Dr. Rosemarie Rossetti, Co-Founder of the Universal Design Living Laboratory Shares Her Inspirational Story of Perseverance and Resilience

Rosemarie Rossetti, Ph.D, is an author, Universal Design and Aging In Place subject matter expert and a public and motivational speaker. She is the Co-founder of the Universal Design Living Laboratory. Rosemarie and her husband Mark Leder, built their home based on UD and Green Building practices. Their homes holds multiple certifications in UD, Green Building, Wildlife Habitat, and more.

Rosemarie and Mark spent 7 years doing research into the area of Universal Design. The process led to a belief that they could share their research, knowledge and home to make a significant and positive difference in the lives of others. They were passionate about finding a way to share what they had learned with others.

Please listen to learn how they made the impossible possible and how they turned tragedy into triumph. The UDLL has helped many people, building professionals, and manufacturers understand how UD is a powerful tool to living more comfortably, with dignity, and independence.

Books By Rosemarie Rossetti:
The Universal Design Toolkit
Take Back Your Life

Transcript

Janet: 0:45

Hello everyone, and thank you for being with me today. Today's guest is Dr. Rosemarie Rossetti I am very excited to have her here with me. I had the pleasure of meeting her in person. During the Easter weekend. I traveled to Columbus, Ohio where she lives, and she was gracious enough to give me a tour for her home. Dr. Rosemarie Rossetti has a PhD in agricultural education. She was also a public speaker and she was on the faculty of Ohio State University. And then suddenly when she was 44, her life changed. And I will let Rosemarie tell us her.

Rosemarie Rossetti: 1:38

Well, thank you Janet. The story has a happy ending in that I lived through it but it was in 98. It was June 13th. My husband, mark later and I were on a bike ride celebrating our third wedding anniversary on a beautiful. Caribbean Blue sky a wonderful day. No wind. No rain, no threat of storm on a bike trail in Grandville, Ohio, not too far from Columbus. When suddenly my husband heard what he thought was a gunshot, and it wasn't a gunshot at all, he yelled to me and he tried to warn me. What he had seen was a tree halfway to the ground and his warning of stop was just not enough. What happened was there was this 7,000 pound tree falling and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Suddenly, I was crushed by this 80 foot tall tree and instantly. Knocked unconscious and paralyzed from the waist down. It was a very difficult rescue. We were alone on the trail. The live power lines also fell on the tree. Fortunately another couple had been riding bikes on that same trail and assisted in the rescue. Got a hold of a phone and called the emergency team that came to the rescue. The helicopter came for the life flight and instantly we lifted off and left the bike trail for the emergency trauma center in downtown Columbus, where I was met by the emergency surgery team, and four and a half hours later I awoke in intensive care. With a spinal cord injury, a broken neck, a broken back, broken ribs, broken sternum, and wondering now what? Fortunately, I was alive and just had to resolve whatever the situation was. I was lucky to be alive and moved on with resolve. From that point in my. You were

Janet: 3:55

lucky to be alive. It's just an unimaginable accident now. Tell us about what it was like for you when you were finally able

Rosemarie Rossetti: 4:08

to come back home with your husband, mark. When I was at the rehabilitation center at the Ohio State University, they allowed me to come home for a home. I was in a rented wheelchair from the hospital and we had three steps at the front door, three steps at the back door. So it was very difficult for Mark then to lift me in the wheelchair into our home. It was difficult, a very difficult situation. The carpet was too thick for me to roll on. Doors were too narrow, so they had to come off. Furniture was in the way. So that was the first rude awakening of saying, this house is not gonna work. We had a master bedroom on the first floor, a master bath, but the shower was not going to work. There was a lip to it and a very small door. So we just knew that this house. Is not gonna work long term. And as I was released from the hospital and then brought home permanently, we had to say, what can we do temporarily to at least get me in the home? So a temporary wooden ramp was built at first. And then later on a electric porch lift was put onto the front door and modifications of the front entry, so at least I could come and go independently. A lot of things had to change and I just was frustrated to say. I can't go into the lower level of the home. I can't go into the upper level. I'm stuck. And furniture had to be traded out and the kitchen had to have a lot of renovation. The bathroom wasn't working. But we tolerated it for a while and said eventually we're gonna have to figure. A better solution. The remodeling was out of the question. The house would take too long. It was too expensive. It was not gonna be marketable. We looked for homes in the neighborhood that might work, and we couldn't find anything. So we hired an architect and started in earnest to build something that would work for the two of us as an adapted home, as an accessible home, as a universal design home.

