(tranquil music)
- It's not something that you take in very easily.
Overnight you go from able bodied,
capable of doing most things, getting on with your life,
to lying on a bed.
Unable to do a lot.
(clock ticking)
I had a bit of a headache,
decided to go out for a jog to clear my head,
and whilst I was about 10 or 15 minutes in,
a tree fell and hit me on the head,
and the impact of that broke my back and dislocated my spine
so it compressed my spinal cord, which left me paraplegic,
so I don't feel anything from the waist down.
Life was just normal, you know, busy.
Fit, healthy, two adult children, suddenly...
I don't talk about it very often.
I've always tried to be as independent as possible.
But there are times when you've just got to ask for help.
I love my house, but after my accident, and with the,
you know, my life changing, I had so many frustrating things
about using the kitchen particularly.
And I needed help to love my house again.
I started to look on Houzz for interior designers,
and they sent me a number of matches of people I could use.
So thanks to Houzz really I found Clare.
Looking at the projects that were on there,
they all looked really impressive,
some of them were really exciting,
and the reviews were all positive,
so I made the decision to contact her.
- Sue approached me and messaged me
about her current situation, so I wanted to find out
a little bit more about her, about her disability,
and about the things she was expecting
to get from the project.
Within an hour of meeting her,
and it was actually quite a tearful meeting, we knew that,
you know, we'd have a good relationship
and there was something I could do.
- I didn't want it to scream disabled kitchen.
I know I'm disabled.
I do accept that, but I didn't want it to scream disability.
But clearly I needed it to be accessible.
I wanted it to be a warm, inviting space.
I had other people living in the house, and I wanted them
to feel that they still were living in their home,
and I felt with Clare it would be a design-led kitchen.
- As an interior designer you can make spaces look fabulous
with lots of tricks, but with Sue it was all about
making sure the function was there,
then I addressed how I'd actually make that look good.
When I first came into the house it felt very dark,
very cramped and quite dated.
The existing kitchen and diner was completely impractical.
It was in two rooms with a very narrow doorway in between,
no flow for her.
So to create the new space we had to knock down
two existing walls and also take out the back of the house
and put in sliding doors, and then install the kitchen,
then redecorate everywhere.
- When we pinned down the design for the kitchen,
I knew it was gonna be what I wanted it to be.
Clare had helped me to feel really excited about it,
because of her creativity.
- When you're designing a kitchen,
you have certain size cupboards
that fit into certain size holes,
fridge freezers are 600 wide, fridges are 600 wide,
but the heights of these things needed to alter throughout.
- The cupboards on the wall were completely out of my reach.
There are baskets in there that I can actually pull down,
so I can get to the contents
of the wall cupboards very easily.
- Normally on a work surface it's 900 high.
Sue needed everything at 700 high,
so I placed everything 800 high.
To Sue, she could still use it,
but it wasn't too low for everybody else,
and she felt that was the right thing to do.
- I love the fact that I can sit at my breakfast bar
and my visitors can sit at the right height for them,
and I'm at the right height for me.
But I don't feel that I'm separate from them,
I'm part of the conversation that's going on.
- Now, not only can Sue not walk, but she's paraplegic
so she has no feeling, and actually that makes
a huge difference when it comes to function
and how things work safely in a kitchen.
- I don't know if I have splashed myself with something,
that's boiling water for instance,
you don't know if you've been hit until after,
it's when you when you find a blister or something.
I love the fact that when I open my oven door
it slips underneath the oven, so it's completely
out of my way, so it's taken away the inability
to get hot things out of an oven now, I can do that.
- Houzz made it really easy for us to collaborate
on the project, it's very visual.
So you can create an ideabook,
I composed and edit the ideas
and I'll post a picture, Sue, I've just seen this
in somebody's house, do you like it?
- Clare would save images to the ideabook,
so you can have a look, and then you can respond
according to whether you feel
it's something you like or not.
It's been a great way to share ideas.
- I often think about the project,
I learned a lot during the project.
By turning it around we made it look like
an ordinary kitchen that anybody could use,
but actually Sue could use better than anybody.
And I can just see the change in her,
and I think for me that tells me
that we did what we set out to do.
- The things that people do and take for granted
every day in the kitchen, I can now do
without worrying too much about it.
Family, friends, they all want to come and visit.
When they come in, they say, oh Sue,
it's just you, which is great.
- Fact that people have come in and said it's really her,
I think has surprised her too.
Because I don't think after the accident
she had much time to really think about
what her personality is, you know,
it was such a traumatic event for her,
to then start to recognize herself again
in her own home I think was really good for her.
- I'm independent.
I can cook, and I can bake again.
So all those practical things, I've got those back.
And that's what the end product is, I couldn't be happier.