Building Accessible Homes That Feel Like Home with Griffin Simony of Shift Projects

In this episode of Forever Home for Our Kids with Disabilities, Valerie welcomes Griffin Simony, co-founder of Shift Projects (formerly Shift Accessibility Contractors). Griffin shares how a desire for more meaningful work and his grandparents’ experience with aging and accessibility challenges inspired him to create a company focused on helping people live more independently and comfortably in their homes.

Together, Valerie and Griffin explore the difference between accessible design and universal design, and why accessibility should be considered from the very beginning of any home renovation or new build. Griffin explains how thoughtful design can create spaces that are not only functional but also beautiful, empowering, and customized to the unique needs of each individual.

The conversation covers:

• How Griffin’s grandparents inspired the creation of Shift Projects
• The difference between accessible design and universal design
• Why accessibility renovations should be both functional and aesthetically pleasing
• Key accessibility features every homeowner should consider
• The importance of curb less showers, wider doorways, and thoughtful floor plans
• Common challenges families face when searching for accessible homes
• Future-proofing a home for changing mobility needs
• Typical costs associated with accessible bathroom renovations, lifts, and elevators
• The role occupational therapists play in successful accessibility projects
• How Shift Projects reduces renovation stress through planning, communication, and project management
• Tips for families considering accessibility renovations

One of the most powerful takeaways from this episode is that accessibility does not have to look institutional. Griffin shares how accessible features can be seamlessly integrated into beautiful, welcoming spaces that people are proud to call home.

Whether you're planning for a child with a disability, supporting an aging parent, or simply thinking ahead for your own future, this episode offers practical insights into creating homes that support independence, dignity, and quality of life.

Key Takeaways

✔ Accessibility and beauty can coexist in home design
✔ Universal design benefits everyone, not just people with disabilities
✔ Curb less showers and wider doorways are among the most valuable accessibility features
✔ Future-proofing a home can save significant costs later
✔ Collaboration with occupational therapists leads to better long-term outcomes
✔ Choosing the right contractor can greatly reduce renovation stress

Connect with Griffin Simony

•  Shift Accessibility: https://shiftaccessibility.ca
•  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shiftprojects/

Connect with Valerie

info@foreverhomeconsulting.ca

Music Acknowledgement: Audio Coffee - Denys Kyshchuk

Editor: Scott Arbeau

Link for book: The S.H.I.N.E. Principle: The special needs mom's path to strength, hope and happiness by Valerie Arbeau

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0CW18ZXGX (Canada)

https://a.co/d/03hFdZI4 (United States)

Follow the Forever Home for Our Kids with Disabilities podcast for more conversations that help families create secure, meaningful futures for their loved ones with disabilities.

Remember: Live with Intention - Embrace the Journey 🎒

Learn more about your host at:
https://coachingwithvalerieanne.com/

Transcript

Hello and welcome to today's episode. I so love that you're here. Thank you so much for being a part of this community. It means a lot. Today's guest is Griffin Simony and he's a 31-year-old co-founder within the home remodelling and building industry. He's the co-founder of Shift Projects, originally founded as Shift Accessibility Contractors Limited, which began as a home renovation company focused on accessibility with a mission to improve people's lives through thoughtful design.

Today, Shift Projects brings those same values to a broader audience, redefining the construction industry through universal design principles and a premium design-led approach. Please welcome Griffin. So glad you're here, Griffin.

[01:00:58:07 - 01:01:00:01]

Griffin

 Thank you. Thank you very much for having me.

[01:01:00:01 - 01:01:09:14]

Valerie

 You're so welcome. So today I'm going to ask you, like I asked most of my guests, please share with us how you came into the world of people with disabilities.

[01:01:11:01 - 01:01:57:17]

Griffin

 Yeah, for sure. So we founded our organization about seven years ago now. Originally, I actually grew up on the East Coast, moved out here for work as an engineer. And my father is originally from the area. So my grandparents were actually going through a bit of transition in their lives when I moved out here from living in the home they'd been in for 40, 50 years into an assisted living facility. And I was working as an engineer. And similarly, my business partner was also working in large commercial construction and great careers, great teams that we worked with. But when we looked at the work we were doing, just lacked a little bit of the meaning and purpose that we were pursuing and wanted to have in our work.

