Redecorating open-plan downstairs

[cornflakegirl]

What's the best way to redecorate with a 22mo DS to contend with?

We have a average sized 3 bedroom terrace house. The downstairs of our house is basically open-plan. The front door and the stairs go straight into the lounge/diner, with the only door being to the kitchen - the back door is also off the kitchen.

We need to redecorate the lounge/diner and the stairs and landing - they're basically a contiguous space and all have the same paint scheme at the moment. This will involve ceilings, skirtings, radiators (2) and at least 3 coats of paint on the walls - the current scheme is quite bright, so will need to be overpainted with white before painting with colour.

We could stick DS in the garden to play, or stairgate him into his bedroom - but while he's quite happy to play by himself, he likes there to be people around - so I'm not sure how successful that would be for the length of time needed to redecorate. (I'm figuring the lounge/diner will be out of action for about 4 days.)

Every time we think about how to do it, it seems so complicated! Are we being complete wimps?

.

easy way? go and stay at your mum's and get someone else in to do it .

Maybe borrow one of thos big Babydan playpens so he can play downstairs while you're painting?

Couldn't you organise a rota between your parents, his parents, friends and a neighbour?

I've tried decorating with little kids around and believe me, it's hell.

MrsB - I'm seriously considering both ideas

mumblechum - neither set of parents lives close sadly - although it may be possible to con mine into coming to stay to help out thanks for making me feel less ridiculous about worrying about it!

any more suggestions?

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I'm trying to redecorate our house (including a large open plan downstairs) with an 11 month old ds, and it is near (but not totally) impossible. I tried confining ds to sections of whichever room I'm decorating but he hated that, vene though he'll normally play happily on his own for am hour or so.

The only way I get it done is by doing an hour or half an hour here or there when he has gone to sleep (I guess a 22 month old isn't asleep much in the day though) or in the evenings. On the rare occasions dh has time off at the weekends he'll take ds away for a few hours to give me chance to blitz it.

So far (in 1 year ) I've only managed ds's room and a spare room. I'm seriously thinking of putting him with a childminder for a couple of weeks to get downstairs done. Can't see us ever managing it otherwise. We could get someone in to do it, but I hate having workmen around the house.