Things To Do Before Renovating Your Home

A renovation, and especially a big one, is a very disruptive process. The build scope will determine if you can stay throughout the duration of the renovation project. You’ll have tradesmen coming in and out of your living space, lots of dust and dirt and whole areas that unusable for a significant duration of time. Planning ahead to be best prepared and even speed this process up is crucial to minimising the impact of a kitchen or bathroom reno.

Pack Up and Prepare Rooms

Any room that might be affected by the renovation process should be at least minimised. A hallway for access for example should be pared down to almost nothing, pack rugs, furnishings and decor away so they will be unaffected by dirt or even accidents. A room that is actually being renovated like a bathroom for example, should only have its essentials. If you have space then just pack the bathroom items in sealable boxes and bags and leave them in the room.

Use Storage Canisters and Crates

For stuff that you will need to access regularly but have nowhere to put (like towels or laundry for example), you can move these to a bedroom if you have space, but if you don’t then plastic storage boxes are perfect, especially the clear ones. They’re lightweight, you can see whats inside, they’ll protect all your items and they are easily movable when needed but still allow access whilst your room is being worked on.

Prevent Children From Accessing the Work Areas

For really young children (especially toddlers), use baby safety gates wherever you can. Knowing access is strictly limited will be less of a worry for you, but also less of a worry to the tradesmen. Builders are used to working around you and your family, but ideally you’d want to disrupt and interact with them as least as possible and so constantly running around after your kids will minimise this.

An even more ideal solution is to actually plan the most intensive and messiest stages of construction around a school holiday, this means you may then be able to take them (and yourselves away on holiday, to stay with family or friends, or at least be able to take them out for whole day trips regularly.

Increase Your Security

For a large or time consuming red you may want to consider moving all your valuables somewhere new. This is not to protect them from your builders, but your whole house is just so much more prone to burglary whilst being renovated. While your builders are there this is uncial, but not impossible. Items like jewellery can be stored in a lockbox or better at another location. For your day to day valuable items that you need (like phones, keys, laptops etc) then consider moving them to a new place for charging or left like a lockable bedroom or cabinet. It might not be super practical, but compared to having any of these items stolen it’s worth the little bit of extra hassle.

Hopefully these tips will help you best prepare for your home renovation, and your builder will be happy to help you plan too on a much more detailed level according to your unique situation.