[01:01:58:19 - 01:02:24:00]

Griffin

 And while experiencing the transition of my grandparents, one, working with them, they were so thankful and supportive of everything that we did with them. And I had a moment of thinking, if I could work with people like this every day who just show their appreciation in this way, it would be selfishly incredible for me. And then as they moved into this assisted living facility, where my grandmother was at this point using a walker, occasionally a wheelchair, my grandfather wasted no time and showing me all the things that were still not accessible for them in this facility or residence where they're paying a lot of money to be there, but a lot of the accessibility features is a relatively standard condo unit. And my aunt, who's an occupational therapist at the time said, you know, there's no one who's really looking at or taking care of residential spaces from an accessibility perspective, especially from a holistic point of view outside of just grab bar installs or a single lift or a ramp.

[01:02:59:08 - 01:03:14:10]

Griffin

 And within a few months of that my business partner, Josh, actually came to me talking about potentially starting an accessible renovation company. And it was a bit of a long aligning of the stars. And we talked with our wives and our wives said, why not? And so here we are, you know, seven, eight years later.

[01:03:14:10 - 01:03:34:24]

Valerie

 Wow. Amazing. I love it. I love that you want to have a job where there's purpose, and you feel like you're giving and people are grateful for what it is you're sharing with them. So I'm just so grateful that you've been able to do this. And like you said, everything aligned so that you're able to make it happen. And isn't it amazing to have a fulfilling job?

[01:03:36:06 - 01:04:04:10]

Griffin

 Oh, it's I, I think about it quite often. I think it's easy to get caught up in the day to day and you know, challenges or whatever you're working on. But actually a few months ago, I was sitting and thinking, you know, I haven't worried about purpose or meaning in my work in seven or eight years. And I think that's something that a lot of people think about and grapple with. And I'm extremely thankful for the work that we get to do and the people we get to work with.

[01:04:04:10 - 01:04:14:15]

Valerie

 Yeah, yeah. All right. So down to business, we hear the term accessible design and the term universal design. So is there a difference between the two?

[01:04:15:21 - 01:06:08:19]

Griffin

 I think accessible and universal, the biggest difference that I would put between it is that universal is designed in a way where it's kind oftrying to hit and cater to as many people as possible within that design. So universal design, you'll hear a lot about in commercial spaces, or you should hear a lot about in commercial spaces where you don't necessarily know who's coming through the door, what their specific needs are going to be. And how can you design and set up that space to, from almost a utilitarian point of view, provide value to as many people as possible. I think when we start looking at the residential space and the one that we work in, I would call it more custom accessible design, because accessibility can look different to everyone. And when we're looking at a lot of these residential projects, there's definitely universal aspects and things that are going to benefit everyone - a wider doorway is not going to hurt anybody, and it's going to benefit all. Zero threshold showers, another something I would call more of a universal design feature. But once you're looking at, say grab bars, for example, when we go into a lot of our projects, we're looking very specific to that individual, what's going to benefit them the most. Some of them don't need grab bars, some of them need many, some of them only need one. And I think that accessibility side is a little bit more subjective. And that's where in the residential space, we've really found some comfort is in the custom accessibility. And so what does this specific individual need and require to live independently and be empowered in their space? And all of those things and how we set up for them definitely have universal aspects such as continuous backing everywhere so that in the future, anybody could put a grab bar anywhere.

[01:06:10:00 - 01:06:27:01]

Griffin

 But that is probably what I would describe as the biggest differentiator between those two terms from my perspective, at least. And in the residential space, there's not a ton of this work happening. So sometimes I just take the liberty of saying, oh, this is how I view it in the space because it's not actually super standardized.

[01:06:27:01 - 01:06:55:15]

Valerie

 Okay, awesome. Well, thank you so much for that. Because yeah, the two terms get banded around, it's like, okay, which one should I be saying? Which, just like within my world, is it special needs? Is it persons with disabilities? So I feel sometimes terms can be a little more personalized and what works for them. So thank you for clarifying the two there. 

So tell me, because I'm curious, and I'm sure the rest of our audience are as well, what's the backstory of why you started Shift?

[01:06:57:13 - 01:07:03:04]

Griffin

 Yeah, so as I mentioned I think a big part of it was just really looking for work with meaning and purpose.