Janet: 6:40

when your accident happened, this was in 2004. How much did the people that you were hiring know about universal design or how to make a home

Rosemarie Rossetti: 6:54

accessible? For someone with your needs, knew very much about universal and accessible design. So that was easy. But then we started looking at existing ranch style homes from the custom builders and the production builders in our vicinity. And they were kind of clueless at that point. They might have one ranch style home. Out of maybe 10 floor plans, and we'd look at the ranch style home and say, but the kitchen is not right, the bathroom is not right. So the architect started looking at the existing ranch style home from the builder and tried to shoehorn, as he called it, a redesign of the interior. Keeping the exterior the same so that we could use the footprint of the existing ranch style home and change all of the rooms and the interior and shoe hornet. And as he started doing that, he finally said, this is not working. We cannot do this. We've gotta start fresh and let's design what you want and let's scrap this idea and build a custom. Okay. And

Janet: 8:10

then that's when Mark found this property where your current house was built. So tell us about what you called the Universal Design Living

Rosemarie Rossetti: 8:22

Laboratory. Yeah, we came up with that name with the help of a marketing strategist, Robert August. We bought an acre and a half lot. It's a rural setting and it looked big enough for the Floor plan that the architect had. It's a great property. It was very flat. It had a southern exposure. So the back of the property could be using the solar panels on the roof. We wanted the house not only to be universal design and accessible, but also very green and sustainable. Universal design is a concept. It's a framework of designing not only homes, but buildings and workplaces and products that are usable. By the majority of the population of all abilities, regardless so that there's not specialized design. So thinking in terms of our home, yes, we have lots of features that accommodate me in a wheelchair, but they're features for everyone as I am four, one in a manual wheelchair. My husband is six four. So what diversity we have just with the two of. And as we have we've had over 3,500 people touring our home, and they all agree that they would love to have these universal design features to accommodate them now as well as in the future so that they can have a forever home. That affords them the accessibility, the comfort, and the safety and peace of. And I'm so glad

Janet: 10:06

you said that because there is such a misconception about, I would say universal design and also aging in place. Design what the aesthetic will look like,

Rosemarie Rossetti: 10:20

and

Janet: 10:22

your home is absolutely beautiful. And like you said, it was made for anyone of any age, any ability to be able to function in it and function in

Rosemarie Rossetti: 10:36

it well. So

Janet: 10:40

tell us about some of the features that

Rosemarie Rossetti: 10:43

you have in your home. Well, my favorite room is the kitchen. I'm the main cook. Mark is the cleanup guy, and so what I like about the kitchen is the accessibility and the freedom and independence. A as you look at the kitchen, we have a large center island and it has three different heights on the counters. The island that I use is the 30 inch high section on one. The island that Mark uses, which is all one part of the island, is a 42 inch height, and then the third is a 35 inch going around the kitchen on the perimeter where the sink is, the dishwasher, the cooktop, that particular countertop is a 34 inch. So that is a compromising height so that both of us have the ability to utilize the sink in the cooktop and all those counters. Also, 50%, at least 50% of all the storage is reachable. From a seated position, and so we've lowered the height of all of the wall cabinets so that shelf on those wall cabinets is reachable, the lowest shelf I can reach from a seated position. And we've got a lot of also some hardware in there that pulls down some of the taller shelves so that I can reach them and great deep drawers underneath the countertops so that all the dishes and the skillets and pots and pans are right there underneath the countertop. It's a dream that kitchen really works well for both of us. Has plenty of room for me to do a 360 circle with the five foot turning radius and a great refrigerator freezer combination with the freezer door on the left and the refrigerator on the right. So those are some of the features with knee space under the sink and under the cooktop. And tell us

Janet: 12:51

about, The sponsors that you had contribute products and their time to your home,

