Warwickshire

Design engineer Mark, wife Penny and their three young children live in a seemingly idyllic old farmhouse in Warwickshire. But there’s a big problem with the house. Mark is paralysed from the waist down following a motorcycle accident and his home has no accessibility built in. Getting around the house in his wheelchair, using the kitchen and bathroom and putting the kids to bed upstairs ranges from difficult to impossible – and it’s only going to get worse as he gets older. But indomitable Mark, a former Paralympic swimmer, who’s spent the last 30 years developing sports cars and racing bikes, has a radical solution. Along with Penny, they will build a dual-purpose family and wheelchair friendly

home on the site of a redundant barn next door.

 

Their cutting-edge new barn will have accessibility baked into its very fabric - with a drive-in basement, a passenger lift, accessible kitchen and bathroom, step-free flooring and extra wide retractable sliding doors. But building such a unique accessible home over three floors for just six hundred thousand pounds proves a huge challenge. With quotes astronomic, design changes forced upon them and inexperienced Penny made to oversee the project, getting the precision needed to make the house work for both Mark and the family comes under serious threat. Then when personal circumstances suddenly change too, the strain on Mark and Penny becomes almost unbearable.