10 Tips for Surviving Your Whole Home Remodel with Your Sanity Intact

Home renovations are time consuming and stressful, but imagine how bad they are when you decide to live in the house that is being completely remodeled! During the entire time the remodel is taking place, there will be people coming and going at all hours, an extreme amount of noise and there will be dust and dirt everywhere. Living in a house that is being renovated is not for the extremely clean people of the world or those people who are impatient and anxiety prone.

We have discovered 10 useful tips that everyone needs to know in order to live at their house while it is being renovated.

1. It is very important to communicate with the contractor at all times. Contractors are not mind readers and they will not know exactly what you want unless you specifically explain it to them.
2. You will need to be prepared to answer what will seem like a million questions during the entire renovation. It doesn’t matter how good your contractor is, they will still need your input over every single detail, no matter how insignificant it may seem to you.
3. As soon as you get up in the morning, you will want to take a shower and get dressed. Depending on what phase the renovation is in, there is a good chance that a person will be working on the bathroom that day or they may need to turn off the water to the house. Plus, you won’t have to worry about the workers walking in to find you in your pajamas.
4. It might be a good idea to move your car to another part of the street during the day. There is nothing worse than having to leave the house and finding that there are multiple construction trucks blocking you in.
5. Plan meals that are easy to prepare, so that if construction is going on in the kitchen, you will not have to eat out all of the time. Even if the refrigerator is plugged into an outlet in the living room, it is still easy to get some food out to eat. Invest in paper plates and cups and plastic silverware and you won’t have to worry about the cleanup either.
6. If it is possible, use plastic sheeting and tape to keep certain areas of the house livable. The dust and dirt will not get through the plastic as easily and this will make it easier as you are living in one or two rooms of the house. You can move the sheet around as the renovations continue throughout the house.
7. Try to purchase all of the new fixtures for the house at the beginning of the renovation. This will save time when the workers are ready to install them as they complete certain parts of the renovation.
8. Be as flexible as possible as the renovations are being done. It may take longer to do a certain phase of the project, but hopefully that will mean that another phase may be done sooner than planned. The more flexibility you have will help your stress levels from becoming too high.
9. Ignore the dust and dirt and the mess as much as you possibly can. In the beginning you will want to clean everything up at the end of the day, but it will be just as messy at the end of the following day. The mess goes along with the renovation and the sooner you start to ignore it, the easier it will be. Everything will look fabulous once the renovation is finally complete.
10. Don’t argue with your spouse or partner over the renovations. It is not going to make the renovations get finished any faster if you are yelling at each other about them. Use that time to escape the house for a few hours and get away from it all. You’ll both feel better when you return.

Renovations are difficult, but if you follow our tips, you should get through it without too much trouble. Just keep in mind that it will all be worth it in the end. Give Sundance Custom Homes a call if you would like to start making plans for a whole home remodeling project in the Earlville, MD area. You can reach us in our Maryland office at 410-877-6112 or our Delaware office at 302-793-9352.