Rosemarie Rossetti: 13:00

what was that process like? That was a long process to attract to over 200 major corporations organizations, individuals, volunteers that provided the products as well as some of the service and installation. We had. A list on our website. You can see them@udll.com. The initials UD l.com is for the Universal Design Living Laboratory, and there's a tab that says Contributors in alphabetical order. Without them, this house would never have happened. Our biggest contributor was Marvin Windows and Doors, contributing all of the windows, most of the doors, and installing them at no charge. That was probably a hundred thousand dollars of contribution. That was the one that really brought us to the point of over the. Making it real so that when we went to other major sponsors and said, Hey, Marvin is in, are you in? We have selected Craftmade as our cabinetry. We have selected Whirlpool. KitchenAid is our appliances. We have selected, Mannington is our flooring. We were very. Specific in what companies we invited to be contributors based on universal design, based on green building, and based on the overall look of the house in terms of will it fit the style of the house, which is a updated arts and crafts look. So our interior design team was very involved in helping select the products that went into the home. I see. So they were

Janet: 14:55

already familiar with some of these manufacturers and the products that they were making, but I know that you told me that a lot of the decisions on the design were made. Impromptu and sometimes they were changed and people thought of better designs. so tell us about how it evolved because it, it sounded like it was a work in progress from start to finish.

Rosemarie Rossetti: 15:28

Yes, it was planned in terms of the floor plan and the elevations, all the architectural plans, the drawings that was all set in stone in terms of what it's, what was gonna look like to start the actual construction, which was in September of 2009. That's when we started the groundbreaking. And so as things went on we started looking at it from another perspective and other design firms. Product manufacturers would take a look at the plans and say, let's put our design team on here. We think we have a better idea. So a major change was done in the kitchen. We had a kitchen and bath designer, Mary Jo Peterson originally design it and a lion was our general interior designer. She approved Mary Jo's plan, but then the interior design team at Craftmade said, we have a better idea. Can we change that center island and can we put in some different cabinetry in the pantry that no one had thought about? And so with those new plans in front of Mary Jo Peterson and Anna Lion and the architect, and Mark and I, we all agreed that Craftmade had an improved design for that kitchen. One of my favorite features

Janet: 16:51

in your kitchen is the raised dishwasher.

Rosemarie Rossetti: 16:55

Tell our listeners about your raised dishwasher. Yeah, the dishwasher is to the right of the sink and it's actually 16 inches above the floor so that it's not so low. It's great for everyone. You don't have to bend down as far. That was a design originally, always in there. That everyone appreciates, not just me, but Mark too, as he's putting dishes in there. And under the dishwasher is then a nice storage drawer for all of our dish towels. And it was interesting, the company Craftmade, who created that design and created the drawing for the cabinet, always had that empty space under the dishwasher just with a little piece of wood as a little. Panel. It was never a drawer, but they sent their innovation team to our home after we moved in and said, what could we have done in the design of your home, in any of the cabinetry to make it better? And that was one idea that we pointed out. What if you had a drawer under the dishwasher instead of this empty space? And they thought it was a great idea. They engineered a drawer, brought it over, tested it, and now that is a standard feature under their dishwasher. Yeah,

Janet: 18:20

I love it. It's just ingenious to have that and so comfortable. And again, that's why.

Rosemarie Rossetti: 18:28

I always promote

Janet: 18:29

universal design and aging in place design because it really makes your house more comfortable for everyone, and it makes it more visible and many times it makes it more beautiful too. Like the having the raised baseboards. I know that you have that in your house to protect the walls. But at the same time, it gives the walls a more elegant look, and having the wider doorways, it does the same thing. So tell us about your bathroom because

Rosemarie Rossetti: 19:07

it's really beautiful and

Janet: 19:10

it

Rosemarie Rossetti: 19:12

doesn't look institutional at all, or. Would belong in

Janet: 19:19

a hospital. So tell us about how you function in your bathroom and the features that you like the best.

Rosemarie Rossetti: 19:27

Well, the feature I like best is the shower. It's four feet by seven feet, so it's pretty spacious. It is set up for a station for me to transfer from the wheelchair onto a seat that is stationed on the wall. And then it has the handheld shower that's adjustable. It's got glass block on the east wall, so we have natural light. And it has l e d lights at the top so I can shower independently transferring onto that chair back into my wheelchair. There is no lip at all. It is level curbless, and the floor has the small tiles with the grout with a slight slope, so the water goes to a channel. To the back of the wall. There's no need for any glass door or curtain. It's just a 36 inch opening, no curb, a very slight slope to that floor. The second area is for mark to shower, so he's got the shower head high so that he can use it. That. So it's great. It's a wonderful independence. I also love the whirlpool. It is a great tub. It's very spacious. It is under mounted with a deck on top, and the height of that bathtub deck is the same height as the seat on my wheelchair. The cushion is 20 inches from the. So it's very easy for me to slide onto the bathtub deck and then go into the whirlpool. It has the handrails, the grab bars built into the bathtub, and I kneel to get in, and it has a handheld shower also so that I can rinse and wash my hair or clean the tub. And the jets are very therapeutic. It's a wonderful experience. And it's also beautiful