And when we started, we very much thought we just want to be really good at what we saw as conventional accessibility universal design. So we thought it was going to be a lot of ramps, a lot of grab bars, maybe some bathroom renovations, those sorts of things. But what we quickly learned is since we weren't from the industry, once we got started with it, we started connecting with a lot of people. And there's already organizations out there that can do a lot of these quicker, smaller projects for you. But what didn't exist at the time was someone who would come in and look at how can we make the space work for you, make it functional, make it accessible, but also make it empowering and be a space that you're proud to have in your home. Because when we look at the wide range of different clients we have, you have seniors looking to age in place, they don't want to take the home that they've lived in for 30, 40 years, or even that they've recently moved into. But all of a sudden start having these things that remind them, “Oh, my needs are changing.”

[01:08:17:08 - 01:08:41:18]

Griffin

 And just for them, it can be a very personal and emotional experience to have that. And so for them, it's how do we modify the home where we can discreetly and well integratedly, if that's a word, incorporate accessibility so that you still feel independent, energized, and like you can do anything. And that was something that wasn't really out there.

So that space for us often looks like retrofitting elevators into homes in a way that looks like a custom or sometimes luxury item in the home rather than, oh, this is a piece of accessibility equipment.

Another group of individuals we work a lot with is young families. So whether that's individuals who have children with disabilities, or if it's individuals who have had a recent diagnosis, or they've just been dealing with a certain challenge for some time, and now it's getting to the point where they have to start making changes to their home.

[01:09:17:21 - 01:10:59:22]

Griffin

 Maybe social media has something to do with this, but homes are becoming like a very big part of people's lives. I think probably COVID had a part to do with that. But even just showcasing, like you do a bathroom renovation, you want it to be something beautiful, it's where you start and end your day, you want it to be empowering and make you feel good. And so going in there, if there's accessibility needs and whitewashing everything and putting in chrome grab bars with white walls, white tile, and giving this very institutionalized look is not something that anybody is going for. And so we work really hard with partnering with designers and trade partners, as well as, you know, everything we've learned internally, to just provide spaces that it's basically a custom renovation that happens to be accessible for you, or a custom renovation where it's an extra level of custom, because we've actually thought about how are you integrating and functioning within the space. And I think that perspective on projects that we've brought and for our organization, as well as for Josh and I, is the thing that we didn't expect when we came into this, but really drives us forward. Because there's the change you make in someone's life when you make your home accessible. And then there's the additional one when you do it in a way that they're really proud of and excited about, because it doesn't remind them of the challenges that they're having or the doctor appointments they have to go to. It's just a space that they feel good, empowered and proud of to share with friends and family. And I think that's the meaning behind the business that only came once we got into the industry and truly understood what difference we can make.

[01:11:00:24 - 01:11:09:08]

Valerie

 Wow. That's amazing. As you were talking, I was just thinking, yes, we certainly look at rooms on the term of functionality as opposed to how does this space make me feel? I hadn't really thought about that before. So I know when I look at my daughter's bathroom, the one that's in the wheelchair total care, she has this gorgeous bathroom. So we bought the home, it was already kitted out for someone with a disability. So the previous owner, the lady of the house had MS. They designed this gorgeous bathroom. It's huge with a skylight and a roll in zero threshold shower. And they even thought about the heights of the cupboards and some of the cupboards don't have faces so that you can store things and make it easily accessible. But I don't think disability when I go in there, just think you are so lucky with this gorgeous bathroom.

[01:11:57:09 - 01:12:53:06]

Griffin

 Yeah. Yeah. Well  this is something I've started talking about recently, because over the past year or so I was just contemplating the values that we bring to projects, those sorts of things. And one thing I thought about is, I don't know when it was, maybe five, 10 years ago, the mattress you buy became a really big deal. And people would say, you spend a third of your life in this, like asleep, why wouldn't you invest in your sleep? And I mean, it's definitely more than a third of your life you spend in your home. And a lot of people look at your home as this, just like you mentioned, a functional space of, does it do this? Or they look at it as a financial investment of, “Oh, I only want to renovate if I'm going to get the value out.” But not many people are thinking, or shouldn't say not many, but people don't always think about what's just the overall value that this is bringing to my life beyond finance and function.

