Building external extension with newborn?

[sarahb083]

Hi, does anyone have experience with building an external extension with a newborn? We're waiting for planning permission for a ground floor extension of a bedroom, bathroom, and utility, and it looks like the planning permission will come through 4 weeks before I'm due with our fist baby.

The extension is all external, so with the exception of knocking through an existing window at the end of the process, the work won't impact us living in our current house.

We've been considering the extension for a while, but we're doing it now because my mum will be staying with us for up to a year after the baby is born. We currently only have 1 bathroom and want her to have her own space. So, there is a bit of a rush to get it done ASAP.

My main concerns are privacy (having builders outside the living room for months), noise, and the stress of having to make decisions when we're overwhelmed and sleep deprived - though we can possibly make most of the big decisions before work starts?

Either way, we'll still want to do the extension within in the next year or two, so I'm trying to decide if an extension with a newborn will be significantly worse than with a small baby / toddler.

It will be significantly easier with a baby rather than a toddler!

I can see the pros and cons, but I'd wait until the baby is at least 6 months.

You might get a baby who feeds well and sleeps easily, you might have an easy birth and not be stressed and anxious - but you might not. The noise and disruption will definitely add extra stress to any difficulties you might have. By 6 months you will feel a bit more human. Stress is also not helpful when you're waiting to go into labour.

For me it would also depend on whether you had an alternative to spending lots of time in rooms adjoining the extension - if there's somewhere you can feel fairly peaceful, that would be good.

Once the baby is a bit older, you can get out and explore more. In the newborn days I mostly wanted to hide indoors with a box set.

I wouldn’t do it personally. You will end up paying builders to do nothing because you will be weeping with frustration at the noise when baby needs to sleep.

We did much more disruptive work than you are planning with a new born. It was absolutely fine. To be honest, the new born phase is one of the easiest. I don't know why people stress so much about it. It gets much harder when they start crawling, dropping their naps, and you hit the horror that is weaning.

We started our extension when LO was 4 months. He is now 13 months and we are almost done. The first 3 months were not too bad as the work was outdoors. We then knocked through in the summer loosing our kitchen for 3 months. Although this coincided with weaning it was ok and doing it in summer made it so much easier. It is the last few months of finishing off which has really dragged. It has been so slow with builders all over the house and a nightmare at the moment trying to get hold of people to finish things off. I think I would be more concerned about the impact of covid and brexit on supply chains and labour atm rather than the managing with a newborn aspect.

Thanks for all of your replies so far.

Hopeful bump for a few more replies