Janet: 21:34

now. I was reading your book. Tell us about your book, because I was reading it this morning. I really enjoyed it. It's such an easy read. It's so well organized and it touches on all of the different topics that someone like myself would be interested in, but also just a layperson that's thinking about making. A few aspects of their home universally designed or more friendly for aging in place. Now, you talk about in your, in the first chapter, I was reading your story and you said several things that were really inspirational. Well, number one, you said failure is not an option, and I really thought about those words. Reading what you and Mark went through at the beginning, before you bought the lot where you built your home. You guys really encountered a lot of difficulty and challenges in even trying to figure out how you would create a space that was accessible. And so when I read that failure is not an option,

Rosemarie Rossetti: 22:51

I

Janet: 22:51

thought, wow, that really, that puts it in perspective cuz you can never stop. So tell us about how you and Mark were thinking at that time.

Rosemarie Rossetti: 23:03

Well, we knew we had to build a house. As I said, our house wasn't gonna work and my injury was not going to be resolved by medical science. There is no cure for spinal cord injury, so we had to make that commitment. Hiring the architect, moving forward with the design, buying the lot. Failure was not an option. We were going full force. We needed a loan. We sold our other house. We moved into an apartment. A long period of time and said, you know, we gotta move on. And we realized that we were being successful in getting contributors. So this thing could not fail. Having one contributor and then two, and then 10, and then 20, and then a hundred, and then 200. We knew we had enough power behind us that we could not fail. All of these people believed in us. They would not let us down. So we just need to pursue the Herculean effort. And I might add, we were the builder. We were the general contractors and we had never built a house before. And Janet, we will never build a house again. This was a naive project. We had no idea how hard this was gonna be. It really taxed us to the degree that we had no idea it was gonna take this long, this much money, this much problem every single day for this period of time. So failure was not an option. We'd wake up every morning with zest and zeal and then we'd come back to bed at night saying, oh my gosh, another problem has arisen, and what are we gonna do about it tomorrow? And we'd just have to barrel through. Imagine pulling. Idea up a hill, pushing a boulder in a wheelchair. That's what I felt like it was amazing. But we just had to keep going no matter what, and move towards our goal. And if money was a problem, we went to our parents and said, Hey. We need some more cash. We are in dire straits. We gotta finish this project, help us, give us some more loan so that we can move this project forward. And fortunately, they saved us financially. Both his parents and mine came to our aid when money was not available from the loan. If you've ever built a house before, there are certain. Points at which you have to have the house finished at this point, or you don't get your draw on the construction loan. And it's like the loan is there, but they won't give it to us until we have finished that part of the house. Well, we hadn't finished that part of the house, so the construction loan was not coming our way. So we had some difficulty in saying we need. Quick, we'll pay you back when we get that construction loan.

Janet: 26:20

And was that because that portion of the construction. Had actually gone over budget and that's why it wasn't,

Rosemarie Rossetti: 26:30

lots of things go over budget and over time and you just say, we only had this much money and paid all of our bills, and now more bills are coming and the bank won't give us any more money. It's like not until we get to this next phase of construction, it's. This is our money we're paying for this loan, but no, we can't give it to you yet. So that just drove us crazy, I'm sure. I

Janet: 26:59

can't imagine. Now something else I've read that kept you going was you said the goal was to make a positive difference in the lives of others through better home design. I really liked that sentence. Just really resonated with me because I feel like that's why I do what I do, is to educate people really on better home design. And from the OT perspective, how can you be more independent? How can people increase their quality of life? tell us what it was like for you after the home was built and you started receiving. Visitors in your home and actually seeing

