Walt Anderson is an architectural designer with an "Aging In Place" certification. My husband was an able-bodied working man one day and paralyzed on the left side of his body the next. We live in a split-entry home. For the three months that my husband was in the hospital, I tried without success to find a home to purchase that was either wheelchair accessible or could be made into a wheelchair accessible home. The hallways and doorways were all too narrow for a wheelchair to navigate, there were too many stairs everywhere and forget about the bathrooms! By chance, I read about "Aging in Place" certification. By searching through the internet, I found that someone in my region had that very certification--and that someone was Walt Anderson at Access Ability Design Group. Walt's specialty is designing and re-designing homes to allow elderly or disabled people to continue to live at home. He helped me redesign our home so I wouldn't have to ship my young-ish husband off to a nursing home. My first priority was in combining two back-to-back bathrooms into one bigger bathroom that was wheelchair accessible, including designing a wheelchair accessible shower area. Together with the contractor I hired, Ron Kittridge, VP of Gary Brownell, Inc., they went to the local town zoning board with Walt's architectural drawings and applied for a construction permit. Had I not hired Walt and Ron to represent me at the Town Hall, I'm sure that the permit would never have been granted because this town is so persnickety about building codes. The permit application was approved during the first review. Additionally, Walt evaluated the inside and outside of our split-entry home and told us about technology available from other local vendors for the disabled that could help my husband travel from the first floor to the second floor of our home so that he wouldn't be cooped up in the basement by himself and he could live like a normal person with the family. I was so pleased with Walt Anderson from Access Ability Design Group and Ron Kittridge from Gary Brownell, Inc., on remodeling the main bathroom that I am now turning a closet into a 1/2 bath that is not intended to be handicapped accessible and their two businesses are doing the work. Walt's designs are reasonably priced and well worth the cost, mostly because he understands building codes so the permitting process is so much faster than trying to go it alone. He works along the East Coast, so he is familiar with the codes of many towns and understands code variations from town to town. Although Walt can work with any contractor, he had an easy time working with the employees of Gary Brownell, Inc. because they were extremely professional and followed Walt's architectural designs to the letter. As for project cost, Walt's drawings were reasonable, much less than an Architect (as he is a designer) but worth every penny because they were well thought out and avoided many hassles with the Town Hall's building code enforcement department.
