We were very excited to finally receive Namine’s new wheelchair, but none more than Namine herself. It’s a fantastic upgrade to her old wheelchair: it’s larger in frame, has larger wheels — both in terms of radius and width, making for easier navigation over grass and gravel — and better tread. It’s larger wheel radius means Namine can wheel herself faster than ever; its increased frame size makes it easier for her to climb into the car by herself.
Unfortunately, the wheelchair’s larger size has also had a negative impact inside the apartment. It’s both taller and wider; too wide, in fact, to get through the hallway from the living room to the kitchen.
The hallway itself isn’t too wide, but in the hallway is also where we keep our crates of water. Even with the crates there, there was still room enough for Namine to get through in her wheelchair. Well, that’s no longer true.
It was a simple enough matter to move the crates, of course. I mention it here because it’s another example of how we’re flying by the seat of our pants; we often don’t know what we’ll need to do to accommodate Namine until we encounter something that tells us, Nope, this won’t work. Let’s try something else.
My aunt had built a kitchen counter perfect for Namine’s wheelchair height, so she could sit comfortably and help us cook.
Since the new wheelchair is taller, the counter needed to be raised as well. Since it was a custom counter, replacing the banquet legs with newer, taller ones was a fairly straightforward task. Once that was done, Namine was able to comfortably sit at her kitchen counter once again.
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