Adding a first-floor bedroom and bathroom for aging in place

When the stairs get hard, a bedroom and a full bathroom on the first floor let a person live on one level and stay in their house. There are three ways to get there. You can turn a room you already have, like a den or dining room, into a bedroom. You can add a first-floor bathroom or enlarge the powder room. Or you can build an addition. The house decides most of it: what rooms you can spare, where the plumbing can run, and how long the person plans to stay.

You'll usually see it coming

A parent starts sleeping in the recliner downstairs. The laundry piles up because the basement stairs are too much. Somebody takes the stairs one at a time, or only once a day. Or the surgeon says no stairs for six weeks after a new hip or knee.

In a lot of two-story houses in Saratoga County, the Victorians in Saratoga Springs and the colonials in Clifton Park alike, every bedroom and the only full bath are upstairs. That's the problem in one sentence.

A stair lift works for some people. It doesn't help with a walker or a wheelchair waiting at the top, though, and some people find getting on and off the seat hard. Moving daily life to one floor takes the stair out of the picture. Either way, put a second handrail on the stair. It helps whatever you decide.

Turn a room you have into a bedroom

This is the simplest route. Dens, home offices, formal dining rooms and family rooms are the usual candidates. Before you move a bed in, the room needs four things.

It needs privacy. That means a door and sometimes new walls. Glass French doors look great on an office, but a bedroom usually wants solid doors or frosted glass.

It needs egress. A bedroom has to have a window big enough to climb out of in a fire, plus smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. The New York State Residential Code sets the sizes. Check with your town or city building department before you count on an existing window.

It needs somewhere to put clothes. If there's no room to frame a closet, a built-in wardrobe along one wall does the job.

And it needs heat, light and outlets that suit a bedroom: a switch by the door, and low lighting along the route to the bathroom for the trip at two in the morning.

A conversion doesn't add any space. The family gives up the den or the dining room. Plenty of households decide that's an easy trade.

The bathroom is the hard half

A bedroom downstairs with no full bath nearby still sends someone up the stairs every day. Lots of houses have a first-floor powder room, and sometimes it can grow into a full bath by taking space from a closet, a hall, a mudroom or a pantry.

For someone planning to age in place, that bathroom should have a walk-in or curbless shower, grab bars screwed into blocking, a comfort-height toilet, a sink with knee space or a shallow vanity, and enough floor to turn a walker or a wheelchair around. A 60-inch turning circle is the general guidance for a wheelchair. We go further into the shower in tub to walk-in shower conversion, and into bars in grab bars that look good.

Plumbing is what limits you. A new bathroom needs to tie into a drain and a vent. Put it near the kitchen, the laundry or the powder room you already have, or over a basement where someone can get at the pipes, and it gets a lot more practical. On a slab, new drains mean sawing and breaking out concrete.

Build an addition

When there's no room to spare, an addition puts a bedroom suite on the first floor. It's the biggest of the three. You're looking at design, a foundation, framing, a roof, siding, heat and plumbing, and a building permit. In the Saratoga Springs historic districts, exterior changes like this can also need Design Review Commission approval.

The building season around here is short. Plan an addition over the winter and you can start digging once the ground allows.

The upside is that you get to build accessibility in from day one. Wide doors, a path from the driveway with no steps, a curbless shower, a level threshold out to a small patio. A suite like that can also appeal to buyers later who are planning for the same stage of life.

The rest of the first floor has to work too

A bedroom suite only helps if the person can get into the house and use the rooms around it. Look at the entry first. You need a step-free or low-step way in, and our post on wheelchair ramp vs steps covers the options.

Then the doorways along the route. Aim for 32 inches clear or wider; widening doorways for a wheelchair or walker explains what's involved. Moving the washer and dryer up from the basement is a common part of these projects. In the kitchen, put everyday dishes and food between hip and shoulder height, and swap knob faucets for levers.

Have an occupational therapist look at the plans with the person's abilities in mind. They'll catch things a drawing won't show you.

What drives the cost

We don't publish prices, and the three options are far apart. A room conversion comes down to walls, doors, egress windows and electrical. A first-floor bathroom comes down mostly to how far it is from the plumbing you have and what's under the floor. An addition comes down to its size, the foundation, how the roof ties in, and the finishes. When you're comparing bids on the bigger jobs, our guide to what a remodeling estimate should include helps you line them up.

Frequently asked questions

Will turning the dining room into a bedroom hurt resale?

Not necessarily. Plenty of buyers want a first-floor bedroom and full bath. Keep the change reversible: doors that could come back off, and nothing that wrecks the room's original trim or character.

How long does a first-floor bathroom take?

Converting space you already have into a bathroom takes weeks. A full addition takes months from design through permit and construction, and the season has a say in when it can start.

Should we just get a stair lift?

For some people a stair lift is the quicker fix, and that's fine. It won't help with a walker or wheelchair upstairs, though. An occupational therapist can help you weigh it against moving to one floor.

Safe at Home, our aging-in-place service for Saratoga County, is still in preparation. It'll cover assessments, accessible bathrooms and first-floor living, and you can get on the waiting list from the Safe at Home page. In the meantime, our bathroom work shows the rooms we build now.