Home lift that fits in the larder!
JANE Seppings, 80, has lived in her beloved 17thcentury Suffolk home for 52 years. So when arthritis in both knees made the stairs more challenging, she was in no hurry to move.
Instead, she has installed a domestic lift in the kitchen larder to help her get upstairs.
‘I can’t imagine living anywhere else,’ she says. ‘It’s my perfect house and I love it.’
Jane (pictured) adds: ‘The stairs were becoming more difficult because of my arthritis but I certainly had no intention of downsizing to a bungalow.’
She opted instead to adapt the four-bedroom farmhouse with a lift, which requires no hydraulics or supporting walls, travels on self-supporting rails and plugs into a normal 13amp power socket.
‘I wasn’t confident about getting on and off a stairlift which sits on the stairwell, so thought why not go for one of these futuristic home lifts instead?
‘It’s a very clever idea and incredibly simple as it plugs straight into the wall. I didn’t want it on display though, so decided to conceal it in the larder.
‘It meant I had to move all the food out, but the larder is 3ft wide and the lift could be hidden behind the door. You wouldn’t even know it was there.
‘It is now much easier to move around my home. The lift travels up to a spare room which I use as a utility room for clothes, so it is also extremely useful for carrying up baskets of washing.’
Mrs Seppings moved into the farm in 1965, along with her husband who worked on the farm and at one point kept pigs and geese. The couple also ran a successful dried flower business, while also working tirelessly on the garden, which they sometimes opened for charity in the summer.
She adds: ‘There is a lifetime of fond memories for me here, which is why I have never wanted to move.’