And then the other joke I make is that people are out there buying like $100,000 cars, and everybody knows when you buy a car, you're not getting your money back. But then again, they look at renos in a different perspective when it's something, yeah, that can completely change your life. Every time I've made my home easier to live in, or in a way that adds an amenity, or some sort of additional function to my life, I'm just always regretting that I hadn't done it sooner, honestly.

[01:13:21:05 - 01:13:59:04]

Valerie

 Yes. I hear you. I hear you. Yes. We are in process of making the decision to actually do something about our bathroom. I've mentioned this on the podcast before. So my daughter has this gorgeous, massive bathroom that lots of room and space and just, it feels so luxurious. And then here I am in my home with my husband and our youngest child, and my husband and I have this ensuite that is so tiny. I cannot appreciate, I can't get my head around the fact that why would you build such a massive master suite and put a tiny bathroom in it? Hello. So bearing in mind, my house was built in 1994, but it's just people get with the program.

So yes, we're making the decision to do something about our bathroom.

I'll be calling you. 

[01:14:14:13 - 01:14:15:08]

Griffin

 Yeah, sounds great. Happy to help.

[01:14:17:14 - 01:14:32:06]

Valerie

 All right. So tell us about universal design and how it can be incorporated into every home. I love the fact that you say you try to put it in discreetly. So tell us a little bit more about that and why should this be the case?

[01:14:33:19 - 01:15:43:04]

Griffin

 Yeah. So something that we've learned and one of the reasons, as we've grown and gotten a bit more of a foothold, say like within Calgary itself in the renovation space. One of the reasons why we ended up branching out was because we were starting to see, for one, we were getting a lot more referrals from past clients and designers in to work that maybe wasn't necessarily for someone who had direct accessibility needs at the time. But what we started learning was that a lot of the design aspects and just perspective that we have on projects, was being valued by everyone that we were working with. And it was an interesting, almost backdoor way of making some more accessible homes without people really thinking about that when they're engaging us for the project. So if you go on to MLS or Realtor or work with a real estate agent and you say that you're looking for an accessible home, right now, I believe it's, if you just have a walk-in shower, it gets classified as accessible. So there's a huge amount of inventory out there that is being considered accessible, but isn't truly.

[01:15:44:13 - 01:16:14:09]

Griffin

 And the more homes we can put curb less showers into, wider doorways, more functional storage, wider hallways, these sorts of things, the better off the whole industry is going to be, because somebody in a wheelchair is buying a home, whether it's a tub or whether it's a four-inch step to get in, you have to replace the shower to make it accessible. So if we can just start at curb less, it can save a lot of time and effort.

And so when we're looking at homes, those are a lot of the main things that we're pushing for is honestly, doorways and showers are the two biggest ones because they're the most challenging to change and cumbersome to change afterward. And they also just provide value to everybody. Myself, I have curb less showers in my home. I recently, as you know, had some injuries that put me on crutches. And even after crutches, I still can't walk into a shower or anything. So I'm mostly scooching in there. And so having it curb less, and then once I can walk, I'm still reducing trip and slip hazards by not having a curb there.

[01:16:58:23 - 01:17:09:04]

Griffin

 So the shower is always going to be one of the main ones we look at. It's also becoming more, again, considered of a high-end finish. And a more high design aspect is to have a curb less shower because it makes the bathroom feel bigger. Tiled can be continuous across the floor into the shower. So it doesn't break up the space as much. And again, it's just more comfortable.

After that, it's really, paths of travel within the home can be really big. So ensuring that your hallways are wide enough, ensuring that your doorways are wide enough. When you're in the kitchen, having enough space between the island and the adjacent cabinetry. These sort of things can start making a really big difference because we do at times, we'll go in with someone who's looking to buy a home and make it accessible. And we're assessing the home with them to say, "Okay, these are the challenges that you're going to face.

[01:17:56:06 - 01:18:43:04]

Griffin

 These are like approximate costs that you're going to experience if you're looking to make it accessible." And the two things that we always look at and are always the biggest drivers are, well, I guess there's three. Number one is bathroom. Is the bathroom accessible now? If not, is it big enough to make accessible without doing anything crazy? So then when you look on design side, that's one of the first things we look at to plan for that. Second thing is paths of travel. How wide are the doorways? How wide are the hallways? How wide are turning radiuses? Because sometimes people will have a 30 or 32 inch door and they say, "Oh, well, I can fit through those." But they're having to turn 90 degrees to get through it. And all of a sudden the swing of their chair or their walker or what have you doesn't really fit super well.

