Living in a Remodel - It's Not for Sissies!

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Living in your house while you’re renovating is hard. It’s messy. It’s noisy. It’s dusty.

And you’re always there. In the middle of it.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is…

You’re always there. In the middle of it.

Because Mr. Redoux and I are doing this project ourselves, we think that living in it during the process helps us get more done because we’re always here, ready to work on it.

It’s convenient.

And inconvenient.

At the same time.

But we’ve developed a pretty good strategy for living in unfinished houses since we built our first home back in 1977.

This house isn’t new construction like all our other homes were but we’re approaching it in pretty much the same way.

Before we moved in we had all the plumbing and electrical upgraded and the attic insulation replaced. And we had all the ceilings scraped. All that was done by licensed contractors.

Then we remodeled the guest room. And my office. We did that ourselves.

Then we moved in.

Now we have the house to ourselves. No contractors constantly in the house.

We’ll be renovating the rest of the house one room at a time.

So here’s the first thing that we do that helps for surviving life in a construction zone:

CREATE A SANCTUARY SPACE

This can be a bedroom, a family room or any space that’s completely finished. Trim. Paint. Flooring. All of it. Done.

It needs to be a construction-free zone.

And it needs to have a door so you can close it off from the rest of the house. To keep noise and dust to a minimum.

You want the room to be finished because you’re not going to want to move all your furniture out of it to finish it later. And then move it all back in again.

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Our Sanctuary Space in every house we’ve built has always been the guest room. Bedrooms are one of the quickest and easiest spaces to complete. No plumbing. No cabinets. No appliances. So for us it makes sense to start and finish the guest room before any other room.

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We have all the comforts we could possibly want in this room. There’s a TV. And a comfortable bed with nice bedding. And good lighting. And candles. And plants. And it’s nicely decorated. So it’s a place where I love to spend time. This is where I go to get away from all the chaos in the rest of the house.

The guest room opens into my office and that’s also part of our finished space. So I’m able to work without being too affected by what’s going on in the rest of the house.

See how to make a desk out of filing cabinets HERE

If you’re going to live in your house while you remodel, try to think about and plan ahead to completely finish a room at the beginning that you’ll be able to move into. Make sure you’ll have everything you need for it to be a haven for you.

So when the rest of your house is One. Big. Messy. Unfinished. Project. with holes in the walls and exposed concrete floors and trim boards stacked up in the dining room…