Home remodeling, renovating, and restoring can all produce effects on your life and that of you family, if you have one, that can be quite disturbing and confusing if you do not prepare for them in advance. But armed ahead of time with coaching and knowledge, you can avoid having your lives become chaotic and even unbearable. In preparation for having your home torn apart and reconstructed, please consider the following list of issues if you want to avoid major stress when building time comes.
- Lifestyle Habits: How will the building process impact your day-to-day life? Are you an early riser? Can you handle a lot of noise and disturbance in your environment?
- Health Concerns: Do you have allergies to construction materials? Are you concerned about needing order and cleanliness in your home?
- Personal Items: You will need to protect your larger items, such as fine furniture, by masking and draping them.
- Do you normally work from home?
- Plan for utility shut-offs that may last man days.
- Take care of your plants and animals, perhaps by “re-homing” them until the project is completed.
- Rent off-site storage if you need to.
- Consider your methods of ingress and egress. Will your accessibility to your home be compromised, such that you will have to enter and leave through the garage, or a porch door?
- Where will you park your car(s)?
- Alert your Home Owners Association about the noise and activity that is to be expected.
- Consider construction hours and their impact on you. Typically in the Tucson/Scottsdale areas, builders like to get started in the cool of the morning—at around 5 a.m. Can you handle having construction continue through the weekends?
- Meals: Where and what will you eat if you do not have a working kitchen?
- Hygiene: Where will you shower, brush your teeth, use the toilet if your bathrooms are involved in the renovation?
- Hide your private things and protect your valuables.
- Security—alarm systems.
- Outdoors: protect adjacent plants, trees, furniture, driveways.
- Contact List, know who has access to your home. Be certain remodelers know how to contact you.
- More! People, covering, dust, cost
Given all these potential disturbances to your life and home, for larger remodel jobs, we recommend that you consider living off-site while the construction is underway. Rent an apartment or a hotel room, visit relatives, or even take that vacation you have always wanted to take!