[01:18:44:19 - 01:19:19:22]

Griffin

 And then the third thing is multi-level travel. So our bedroom's on the second floor and now we have to get to the second floor with an elevator or a lift. Or are we looking at bungalows where we're really just concerned about getting from the say garage into the house? Those would be the three areas. Those are the three most common ones that we see as challenges on homes that haven't been made accessible. So those are usually the three areas that we focus the most on in design of accessible homes because the remaining items, those are the items that it's really hard to backtrack on or it's costly to.

[01:19:20:23 - 01:19:28:07]

Griffin

 Once you get beyond that, then you start looking at cabinetry design. So more drawers than cupboards, which again, my lower cupboards in my house, I have no idea what's at the back of them. I don't think anybody does. So drawers are always better. All of these things are in your pantry. So it's funny because as you start talking about these things, it's like, "Oh, well, this is just better for everybody." Everyone would appreciate this. And so there's definitely a lot of those little detail things, but I'd say the biggest cost factors and the biggest design decisions are the bathroom, paths to travel with throughout the home, and then multi-level travel. Do you need an elevator or a lift to get between floors? That sort of thing.

[01:20:02:15 - 01:20:20:21]

Valerie

 Yeah. Thank you. All right. So I'm hearing the retrofit can be pricey. So can you give us, I know every situation will be unique, but can you give us kind of like a ballpark of what it might look like to redesign a bathroom or what it might look like to put in an elevator?

[01:20:22:03 - 01:20:57:06]

Griffin

 Yeah. So from a cost perspective, it is all definitely very custom. I'd probably say most bathrooms, if you're looking to make them accessible and do it well, they're typically going to be anywhere between, I'd say like 30 to $70,000 for like a full bathroom. I know there's organizations out there, I should say, that will do closer to the 30 mark. We're typically more like the 50 to 70 probably, but that's because we do full tile throughout the bathroom. Like you can roll marbles into the shower, that sort of thing.

And then just highly durable custom millwork as well. We really want to build something that's going to last. Unfortunately, I have been called into people whose bathrooms, you know, the tiles are starting to come up and those sorts of things or quality standards weren't really met. On the elevator side, if you're in a bungalow and you have an attached garage, then getting from the garage into the house, you're probably closer to, that's going to be between $10,000 to $12,000 maybe. That includes the lift. The lift is a huge part of that. It's like $8,500 to $9,000 for the lift. And then you're doing your landings. Elevators, super dependent on what you're doing. I think elevators themselves are somewhere around $40,000. But the thing people don't think about is that the contractual work usually ranges anywhere from 50 to a hundred depending on what we're looking at. Yeah. And beyond that too, I should always say one of the things with renovations is there's never really, or even just residential projects, there's no cap on costs because I mean, we've done bathrooms that are the same price as the plumbing fixtures for another bathroom. It's totally dependent on what the client picks and what the design is. But very rough numbers, of course, every single one's custom.

[01:22:21:19 - 01:22:28:16]

Valerie

 Yes. Thank you. And I appreciate, just to kind of give people a ballpark and just for the audience, that's Canadian dollars that we're talking about today.

Yeah. So it's a lot.

Yeah. And so I love that you actually go with families to look at houses and sort of give them pointers on what they need to be looking at and roughly what it's going to cost them to make those changes. Because at the end of the day, we want to make sure that something is going to work for them now, but we also need to be looking into the future, right? So is it still going to be workable for the person with a disability or the person with mobility challenges or whatever the case may be? So we just need to make sure if we're going to do it, we're going to do it once, we're going to do it right.

Griffin

Yeah.

[01:23:09:09 - 01:23:12:07]

Valerie

 I love that that's part of the service that you offer.

[01:23:13:13 - 01:23:16:15]

Griffin

 Yeah. And I think something that's really important to note as well with, both with the realtor kind of future planning of homes, that one is relatively straightforward, I think. But even once you're getting into the renovations, a huge value add is having an occupational therapist. Like most people are working with an occupational therapist at the time.