Rosemarie Rossetti: 27:52

this take place? Well, we had tours during construction also. We had a lot of builders here and architects. And the manufacturers would put on special demonstrations, like when they were putting the roof on so that people could see the roof actually being installed. We also had a construction video camera that was on a pole in the front of the house that was on 24 7 during the entire construction. So people all over the world were watching this. Live as it was being built. So we were getting lots of feedback from people and of course lots of training was going on in the construction world. And then we started bringing friends in during construction and having small picnics in the construction site and everyone was just so excited to say, oh my gosh, Rosemary, what you're doing is really trend setting. You are really. Breaking tradition to say homes need to be accessible all the time. They need to be visible all the time. We need to change the way construction is looked at, maybe through laws, maybe through incentives. Builders just need to do some changes in their plans to make at least homes visitable so you can get into them from one entrance and that you can use at least a half a bathroom. But go beyond that and at least have the curbless shower and the kitchen that might work out more to the benefit of the family that lives there for long term. We never know when we're gonna have a temporary disability or a permanent disability. And if we age long enough, we will have some limitations in our vision, in our hearing, and our mobility and our strength and our thought process. So build that in so that the house will accommodate us. I love

Janet: 29:59

that you said that. Tell us about the work that you do now as a public speaker. I know you spent a lot of time traveling. You were telling me about one of your most recent trips to Barcelona, Spain. And it's just amazing the work that you're doing, but tell us how you're helping what you just said, how you're helping that become

Rosemarie Rossetti: 30:24

a reality for other people. Well, I'm an advocate for universal design, not only in the residential, including homes and apartments and short-term rentals and condos but also let's go to the commercial site in terms of hotels and motels, and also the workplaces in terms of corporations and associations that. Workplaces that need to be accommodating. And then the meetings and events for accommodating people with disabilities at meetings and events, and then communities, cities, counties, and working with lots of different cities and counties to help them to make them. Accessible as a visitor or as someone who lives in that community, and to promote that on their marketing so that people with disabilities know they're welcomed at these facilities. So I've really expanded the business beyond just designing of residential to go to the built environment, whether it be residential or commercial. As well as now the meetings industry. So I will help a family that is working on a design and Mark and I will look at the floor plan with them and their design team. We'll work with architects and builders that might have a development. And it doesn't matter where it is it can be a. A, a project in Texas, and we don't even have to go to Texas. We can have the plans delivered virtually as a electronic plan or send them as a printed plan and give them our impression of how to make that more usable, more safe, more accessible with some universal design twist that they may not have thought. So I can consult, I can speak virtually as well as in person, and I'll be going to Montreal in June for the first time speaking in Canada in many years. Last time I was there was 2019, so I'll be leading a tour of a hotel for meeting professionals showing the accessibility of that hotel for the meeting that's happening. And as you mentioned, I was in Barcelona speaking in October to the Universal Design Architecture class. Fortunately, the 33 students all spoke English, so it went well with the students having the ability to see our home from the slides that I brought with me. That sounds wonderful.

Janet: 33:12

Rosemary, do you find that building professionals such as architects, developers, general contractors, are they becoming more open to the idea of including universal design in their construction or in the design of their

Rosemarie Rossetti: 33:34

spaces or building. From those that I work with, of course they're coming to me as an expert in universal and accessible design. So I can't speak for the entire population, but as we look at the National Association of Home Builders, they have courses in the Certified Aging in Place specialist. We look at the National Association of the Remodeling Industry. They have courses in universal design and they have for a long time. So the courses have been out there, the certifications for the certified living in place professional, the CLIP certification. So there's a lot of people that embrace it. And on the other side, there's probably a lot of the professionals that have not yet embraced. Yes.

Janet: 34:29

And how do you think that this industry will evolve with the growing number of baby boomers that we have from here to

Rosemarie Rossetti: 34:44

2035? Well, that baby boomer population is definitely a driving force in the market in terms of as they take cruise ships, as I was just recently on a cruise ship and saw how accessible the newest ship in the world, the biggest ship in the world from Royal Caribbean the Wonder of the Seas as I took an European cruise out of Barcelona, I was just blown away by how accessible. The cabins were, and all of the facilities, I think they understand there's a huge market for these baby boomers. So they need to be building accessibility in these cruise ships and the hotels and the restaurants and the design of the city itself. So it is a marketing. Bonanza to market to this senior population. They have money to spend. They're living longer. They're living healthy. They have time. They're retired. They want to possibly downsize. Or to remodel what they have. They want quality of life. They realize staying at home is what they'd like to do best. They would like to resist going to independent or assisted living as long as possible. So if they could invest, let's say,$50,000 in an existing home to really spruce. The bathroom and kitchen, making sure the entrance of the house was accessible, maybe widening a couple doors or putting some swing away hinges in to make that more accessible for them and having first floor living as a po a possibility versus spending maybe 12,000 a month. On an assisted living facility. I mean, think in terms of the benefit and the return on that investment, spending 50,000 upfront versus spending it for four months and then having that money in the real estate as equity when that home is sold. Doesn't that make more sense?

