Everyone who comes to your kitchen table will sound like they know what they are doing. Confidence is free. Here are six questions that separate a company that does accessibility work from one that does bathrooms and mentions accessibility.
Ask all six of whoever you are considering, including us.
1. Where exactly will the grab bars be anchored?
The answer you want: solid blocking behind the tile, or a rated hollow-wall fastener where the wall is not being opened.
Walk away from: drywall anchors, or toggle bolts described vaguely as heavy duty.
A grab bar exists for one moment: a person going down sideways with their full weight on it. A bar in a drywall anchor is decoration. It will come off the wall taking a fist-sized piece of drywall with it, on the day it was needed.
2. Is the mixing valve thermostatic, and where will it sit?
The answer you want: thermostatic, temperature-limited, and positioned so it can be reached from outside the enclosure.
Reaching in to start the water before stepping in is not a luxury. It means she is never standing in the shower waiting for cold water to run warm. And if she has reduced sensation in her hands or feet, a temperature stop is the difference between a shower and a burn she does not feel until afterwards.
3. How many days will she be without the bathroom?
The answer you want: a number, not a range, and an answer to what happens if they run over.
“About two to three weeks” means nobody has sequenced the work. A contractor who has planned the job can tell you which day the tile goes on.
The follow-up question
“What happens if you run past that date?” If the answer is an apology, the date was never a commitment. Ours is written into the contract, and if we run past it we pay for hotel and meals until the bathroom is finished.
4. What is the slip rating of the shower floor?
The answer you want: DCOF 0.42 or higher, wet.
Someone who does this work every week knows that number without looking it up. It is the published benchmark for wet floors. Anyone who answers “it is a non-slip tile” is telling you what the box said.
Large-format tile is the wrong choice on a shower floor regardless of rating, because there is not enough grout line to give any grip. Small format, or a sealed one-piece base with a certified rating and no grout to scrub at all.
5. Will the door still be too narrow when you are finished?
The answer you want: a measurement, and a price if it needs changing.
This is the question nobody asks. A walker needs about 32 inches of clear width and plenty of older bathrooms have a 24 inch door. A beautiful accessible shower behind a door she cannot get a walker through is not accessible.
6. Is the house pre-1990, and are you testing for asbestos?
The answer you want: yes, we sample it and pay a lab, before demolition.
Ontario Regulation 278/05 puts the obligation on the owner to determine whether asbestos is present before demolition. Floor tile, mastic and joint compound from before 1990 are the usual suspects.
Most contractors never mention it. If nobody raises it, the liability quietly becomes yours, and you find out on day two when a crew stops work.
Two more things worth noticing
Whether they ask how many bathrooms you have. A contractor who has not asked has thought about their schedule, not your week.
Whether they ever say no. Some situations are better served by a one-day safety package than a full conversion, and some by a different company entirely. Anyone whose recommendation is always their most expensive option is selling, not advising.
Which kind of company do you actually need?
Five different kinds of company do this work and they do genuinely different jobs. Three of them are a better choice than us for certain situations, and we say which.