 So including them just for light design review and helping with locating where grab bars should be mounted, those sorts of things are really beneficial because we also don't want to pretend that we're a healthcare professional and that we know exactly what your needs are going to be in 10 years. We definitely have experience and have worked with people of varying needs, but having that healthcare professional as a part of the project to provide not only that input, but it also just provides confidence, I think, to the client as well as to us that the work that we're doing is going to have that long-term benefit. Because that's really, we're trying to be in the business of it's a kind of one and done space you're super happy with, durability and quality is there and all of the future proofing that we have to do is there as well, because we've entered into too many homes where someone built a walk-in shower three or four years ago because at that point they were maybe using a walker and they thought that was going to work, but now they're in a wheelchair and now we've got to pull the whole thing out to put in something curb less. We're trying to provide that long-term value on every aspect of the project.

[01:24:48:18 - 01:24:54:24]

Valerie

 So I love what your company does. I love the values and what it stands for.

So renovations of any magnitude are stressful, right?

Having lived through some basement renovations with my husband, my husband is very handy. I'm so blessed, but living through those renovations is extremely stressful.

So how does your company reduce the stress for your customers?

[01:25:16:01 - 01:25:19:10]

Griffin

 I think we do it in quite a few different ways. To start off, I could kind of run through what our process is, I guess. So my business partner and I both come from very heavy project management backgrounds. So we're very, you know, everything in writing, everything planned out, realistic expectations and have a good idea of what it's going to take to do the project and are invested in figuring that out so that again, proper expectations are set up front. The way that we run our business and run our process is we actually have two parts to our renovations. The first part is called pre-construction. So in that pre-construction time, we do all of our site assessment, any testing, any engineering, apply for the building permit, basically plan out the whole project on paper and account for all the different risks and try to identify everything that we can about the project upfront before demolition is started or people are on site.

[01:26:22:22 - 01:27:06:14]

Griffin

 After that pre-construction process, which also would include design, those sorts of items, we basically have a full package of, okay, this is exactly what the project's going to look like. And we also try to say, if there are risks, these are the risks that we see. Basically give all the information to the client so that they can make a decision for themselves. The other thing that we provide them at that point, because we have all this information, is that we provide a fixed price construction contract. So we do fix the price on the renovation. The reason for that is because our primary value as an organization is ownership. And what we want to do is own and be accountable to your project. It shouldn't be on the homeowner to worry about, did something get ordered?

[01:27:07:14 - 01:27:46:12]

Griffin

 Are we going to do what we say we're going to do? Are we going to hit schedule? Are we going to hit budget? Did we estimate this properly? We want to take on all that ownership because again, and it's something that's served us really well. And I think it's a great industry to work in is we understood from day one that the people we're working with have other stresses in their life. And in all transparency, some of these people are the best people to work with because they know what real stress and challenge is. And so when things come up on the project, it's not all of a sudden, the world's ending. It's like, okay, how are we going to address this? We address it, move on.

[01:27:47:21 - 01:28:23:00]

Griffin

 And so we just try to give as much information upfront and then take as much accountability as we can on the project and build that trust so that the homeowner is just like, we just know that Shift is going to take care of it. And we've told them, these are the unknowns. This might be what comes up. And then they're prepared for that as well. It's not like, oh no, we've got everything covered. And then you demo and we're like, oh, by the way, now there's all this extra stuff. We're trying to set, because I think the thing I say is the best way to end the project on the right foot is to start on the right one. And I think that's by setting expectations and taking accountability of the project.

[01:28:24:15 - 01:28:25:04]

Griffin

 Beyond that, we have a project management software. Nothing changes without everybody signing off on it. We don't do any, there's nothing that impacts client costs without them approving it first. Like we don't back charge for a change order or anything. We always make sure that everybody's approved everything before moving forward, share the schedule with the client. They have an assigned project manager. So one person that they have to communicate with, they don't have to worry about communicating with a bunch of other people. And I think honestly, the last thing I would say is when we started, again, having pulled a lot of the inspiration for the organization, myself from my grandparents, and then Josh from his family, we don't want to hire or bring anyone in that we wouldn't have in the homes of our family, our grandparents, our kids. And so the subcontractors that we work with as well as our employees internally, we've just curated them in a way where we now have clients say that they're actually going to miss having certain trades in their home, rather than saying, “Oh my gosh, I cannot wait until these guys are out of here.” So yeah, and honestly, Josh and I like coming to work every day and we like having a good team. And we didn't get in business to be stressed out and fighting with people. We got into it to have a meaningful impact and enjoy the work we do. So that only happens if the client's happy as well.

