Remodeling a Home to Care for the Elderly

Open up a closed floor plan to keep an eye on your parent from another room. Perhaps you have too many separate rooms in your home to keep a watchful eye on mom or dad. Creating a great room brings the entire family together into a shared living space, where your elderly charge will be more likely to have someone else in the room to help out or keep watch. You can often open up your home’s floor plan by simply removing one or two walls that may be separating the kitchen, living, and dining rooms.

Add a second master bedroom for yourself and give the main level master to mom or dad. Master bedrooms are often found on the main level of the house. Two major reasons are convenience and creating privacy for parents with children, whose rooms are usually on another level of the home. The layout is perfect for people who plan to stay in their home long term. The master bedroom would also be perfect for an elderly live-in: plenty of space, a private bathroom, and the convenience of main-level living without the hassle of stairs.

Adding a second master gives you the opportunity to create your own new bedroom of your dreams as well. Good spaces for this new room may be found in the basement, attic, or garage, or a master can be created by combining two smaller, adjacent bedrooms into a larger one.

Convert your existing two-car garage into an apartment.

Maybe your elderly parent needs to be on-site but doesn’t need help or supervision 24-7. Converting your attached garage into a mother-in-law suite may be just what the doctor ordered. A detached garage has even more options, as the apartment can be built above the existing garage so you don’t lose your garage space, but snow, ice and other environmental factors may make it unsafe for the person traveling between the detached garage and main house.

Converting a garage to an apartment can have other hidden benefits as well. As your elderly parent needs more help as they age, you may decide to move them into the main house and an adult child that still lives at home can move to the garage apartment, for example. When the apartment is no longer needed or occupied, it can become an art studio, guesthouse, or rental unit for extra income.

Keep in mind that if you finish an existing but currently unlivable space in your home such as a garage, basement, or attic, you will be adding square footage and increasing the home’s value, without building an addition onto the house.

About the Author: Joaquin Erazo, Jr., senior vice president of Marketing and Public Relations for Case Design/Remodeling, writes about redoing your interior spaces and variety of other home remodeling topics including open floor plan designs and aging in place.

Disclaimer: This post is a sponsored post and I was compensated for hosting it here. I found it to have useful information and hope that you do too.