Like you said, you wanted to make this realistic. And I think this project is relatable to many people just thinking about what they could do to boost access in their own homes on a budget, and some of the examples that you did were fairly simple and really did add a lot of function to the house. People can even do this in phases if finances are a [00:05:00] concern.
Grant: Absolutely. And one of those first things that I was able to do with the house was, I was just able to paint the entire thing. Originally, it was a wild yellow color that just made the house look gross, and now I put in this nice metallic gray just to clean it up. Uh, this allowed for a lot of visual contrast because all of the cabinets, doors, and baseboards were white.
Next, I swapped out all the electrical switches in the house to rocker switches that were also white, so that way they would stick out, and they would just be better than the regular stick switches. I also swapped the majority of the doorknobs to lever handles, so that way it’d be a whole lot easier to use.
Rebecca: These are all very classic UD features we should note. Contrasting color cabinets so they stand out from the walls, rocker switches which can be operated with a finger, full fist, elbow, or reacher, and lever handles that are similarly versatile and don’t require too much fine motor control.
Grant: Yeah, and after that, I ended up tackling the kitchen. [00:06:00] I put in a motion sensor faucet, I put all new knobs on the cabinet doors, I put in new lights in the room, both above the sink and just in the room in general, as well as under cabinet task lighting, I put in a pull down shelf, as well as a pull up appliance shelf that we talked about in my previous episode and I put in a new desk in the kitchen, which I ended up turning into a kitchen table. So that way you could roll underneath it or you can put any kind of other chairs with it.
While working on the electrical. I went ahead and put in new overhead lights in the hallway, the bedroom, bathroom, a new thermostat, as well as a new garage door motor. All of things that I will come back to later.
So then I moved into focusing on the main bedroom and bathroom. Where I put in new shower hardware, new sink hardware, a new vanity light. I put in a new fan in the bedroom. And then I put in a new battery powered closet lights. These were really cool.
And my favorite item of all, I put [00:07:00] in a four way Brinks doorknob that you can push and pull as well as your normal up and down.
Sarah: I’m actually excited to put some of these pictures in the show notes for you guys because this really is a transformation, Grant, and you did pack a lot into this house with the functional projects and just general upgrades. I know when I was checking in with you throughout this project, you said you ran into a lot of things that took up time that you really weren’t expecting, like just maybe some features of the home that weren’t the best workmanship, but I’m glad you were able to make these changes and fix some things that weren’t even safe electrically. Um, but that Brinks door knob that you mentioned is really great. While it is a traditional doorknob that you can turn, it’s also operable by pushing it and pulling it, which is great for so many situations, and it’s just very versatile. But I do want to note that lighting just really makes a big difference and often gets forgotten. So I’m glad you were able to show a little attention to that area of the home. Now [00:08:00] Grant, I know you also added some really cool technology into the home. Can you share about that as well?
Grant: Yeah so after I finished all of those major things, I moved into technology as well as just putting the furniture back in place. So I cleaned up a lot of the original furniture that was in the house already and I moved it back both in the bedroom and the living room Um, but I did put a few new things in like an end table and some new lamps just to put those in the living room to even help out with some of the technology.
I put in a whole set of Google Home equipment. So every single light bulb that I have in this house, as well as all the new overhead lights that I put in, they were all smart lights that could connect to the Google Home. The thermostat that I put in was also connected to the Google home and the garage motor that I put in was connected to the Google home.
And then we put in three Google cameras, as well as two different speakers, one regular speaker and one hub, on either side of the house. So that way [00:09:00] you could give orders to the Google, no matter where you were in the house. So then for fun, cause I had to have a little bit of fun while doing this is I ended up adding some little tricks into the system so that if you said the correct phrases, some fun things would happen where the lights would change, funny phrases would be spoken back to you, and even the music would start playing.
Rebecca: Yes, when you first told us about this personalization, Grant, I thought it was so charming, and thinking about using something like that in a residential home is even more so, because it’s really, really a way to make the place your own in a quirky, sometimes silly kind of way. So, Grant, I know we did a whole episode on cabinetry, and I know you had mentioned it before, but I’m super eager to hear what you did with the cabinetry for your project.
Grant: So, as you said, I was working on a concept cabinet, and this was the idea of doing something DIY that would also be electric. So, my cousin was an electrical engineer, and he was able to help me out with all of this. So, we tried to do it [00:10:00] with only objects that you would find at your normal hardware stores.
So we took off to Harbor Freight and we ended up buying some bolts, a TV mounts, of all things, a winch that plugged into the wall rather than your normal car winch. And then we went over to Lowe’s and we bought some boards to try and build this thing together. We’re able to zip it all up and make the concept work by testing it out with a couple of zip ties and a step ladder.
And, when we saw that it would work, we were like, sweet. So how it was supposed to work was the winch would be on the wall connected to one board, and then it would be connected to the TV mount, which would be connected to the cabinet, and the wall. So that way it could move up and down. The eye bolt that we would have connected into the back of the cabinet would be hooked into the winch.
So then when you pressed the button, you could raise that cabinet up and down. The problem that we ran into was the winch was a little too big and it made the cabinet stick out a little too far, [00:11:00] thus making it kind of a safety concern inside the house. On top of that, the TV mount couldn’t have the correct tension all the way through, to lock up as well as lock in the down position. So we deemed it inoperable, um, but I intentionally left it in the house as a concept idea. And I left it in a back room so that way if another student wanted to take over, they could look into it and decide what’s best, and if they would like to do it, they could.
Sarah: . You know, Grant, I think even though that you didn’t finalize this cabinet, it is a great testimony to the idea that there have to be many iterations of a project and lots of time that goes working into just a design concept of a product and I want to praise you for trying to do this on a budget with things that you could easily get your hands on. You had a lot of previous skills and knowledge and the tools to actually make this happen. You could work on it and tweak it. And I do remember [00:12:00] that at one point you were stuck on, how to get something to work and you were just talking with a friend and got an idea to use another product that you hadn’t even thought about before.
So, you know, maybe in the future you can pick it back up again as you get some inspiration for what you’ll maybe even learn in the future. But overall, well done. And I’m glad you at least had the opportunity to test out your idea to see if it would work.
Grant: Absolutely. It’s an idea that I haven’t given up on yet. It’s just gonna take a back seat as I start studying for boards. But, thank you guys again for having me, and all the information and resources that y’all have helped share along the way. And it has just been an absolute pleasure to be on this podcast just one more time.
Rebecca: The pleasure has been ours, Grant. Thank you so much for bringing your passion, talent, knowledge, and skills to the Universal Design Project as a whole, and to Good Fit Poor Fit. And listeners, thanks for tuning in, and we’ll be back in your feed soon.
Sarah: Thanks for listening to Good Fit Poor Fit. If you want to learn more… first, find more episodes with [00:13:00] transcripts and show notes at goodfitpoorfit.com. Don’t forget to subscribe! Second, check out our courses at go.universaldesign.org.
We cover housing topics like advocacy, collaboration, home modification, universal design and task adaptations. Lastly, if you have questions or topics you’d like us to discuss, email us at [email protected]. Thanks for fitting us into your day.
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