Heading down the long, narrow and deceptive straight staircase into Eva’s basement, a sign hangs on the wall that reads, “Too much of a good thing is beautiful.” That’s certainly Eva’s sentiment now that she can access her basement with ease and comfort, thanks to her newly installed straight stair lift.

Accessing her basement is an absolute necessity. It’s where she runs her arts & crafts business, does laundry, and stores an extra supply of food. Two trips up and down the stairs wears her down, and that’s not good because she has other matters to attend to.  The average person travel up and down the stairs 8 times a day.

Her and her husband waited to install a stairlift but after a few falls, breaking 3 toes and injuring her knee, they decided to move forward.

Unfortunately, for them, like many others, the decision to install a stair lift often comes after an incident happens. Planning for the future sounds wonderful on paper, but you never know the problems that planning can prevent and most people decide to wait until it is a necessity.

In basement staircases, one of the other challenges for a stair lift or hand rail is that the door to the rest of the house is at the top of the stairs and there is very little room.  In these pictures, you can see where we were able to use adjustable feet that support the stair lift rail and make it higher at the top of the stairs without forcing us to remove the door to the basement. The taller rail makes the chair taller which makes it easier to get out of the chair at the top of the stairs. As you can see the chair for the lift fits inside the door when it is closed and everyone is happy. This is one of the little things that can be done to make the stair lift much more personal.

Eva now feels it safe and to ascend and descend her straight staircase on her new stair lift.

Can you decipher what the Japanese Kanji characters painted on her staircase mean? Email us if you can figure it out.