Renovating With Safety

I regularly drive around various sections of town to see what different homeowners are up to in sprucing up their homes. Sprucing up can mean so many things to different people, from planting flowers or shrubs to add a bit of color, or painting and re-siding, or even stuccoing the outside. Today, for your information, stucco comes in a wonderful assortment of colors and shades.

Sometimes, it’s just a series of windows or a whole house of replacement windows which can change the entire look of the house as well as creating an energy saving feature that saves heaps of money both in heating in the winter as well as air-conditioning in the summer months.

Then there are all the masonry repairs and replacement renovations, such as new entry porches or stoops, replacement brick or cement or stone staircases, driveways, walkways, or even patios. Sometimes, if a backyard is large enough, it’s not unusual to see a full basketball court all ready for a spontaneous game. Usually when I see a basketball court, I realize this household has kids who are very into playing basketball and the court will get lots of use!

All of these renovations I just mentioned are commonly seen throughout town, but recently something a little different caught my eye and I thought I would discuss it in the interest of safety and accident prevention.

Some people are taking the opportunity, while replacing a walkway, to create a slant similar to a partial ramp, figuring that by utilizing this technique, they are limiting the number of steps potentially needed to go up to their homes. The slant effectively creates a gradual ramp, and by utilizing this technique, it does in fact save on the number of steps needed to reach the front door.

Although this idea by itself is a great one, some homeowners are busy with the walkway design of the slant and are creating stone facing design along the sides of the walkway rather than filling the depression with dirt to meet the walkway. This design may be lovely to look at, but the homeowner has not taken into consideration that when there is a drop on either side of the walkway, even a drop of several inches, he has invited the possibility of someone accidentally tripping or stepping over the side of the walkway and rather than meeting with soil graded to meet the edge of the walkway, their foot ends up in that space of several inches, similar to when someone falls into a ditch.

Since there are no bannisters or railings, there is no guide where the walkway ends, and a drop is present on both sides, so with one misstep, a person can be injured.

During the day, it may be easier to watch where you’re going, but at night when it’s dark, or when it rains or particularly when it snows and the walkway as well as the drop on both sides are hidden, this is an accident waiting to happen.

Now, I also must mention that I noticed that this design is not only being utilized in creating new walkways, is there also in new driveway designs, with the stone facings alongside the new driveway with that same several inches drop on the sides, and the grass or soil only beginning at the bottom of that drop.

The same situation holds true with a driveway design such as this where someone can inadvertently misstep and fall over the edge of this driveway into the drop and be injured, but in addition, if the homeowner or someone else driving their car into the driveway misses the edge of the driveway, the wheel of the car also falls into that drop on the side of the driveway and not only may the driver and the passengers be injured, the car might be damaged as well.

Sometimes, just looking pretty is not enough. When you start designing and landscaping your property, please keep in mind various safety issues as well. If a pretty design also becomes a safety hazard, it defeats the objective! n

Anessa Cohen lives in Cedarhurst and is a Licensed Real Estate Broker (Anessa V Cohen Realty) with over 20 years of experience offering residential, commercial and management real estate services. You are invited to visit her website at WWW.AVCREALTY.COM. She can be reached at 516-569-5007. Readers are encouraged to send any questions or comments by email to [email protected].