Did You Stay In House While Extending?

[LClogs]

We're planning some quite radical changes to our house and so far every builder has tried to persuade us to move out during the work.

Did anyone stay while having major building work done? How bad was it really...?

What did you do with all of your stuff from the rooms being changed - self storage, something else?

Any helpful tips or advice would be very much appreciated

We did stay in the house but it was an extended (ie. over a long period of time) renovation including 2 stages of building extensions.

If we were to ever live somewhere that was having an extension again I'd move out in a flash!

No - we had 2 kids (aged 5 and nearly 3 at the time) so it would have been foolish. Is also more expensive to stay in as they have to work around you and it takes longer - best to move out and get them to blitz it. To be honest having seen the work in progress there is no way we could have lived in the house while the work was being done (there was alot done - new kitchen extension, new loft room and 2nd floor extension, moving walls around etc - and it was through the winter) - at one point there was no roof or back side to our house and if you looked up from the kitchen area you could see the sky as no floors either!

We moved to a cheap 2 bed flat - part furnished. Took some furniture with us and essentials for next 6 months - sold some of the rest of the furniture and put things we were keeping into storage (shop around to find best price and deals). Containerised storage is the cheapest but means you cant go pick up stuff you find you need after you've put it in storage.

It was a hassle moving out and back in but well worth it I think - and far less hassle than living through the work.

We're having fairly major work done - can't afford to move out, so we're basically only going for two weeks when they knock through between the old house and the new extension and put a couple of new internal walls in. We're going to go on holiday for one of those weeks and stay with the grandparents for another week (we have backup offers of living space if it runs over the two weeks, but I like to think that it's a useful pressure on our builder).

We have two small children, but luckily the bedrooms and the living room will not be particularly affected by the work. We will have to put stuff in storage for a couple of months during the final phase, but we're hoping to sweet talk friends and relations into lending us their garages/sheds. We've stored enough stuff over the years to have accumulated favours!

There was never any suggestion that we would need to move out while the loft conversion was done though. I can see it would be easier for them if we did move out, but I don't think it would make it particularly quicker - the builders have blocked off the second floor stairs, and can leave it as they like behind the plywood. Similarly, there will be no crossover between the extension and the existing house until they knock through, so they don't need to worry about 'tidying up'. bedrooms

I think it depends on the nature of "radical" changes TBH, plus what your options are of where you could go to. We're staying put - and our project manager is encouraging us to do this- but it's basically affecting one room, plus we can be out of the house for most of the day at work/ school/ nursery. We also have a back up plan of decamping to MIL if it all gets a bit much, so we can afford to play it by ear. For some of the time though there will be no hot water- joy. If they cock that up we'll be off!

Yes, we did.

I was glad because I was there to keep the builders fed & watered and imo that meant we got a better job!

We stayed during ours as it was £800 a month to rent a tiny flat locally and would have added too much to the final cost.

We added a bedroom and bathroom upstairs and extended our kitchen making an open plan kitchen diner. Upstairs was done first and was completely blocked off for three months. Luckily we had a downstairs bathroom and also a small downstairs study so our DDs slept on a sofa bed in there and me and DH slept on lounge floor on our mattress.

It was a novelty to begin with. Girls loved it, big adventure. They were 10 at the time. it was like living in a dusty messy flat really. I kept the minimum of clothes for us all and the rest went into our garage in huge ikea storage boxes. The furniture upstairs was all built in and knackered so was ripped out and dumped saving us having to store that

when upstairs was finished the builder started downstairs. I found this more stressful as the kitchen was out of bounds for weeks and we had a makeshift kitchen in the study with the fridge, kettle, toaster and a Tiny baby belling cooker with two hot plates. We managed though and even entertained!! Manage to make a chilli.

It's doable but your children are younger. The mess and dust got me down and our wine consumption increased dramatically .

Two years on the excitement of having their own bedrooms has worn off and the DDs are sharing again, perhaps we shouldn't have bothered with upstairs!

Good luck.

We've had two major extensions and stayed put.....A mistake if I'm being honest!

The first time it wasn't too bad. Work started in May. We pulled the garage down and then extended sideways to fill the plot and backwards to put on an extra room. We put 2 more bedrooms and a new bathroom and shower room above. The noise at times was unbelievable. DH and the older DC were out all day so never fully understood what it was like for me and our 2 year old ( I was heavily pregnant at the time). We visited friends a lot. The worst part was when they cut through from the old to the new. Very noisy and dusty. The night I went into labour we had no bathroom so I had an all over wash in the baby bath at midnight. I arrived home at lunch time the next day and proudly showed new born DS off to the builders (before the GP and extended family).

