Living Through a Renovation Without Losing Your Mind

Staying in the house saves rent and keeps you close to the job. It also means living with dust, noise and tradespeople for months. Here is how to make it work, and how to know when it will not.

When staying is realistic

• Ground floor extensions where the existing house stays sealed
• Single-room renovations, one bathroom or kitchen at a time
• External work such as decks, cladding or roofing
• Any job where you keep a working kitchen and at least one bathroom

When you should plan to move out

• Second storey additions during the roof-off and framing stage
• Whole-house renovations where every wet area is offline at once
• Any job involving licensed asbestos removal
• Floor sanding and sealing, for a few days at minimum
• Where someone in the house has a respiratory condition

Be honest about this at the planning stage. Deciding to move out at week five, in a hurry, costs more than arranging it in advance.

Making it liveable

Set up a temporary kitchen early. A bench, a kettle, a microwave, a fridge and a sink somewhere else in the house. A laundry tub works. Do this before the kitchen goes, not after.

Agree the dust barrier before demolition. Proper plastic sheeting with zips, taped to floor and ceiling, not a sheet draped over a doorway. Ask for it specifically.

Keep one bathroom sacred. If you have two, only one gets renovated at a time. If you have one, budget for a portable option or plan to be elsewhere.

Pack away what you value. Dust penetrates everything. Anything precious, soft furnishings and clothing you are not using should be boxed and stored away from the works.

Agree working hours in writing. Standard is 7am to 5pm weekdays and 8am to 1pm Saturdays. Know what you have agreed to.

The rhythm of a job

Weeks 1 to 2, demolition. The loudest and dustiest stage. Also the most visibly dramatic, which is oddly encouraging.

Weeks 3 to 6, structure. Framing, roof, windows. Progress is very visible and morale is high.

Weeks 7 to 10, services and lining. Plumbing, electrical, insulation, plasterboard. Progress looks slow because most of it disappears inside walls. This is where people get discouraged.

Weeks 11 onward, fit-out. Tiling, joinery, painting, fixtures. Progress becomes visible again.

The middle stage is the hard one. Nothing seems to change for a fortnight because the work is inside the walls. It is not stalled, it is just invisible.

Living with trades

Most tradespeople are considerate, but a house full of them is still a house full of strangers. Agree where they park, where they eat, which toilet they use, and how they get in when you are out.

A key safe or a lock box is simpler than being home at 7am every day.

Communication

Ask for a weekly update: what happened, what is next, anything that has changed. A short conversation each Friday prevents most disputes.

If something looks wrong, say so immediately. Fixing a misplaced window before the cladding goes on is trivial. Fixing it afterwards is not.

The honest summary

Staying put is achievable on most jobs if the house is properly sealed and you keep a kitchen and bathroom. It is genuinely miserable when the whole house is a site at once.

We stage jobs specifically to keep people living in their homes for as long as possible, and we will tell you honestly when we think you should be somewhere else.