Janet: 36:59

And when you consider that you're going to make your. More beautiful. It's going to be updated. It's going to be more comfortable. Why wouldn't you do that? You could finally have the bathroom of your dreams or the kitchen of your

Rosemarie Rossetti: 37:18

dreams,

Janet: 37:20

and at the same time, this dream kitchen or dream bathroom will allow you to not only stay in your home, but also be more independent, which will save you money on having to pay a caregiver or having to have family members come over and help you. So it's a win-win. Any way you look

Rosemarie Rossetti: 37:44

at it. Yes, and it's safety. Also, it, I can't overstress safety, how many times people are falling at home. Mostly in the bathroom. So we're putting safety at first in terms of all the grab bars strategically located. We're also looking at lighting, we're looking at level flooring. We're looking at. Possibility of those little tripping hazards that might have been there. For example, throw rugs, get them out of there, and looking at your level flooring and making sure that you have slip resistant flooring in that bathroom with great lighting to guide you as you're leaving the bedroom at night to go into the bathroom so that you orient yourself. That's what's important is keeping yourself from falling. One fall leads to another, and one fall could lead to a bad break. A hip replacement, a knee replacement, an arm replacement, a shoulder replacement, and if you look at the data, one fall leads to another and then another fall could lead to the end of life.

Janet: 39:00

Yes, and I want to say this again. I've said it in several episodes that people fall for four main reasons. One of them is having an unsafe home. Number two is taking medications incorrectly. Three is generalized weakness. From lack of exercise or stability. And number four is vision problems. So if we can tackle one of these problems, which is the home safety, and that's where you spend most of the time. Then I think you can really decrease your fall risk and increase the likelihood that you're going to be able to stay in your home for not only as long as possible, but as long as you want to stay

Rosemarie Rossetti: 39:55

in your home. Yes, you're right. And we will age, and it's gradual sometimes, and we have to acknowledge that. So getting our eyes tested on a regular basis. Changing our glasses and wearing our glasses and looking at lighting and looking at glare. As we age, we need a lot more light to be safe in terms of our kitchen and cutting surfaces, and we need things that aren't gonna glare back at us as we look at our countertops or the flooring so that we have some matte finishes and not glare and possibly some window treatment if the sun is coming through too bright. And then changing the L, the lamping in terms of l e d lights are so much easier. So we never have to change a light bulb for the rest of our lives. Never have to get on a ladder and change anything. So while you're at it, change the lighting to be brighter. And a better quality. Put in some motion lighting so that when you go in a room, the light is on automatically. When you go out of the room, the light goes off automatically and then put in some night lights that will be on when you need them. They're just automatic. I love that you

Janet: 41:17

mentioned all of those features because. They're small things. Some of those features will not cost you more than a hundred dollars to install in your home, but yet will make a huge difference in terms of safety.

Rosemarie Rossetti: 41:33

For

Janet: 41:33

example, the l e d lighting, having l e d strip lighting at your stairs or underneath your cabinets in your kitchen and in your bathroom. Feature that I love that you have in your home, and of course this is much more expensive, is having the automated window treatments that really helps cut down on glare, and it also increases safety

Rosemarie Rossetti: 42:01

and security. And it's also energy efficient, you can throw that in, is we have some window treatment that if with a push of a button, the window treatment rolls down. And during the cold weather, that is keeping that room a lot warmer because we're not having that cold going through the glass into the house. It really is a thermal shield.

