I have been watching HGTV for a couple years now almost every day and I do not recall seeing any shows where they have help remodel a house for anyone that is disabled. If you think about it a good number of their viewers are people that are disabled and at home during the day watching these shows all day long. I am not saying the disabled should get special treatment, but it would be nice to see a family on this show get help that really needs the help because they are disabled once in awhile too.

You have a good point! What few of the shows I watch go pretty fast through their fixes, and that may be too fast a pace for fixes for disabled people.

But realize that this is a forum for Q/A and the show producers probably do not watch it. Address your comments to another area of the website.

Thank you very much Mr. Fleming. I have went over their website many of times and I cannot seem to find anywhere that you can write them about these types of things. When I found the forums, I thought I might have finally found a spot that someone might actually see my feeling on this. I even emailed Vern at one time and asked him what type of flooring to use for my electric wheelchair in my home, and I never got an email back, but yet the link said that is what it was for was to ask him that type of questions. So my husband just used the type that the store told him would work, and now my chair has pulled all of the floor pieces apart and it has not even been down 6 months. Maybe if they did shows more often showing us things like this it would help us when we was trying to redo our own homes to make them handicap accessible. Where we are not having to redo the work two or three times or mortgage our home to hire someone to do the work for us. That is my point in all of this.

This Old House did a show on adapting a house for the owners mother, that was during the Bob Vila era so it was a long time ago. Steve was the host for 10 years and he's been gone for several now. Hometime has done several shows on this as well. I don't see much of Hometime any more, they are only on the digital version of our PBS station that I rarely surf to, and I believe they are on some broadcast channel at some inconvenient time like Sunday's at 9am.

It is certainly a topic that could be covered by HGTV, DIY or their competitor TLC. Other than running Ed McMann's commercial for the walk in bathtub, Life Alert and Scooter Store commercials they have pretty much ignored this segment of the population.

Kasami, I didn't realize you were asking specific questions for your own use. Please do that and we will help if we can. I have done some of this sort of work for customers.

What type of flooring did you use that did not work? My experience is that electric wheelchairs are pretty gentle on floors.

Yes, the segment of population needing to accommodate wheelchairs, for example, is larger than you think.

Or, they could do a show on how to do a makeover for your aging parents' home so they can live independently for as long as possible. And that would apply to most viewers.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: DIY Guy,

Sadly, several years ago HGTV began aiming all of its shows towards the 20-somethings who are all 'hip and happening'. They no longer care about its viewers who are in the older age brackets and possibly have disabilities. (Although, there are people with disabilities in all age brackets. Most people don't stop to realize this unless it happens to them.) This has been a common complaint throughout the boards but no one has listened and I don't expect them to start.

hometime just did a make over for a family, the husband was anticipating wheel chair use. they converted a den and half bath to master suite complete with handicap bath. in the past they've done ramps, and kitchens.

in the past if you visited hometime site they used to sell videos of all the major projects.

We put down laminent flooring. For some reason using my electric wheelchair on these floors, it is pulling the pieces apart. Not like completely apart, but enough that it is noticable by me and it is very upsetting that we spent the time and money to do this work, and it does not look like I thought it would. And now I am afraid that I am going to totally ruin the floors by using my chair on them if I keep using it on the floors but I need to.

I think it is very sad that the television stations do not listen to their viewers more often. But I think we all know that if they did more people would be getting help that actually needed it. It just makes me cringe when I see them destroy cabinets and bathroom things or anything else that can be saved and used elsewhere. They have to have some place they could donate them items to. We have one about an hour from us. Yea they are not open when is convientent for homeowners a lot of time, but they got one, and if someone really needed something they could find a way to go up and see if that place has what they need. And when it comes to people with disabilities, there is always a ton of hurdles to climb and getting help without paying a fortune is just another one of them hurdles. It costs us extra money because we have to have things done in a special way. Some day maybe it will change.

The first place I thought of for those donations (since I live in South Louisiana) was Habitat for Humanity. They will sell building materials, finishings, & fixtures at the Habitat ReStore and use the money to help build new homes for families who qualify.

Habitat for Humanity - NOLA

quote:

The Habitat ReStore resells your new or used items (as well as corporate donations) for 30% to 90% off retail prices. All profits from the Habitat ReStore are used to help Habitat build more houses in the New Orleans area.

There MUST be Habitat ReStores all over the country right? There should be plenty of Habitat agencies that could accept those donations because you're right, it is a dam* shame for all of those materials to go to waste.