[01:29:52:19 - 01:30:00:06]

Valerie

 Right, right. Love it. 

I suspect you get a lot of word-of-mouth referrals. That's amazing! I just love that you've taken that into consideration as part of your company's values. What is the client receiving? How are we leaving them? What feeling are we leaving them with after we finish the project? So I just really appreciate that you take that into consideration and just the fact that you would not have anybody going into my home that you wouldn't have in your home as a subcontractor. So that gives me peace of mind. And as you rightly mentioned, parents of children with disabilities have enough on their place. Any parent has enough on their place. I think raising children in today's society is not an easy feat. That is for sure. I certainly recognize that. So I do appreciate all that you do, Griffin. So thank you so much for sharing with us today. 

Before we conclude, though, I just want to know what tips you have for our families who may be contemplating any renovations to improve accessibility in their homes.

[01:31:01:21 - 01:31:17:06]

Griffin

 I think the main thing is getting in touch with someone who has experience within the space. Because a lot can be done and it does take a little bit of extra work to do that, or at least to learn about how to do it.

The experience that I would share is when we got into the business, we would hear a lot of stories about occupational therapists who made a recommendation for a curb less shower. The client took it, ran with it, and the OT came back after and the contractor had put in a curb shower. So I think my biggest thing would just be to ensure that when you're engaging with someone for accessibility-related work, that they are someone who maybe it doesn't even have to be that they have a ton of experience in it, but just really ensuring that they understand and that the requirements that you have are well laid out and making sure, again, just making sure the client understand or the contractor understands that because these are pretty large intrusive projects.

[01:32:07:17 - 01:32:57:22]

Griffin

 And then beyond that is really just dialling in on the experience that the contractor talks about you having. I think that renovations oftentimes get commoditized. They're looked at like, what's the best price? That's going to be the way that I want to go. And as we talked about, renovations are already stressful and raising kids is already stressful and you already have so much stress in your life. I think the value of going with one that has a really well laid out process plan and that ultimately you just get along really well with is going to give you the most return on investment across your whole life with respect to the project. And again, just looking at it from a little bit of an aesthetic lens, like all these things, there's so many products out there now. You can build beautiful accessible spaces. I think that everybody deserves that and should at least pursue that for their own home because the environment that you're in, the space that you're in, where you start and end your day, again, just has so much value across your life rather than just the functional. So I would just encourage people when they're looking at renovating their homes for an accessibility perspective to do that. And I'm always happy to be a resource even if it's not in our city. Relatively familiar with different contractors, at least across Canada to help people get started on the right foot.

[01:33:33:13 - 01:33:52:03]

Valerie

 Oh, love that. Love that. Because I was thinking of some other families that I've worked with and continuing to work with that to live in a different city from where we are here in Calgary. So great to hear that you have fingers in other provinces. 

Awesome. All right. So where can our audience go to find out more about you, Griffin?

[01:34:00:15 - 01:34:21:24]

Griffin

 So at the moment, we've got our websites, we actually have two websites. So on the accessibility related front, we have shiftaccessibility.ca. That's where we have all of that work. We are transitioning over to shift projects. At some point, there's a website for that, but the shift accessibility one's a lot more built out. And then on Instagram, shift projects, all one word. That's where we post a lot about our team, a lot about our trade partners, as well as a lot about the work we're doing to make homes more accessible. So those are probably the two best spots. And then on LinkedIn, I'm on LinkedIn. 

[01:34:37:22 - 01:34:50:16]

Valerie

 All right. Well, thank you so much, Griffin. It's been such a pleasure to get to know you a little bit more and understand what it is that you're doing and the impact that you're making in the world of people with disabilities. Thank you so much for all that you do.

[01:34:50:16 - 01:34:54:12]

Griffin

 Oh, well, thank you for all you do and for having me on today. It's been awesome.

[01:34:55:15 - 01:35:00:03]

Valerie

 Thank you. All right, audience, remember to Live with Intention - Embrace the Journey.