The next extension was much worse and we should have moved out. By this time the newborn mentioned above was crawling and I was expecting again. We extended along the back of the house so only had a small study , a downstairs loo and a kitchen. The builders smashed the kitchen window. We ate outside in a tent and lived in the bedrooms for three months along with most of the furniture from the downstairs.

Move out if you can afford it!

We stayed in our house and it was pretty bad. We had work done upstairs (knocking down a couple of walls and putting new bathroom in) and downstairs (extension and new kitchen). I am fairly laidback, so I coped fairly well, but it depends on how much mess and dust you can live with. i do regret doing up as well as downstairs now. My kids were 2yo twins and a 5yo. I did send the twins to my parents fairly frequently while school still open (for about 3 weeks of the build). Kids still remember the TV dinners, breakfasts and lunches - or McDonalds!

I would consider things like how long water would need to be switched off etc. The main issues for us were:

• Toilet only at night for couple of weeks and 1 day/ night no toilet at all
• Bathing in a bowl for a couple of weeks (had to go to friends)
• Sooooo much dust you cannot imagine
• No kitchen (including sink, which I missed the most) for 6 weeks
• Washed dishes in bath when it was finally in, and had a small area of living room as 'kitchen' including fridge and boxes to prepare food on. ALL stuff went in living room (it is fairly big) but there was no room to walk or play really.

So, yes it was really stressful but do-able and worth it in the end. We couldn't afford to move out, so it was the only way really to do it and it looked so great in the end. I would suggest doing it in holidays so you can farm the kids out a bit and get out of the house more without being trapped by the school run. I don't think I would have managed it without my parents and the holidays. If all 3 kids had been around all the time, it would have been hellish.

We stayed in twice - once having the bathroom redone and once a bedroom being added.

It was stressful at the time but you just cope and get on with it, if I had been given the option of moving out and coming back when it was done I would have taken it.

It depends how big the project is.

In our last house we added a single-storey utility room and garage extension and stayed. It was fine, because most of the work could be done before breaking through.

In our new house, we're about to build a bigger extension and moving quite a few walls to make an open-plan kitchen diner and a better arrangement of bedrooms, as well as rewiring and replumbing the whole places. There's no way on earth we'd want to stay through that, so we're renting for 4 months.

We're lucky that the cost isn't a deal-breaker for us: this is our forever house, and the rent as a proportion of the total budget isn't massive. If you need to, I'm sure you could stay there through pretty much anything, but don't forget to account for the extra time the project could take if builders are trying to work around you and belongings.

Is also more expensive to stay in as they have to work around you and it takes longer

Totally agree with this - we spent less than 5% of the total budget in rent but would have added at least 10-15% plus another month to the final bill if they'd had to work around us and make good every evening. Plus I don't really want DC breathing in cement dust / falling into craters.

We did. Until the builders phoned us on holiday and said "you can't come home because we have found extensive asbestos". So we rented a super expensive short term let for 2 months and lived in the clothes we brought on holiday (encompassing the new school year and work sigh) because the house was a no-go zone until it was sorted.

Move out. It just isn't worth it. The builders are right. They know.

Not on your nelly, get out if you can! I've done it twice.

We extended last year when DS was just 1 and dd, 3. We extended the kitchen, but had to put a couple of rsjs in across the back of the house to repair a previous bodge job.

We discussed moving out but the builders said not to. For most of the 4 months we had most of a kitchen. Even after they knocked through and moved the water main, they left us a kitchen sink and washing machine with temporary pipes that they put back every evening.

We had about 2 weeks with no functional kitchen and survived with a slow cooker, microwave, kettle and toaster.

Our builders were brilliant though and good with small children. Builder 2 was dad of our dd's best friend from nursery so she often came to play after 3pm. They even made sure the dishwasher was plumbed back in when they had a week off over Christmas...
Bloody loved our builders.

We did but we planned around it to give the builders as much space as possible. It depends if it works for your house. We weren't rewiring or anything that needed to go into every single room or having the electric or water off for days on end. They built the extension, broke through, then we could use some of the extension space while they did the bits in the existing house. I don't think it really delayed them.

Think through the work that needs doing - can the builders have a clear run at it even if they need to slightly change the order of things, will they have working space, parking, will you realistically have rooms to use?

We camped in 3/4 rooms for about 5 months.(!) But we weren't rewiring or anything that needed to go into every room. We spent a little money getting a temporary washup sink put in and asked the guys to keep the electric shower working until one of the new bathrooms was ready.

Our DC are school age and we are all out during the day, it's not like I had a toddler at home. We were doing quite a bit ourselves so we could get on with things during the evenings.

Washing machine and masses of possessions and furniture crap were taken to DH's business unit, so we did effectively use a couple of garages' worth of storage.

Sorry for my repetitions!