Janet: 42:31

Rosemary for someone who is thinking about making changes in their home, what? But they don't know exactly what to do or where to start or what they even need. What

Rosemarie Rossetti: 42:47

is your recommendation for them? Well, depending if they already have a disability or they've got a diagnosis of something that possibly is going to impact them the occupational therapist would be my first choice is bringing that occupational therapist. Into the home, and there are many of them that are specialists in home modification. So seek out someone who's an occupational therapist specializing in home modifications. They will better understand the diagnosis. So if you've got some Let's say you've got a possibility that sometime you might have Parkinson's or a possibility that dementia might be creeping into your life or you're recovering from a hip surgery and now you need a little bit more help around the house. Get that occupational therapist in there right away so that you can have some contractors in that know how to install grab bars, taking maybe the towel bars off also, and using a towel bar that can serve double duty as a grab bar. Why not just replace the old towel bars with the new towel bar that's rated as a grab bar so that when you grab. That your weight will not pull it down also. So I, there's so many easy things. You might be using a walker right now and finding that the door is just not wide enough to get through, and you're always having to jockey that walker through that door, go to the hardware store and get some swing away hinging. And all you have to do is take the hinges off the old door and put the new ones on, and you can get up to five more inches of clearance. So that now you can go into that room without any encumbrance of that door being in the way. What a$50 investment to now have access to the bedroom or the bathroom that did not have the door. That was a 36 inch wide door. It may have been a 32 or a 28 inch door, and now these hinges give you that extra space. How about

Janet: 45:13

for someone without urgent needs, someone who's aging well, very independent, functional, what would you say to them? Why is universal design an aging in place, design an important consideration in your remodel or

Rosemarie Rossetti: 45:35

possibly. But if you're building a new. Well, it's always goes to safety. That's the first one. Looking at it as an insurance policy so that you will have more peace of mind and more ability to catch yourself on these falls to have better lighting. Furniture in the right place so that you're not crawling over things in a haphazard manner. Taking a look at where your electric outlets are and your electric cords and saying, you know, these are all tripping hazards. Why am I doing this? Taking a look at your stairway and saying, why do I keep piling stuff on here? Taking a look at your handrails. Are they loose? Fixing things that you might have just kind of overlooked, and realizing how easy it is to go to your simple hardware store and buy a few more night lights and plug them in. That'll come on automatically from Dawn to. Yeah, I couldn't agree

Janet: 46:40

with you more. Thank you so much for being with us today, Rosemary. I've so much enjoyed our conversation and I'm so grateful that you invited me to your home. It was so

Rosemarie Rossetti: 46:54

beautiful

Janet: 46:55

and

Rosemarie Rossetti: 46:56

it was just

Janet: 46:57

like being at a theme. I felt like a child again, but it was a universal design theme park and seeing all of the things that are possible in every single room in the house, not one corner was

Rosemarie Rossetti: 47:16

overlooked,

Janet: 47:18

and rarely do we ever get a chance to

Rosemarie Rossetti: 47:22

actually see it.

Janet: 47:24

We read about it, but we don't actually see it. And are able to see how someone functions in that environment. So it was such a treat, and I encourage all of our listeners to visit the website. It's. U D L l.com. I am going to include it in the show notes and I will also include Rosemary's books. She's written several books. One, the one that I have is the Universal Design Toolkit, and it tells you all about the house, the entire process. And how she made her and Mark made everything happen. And then Rosemary, tell us about your other book that you wrote

Rosemarie Rossetti: 48:20

about. Well, the other book is more motivational, take Back Your Life. And that is the Life Lessons I Learned after the injury, looking at a two year period of time starting on the bike trail when I got hit, and then going back to the bike trail and the anniversary two years later. So Take Back Your Life is available at Amazon. The Universal Design Toolkit is also at Amazon printed. Or if you prefer as a P D F that comes with 16 videos, you can go to universal design toolkit.com and I'll give everyone a free chapter. If you go to the main website, u dll.com. There is a free chapter, which is a list of the universal design features in our home room by room, so download that and then take the virtual tour. All of your listeners can go to my home virtually. Google did a great job. So that you can just go and see our home virtually through the virtual tour and then look at the free chapter as you're going through. In each room you'll see these universal design features. You can also play a game while you're on the virtual tour. Our little cat Kiko was loose as the photo bomber, so you'll see this little orange cat throughout the virtual tour. In addition, there's a video tour that Mark leads, so feel free, I know you can't come to Columbus and see our home, but anyone in the world can see our home virtually or visually through the video tour. Oh, well that's

Janet: 50:00

wonderful. Thank you so much, Rosemary. I really appreciate you being

50:05

on

Rosemarie Rossetti: 50:05

my show. Well, thank you for your invitation. It's been a pleasure. Thanks, Janet.