The physical installation is usually quick — often just a few days for a shaftless model, and up to a couple of weeks for a full traditional elevator. The longer part of the timeline is everything around it: the in-home assessment, design, permitting, and any structural prep. For most New England families, planning and approvals […]
Yes. A shaftless home elevator can be installed in an existing house without a traditional hoistway or a separate machine room. Instead of a framed shaft, it travels on one or two guide rails mounted near a wall — which means far less construction than most families expect. For many New England homes, especially older […]
Make the parts of your home you use every day reachable without stairs, bending, or risky transfers — ideally before your surgery date. In practice, that means setting up a comfortable space on the main floor, securing the bathroom with grab bars and a shower seat, clearing trip hazards, and arranging safe access to your […]
The difference comes down to the shape of your stairs. A straight stairlift runs along a single, unbroken flight and can often be installed in a matter of hours. A curved stairlift is custom-built to follow a staircase that bends, turns, or pauses at a landing. If your stairs run straight from bottom to top, […]
A well-maintained stairlift typically lasts between 10 and 15 years, and many units remain fully functional well beyond that with regular servicing. The biggest factors are usage frequency, the quality of the original installation, and whether the lift receives scheduled maintenance — not just repairs when something goes wrong. At Home Health Smith, which has […]
Multi-generational households — where grandparents, adult children, and sometimes a third generation share a single home — are one of the fastest-growing household configurations in the United States, and New England is no exception. Making that arrangement work long-term requires thinking about the home at two levels simultaneously: what does the oldest generation need today, […]
Making a home safe for a parent with dementia requires two layers of planning: addressing physical fall risks and mobility barriers, and addressing the cognitive confusion that makes an otherwise safe home feel disorienting or dangerous. At Home Health Smith, Linda Bohmbach — a Certified Dementia Practitioner (CDP) serving families throughout Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and […]
A residential elevator in New England typically costs between $35,000 and $80,000 installed, depending on the elevator type, the number of floors served, and the structural work your home requires. At Home Health Smith — which has been installing residential elevators in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut for over 45 years — most two-stop installations […]
You’ve probably been running quiet calculations for a while now. Noticing little things. The way your mom holds the wall on the stairs. The bruise on your dad’s hand from a stumble he mentioned — then quickly changed the subject. The bathroom that you look at with new eyes every time you visit and think: […]
When a staircase becomes a barrier, there’s more than one way to remove it. Two of the most practical solutions are stairlifts and vertical platform lifts (VPLs) — and while both solve the problem of getting from one level to another, they do it in completely different ways and suit completely different situations. If you’re […]
