This year I was fortunate enough to escape part of the Canadian winter. Being a quadriplegic, there are a lot of things to consider before making the temporary move to another place. My list of needs in a potential destination is long: minimum 30-inch-wide doors with no sill, no stairs, a comfortable bed I can get into that won’t cause me to sweat or develop pressure sores, a bathroom — with a shower — that can accommodate my commode, a fenced-in backyard for our two dogs and, if possible, an RV pad for our friends to stay on-site. Finding a property that checks every box is very difficult, but with some ingenuity and a few tinkers and hacks, it’s totally doable. Here’s how we did it.

A Home Away from Home

I’m grateful and fortunate that my darling wife, Terry, has a black belt in property research. My attention span is about as long as … wait, what’s that shiny thing … you get the idea. I looked at three properties and decided we really didn’t need a winter getaway.

“Found one!” she said.

“Found what?” I said.

“A Vrbo at Lake Havasu!” she said.

I love Arizona’s Lake Havasu. There’s a lot of accessible fishing piers, nice parks and trails, and good weather. Terry back-and-forthed several emails with the owner and soon was satisfied that we could make the house work for us. I was all in.

Our friend Super Dave came along on the trip to help out and share the driving. We pulled out from home in Alberta, Canada, at 8 a.m., and, with Terry and Dave trading off at the wheel, arrived at Lake Havasu the next day at noon. I had my headrest on my chair and leaned back to nap when needed, but stayed awake to enjoy the scenery as much as possible. We pulled a 10-foot utility trailer full of immense quantities of gotta-haves behind our Toyota minivan. When we arrived, we got right at it, making the place wheelchair accessible without doing any permanent damage.

The first step was getting into the house. The front and back doors were plenty wide but had lips that needed ramps. In anticipation of steps, we’d brought several pieces of plywood and a 10-foot aluminum ramp. Now we were in. The priority then was setting up the bedroom. The bedroom doorway looked narrow and required a tight 90-degree turn. Terry suggested removing the door. Problem solved.

The queen-size bed looked fine — maybe a tad crowded with our Great Dane dogpiling in, but it would work. To make sure I’d be comfortable, we brought a ROHO mattress overlay. But when we placed it down, we didn’t like that my side of the bed was 3 inches higher than Terry’s. We purchased a queen-size memory foam and cut out a hole to fit the ROHO, making both sides of the bed an equal height. I like to sleep in a reclined position, so we brought a memory-foam bed-wedge-pillow set. It lets me relax as I’m used to, and I was as comfy as in our recliner-bed at home. To transfer me to bed, we brought along an Arjo EasyTrack Free Standing portable rail system. It’s easy to carry and set up and we found it online for a good price. Dave and Terry had it ready in minutes.

Next up was the bathroom. My commode chair fit fine, but the shower looked tough to manage. The existing enclosure had an 8-inch lip and there wasn’t a lot of room for a ramp. Fortunately, our friends Joe and Sue showed up to camp on-site. Joe happens to be great at carpentry and fabrication, knows my needs, and was happy to problem-solve the tub/shower. “I’ll build an insert so your commode wheels don’t drop down into the shower pan,” said Joe. “It’d be hard to get you back out.”

Soon you could hear saws sawing, drills drilling and hammers hammering. Then all was quiet; the masterpiece was unveiled. Joe had built a plywood top above the shower pan that my commode chair could roll onto. He’d drilled the plywood full of holes to let the water run through. He carried the insert to the shower and, voila, it fit the shower pan perfectly — of course.

Joe took a few measurements, committed them to memory and jumped in his truck to head to the lumber yard for the needed materials. A while later he returned, unloaded some wood and strolled over to his motorhome. As he started opening storage compartments and pulling out woodworking tools, I was enthralled. I’m not sure how much storage a motorhome has, but Joe takes this number, multiplies it by two and somehow fits it all in.

The only thing keeping me from a refreshing shower was an 8-inch rise from the floor to the lip of the shower enclosure. Terry measured, and it looked like a 6-foot ramp would fit in the bathroom. We’d noticed on our mandatory trip to Harbor Freight, the handyman’s toy store, that they had folding aluminum ramps. There were various lengths, all wide enough for my commode. I wanted the longest one possible, since pulling a couple of hundred pounds of lard up a steep ramp on little caster-wheels isn’t easy. We purchased a 6-foot ramp and headed back to the house. It fit perfectly and wasn’t too steep to pull me into the shower.

The last room to tackle was the kitchen. To get close to the kitchen table and have a place to set a laptop, we brought a wooden tray, also fabricated by Joe, and used plastic clamps to temporarily fasten it to the table.

The whole setup worked perfectly. We now had accessible entryways front and back, and a surprisingly comfortable accessible bathroom and bedroom. In a few hours Dave, Terry and Joe transformed a regular inaccessible house into a temporary, fully accessible one.