Hints and tips for living in a house through and extension please!!

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Planning permission expected on Friday for a two story side extension. Our original plans meant we would have been able to build the new kitchen diner and bedrooms and have them functional before knocking through However those plans got refused 😡 so now we will have to lose the kitchen before the new kitchen is built. We will have to stay in the house while the work is being done as we can’t afford to rent and don’t have anyone nearby we could stay with long term (pil could accommodate us for about a week max!)
We have done a similar extension before but this was when we had no children at school so I literally went with them to my mums for 4 months. Now there is school to factor in and she lives 150 miles away so no go!! But as a result I have no experience of what the house was like while the work was going on and how people manage around it!

Dh is incredibly practical and clever and will no doubt come up with ways to mitigate the disruption but I would be grateful to hear your tales of success (or misery - best to be prepared!!) and what helped and worked for you.

Many thanks!

Its hard to say without seeing your plans. Have you got enough space in the original part of the house to live in?

Talk to your builders. They will set you up with water to another room temporarily to make a kitchen. They are the ones to come up with a plan.

Do the builders know you are planning on staying put? You may find that it adds to the build cost and it's actuallly cheaper and more efficient if you rent somewhere for some of the project.

We had a microwave and camping stove for 6 weeks. We ate out a lot. It was not fun. But we managed. Stayed at my parents pretty much every weekend. I was very glad when it was over.

It's going to be incredibly testing for you so brace yourselves! Try and make it fun and an adventure for the kids - camping indoors, washing up in the bathroom, taking washing to the launderette (if there is one nearby?!), cooking on a camping stove / microwave. It'll be dirty and dusty - that's what got me down mainly - and not having any peace or privacy with worker coming and going constantly.

I would recommend putting everything you don't need into a storage unit. We would open cupboards in rooms unaffected by the building work only to find a fine layer of dust on our belongings.

Grab a couple of cupboards from the existing kitchen, take the doors off or prop the cupboards slightly off the ground and use for a temp kitchen.

The IKEA plug-in single ring induction hob is a good alternative to a camping stove. We erred on the small side with our main hob, thinking we have the plug in hob as a 5th ring if we need to, but we haven't done so yet.

We used old towels, bathmats and dust sheets for extra door mats to help limit the spread of the dust.

Store up laundry and do it in a batch at the weekend. Make sure kids have enough uniform to get through a week at school.

We are in the midst of this at the moment. Things that make it easier:

• instant pot
• picnics in the park
• going away nearly every weekend to see friends elsewhere in the country etc
• being resigned to dust
• eating out more often
• get the washing done when you can, live with the buildup when you can't
• talk to builders. Ours have moved and temporarily plumbed in washing machine 3 times. See what can be done in that respect
• washing up bowl and draining rack in bottom of shower is easier than washing up in the sink imo
• remember that it will all be worth it in the end....

@fruitbrewhaha the current 3 bedrooms will remain untouched, as will the lounge downstairs. The bathroom will have work done but should continue to be usable. So yes there is living space. The builders know we’re staying as that was always the plan - just the revised building plans mean much more impact on the existing house than before. Originally we were almost building another house on the side so could have got it to a useable level before knocking through.

I can take the kids away most weekends. Dh will probably stay here to work on the house.

I am seriously dreading the mess - I am a fairly house proud sahm so will be stuck right in it!!

I can’t really add much except to say that paper plates and cups come in useful at times. Good luck!

Find a way of putting up plastic sheeting in doorways. You wouldn't believe how far the dust goes!

Do you know anyone who has a touring caravan they could loan you whilst your kitchen is being done? There is nothing worse than living in the middle of builder's mess, it's nearly summer, the kids would treat it as an adventure, plus you can shut the door on the house every night when the builders go home & have a clean, dust free place to eat & sleep.

Currently mid extension. Lower your expectations and accept that you won't have a nice house for a while! But then think of what you'll have in the end

I did this, 11 months with the back ripped off my house. Firstly, I decided not to be too bothered about cleaning up all the dust - it was pointless & had a major clean up after. I had the washing machine & tumble drier moved & plumbed into the bathroom temporarily, so laundry could carry on as normal. And cooking was done on a baby belling that could be plugged in anywhere, also had a microwave. Did all my washing up in the bath. It was quite fun really. The only stressful bit was suppliers sending wrong parts for the build & waiting for replacements. The builders did tape-up relevant doorways but the mess got everywhere regardless.

Temporary kitchen elsewhere in the house. Ours was on a dining table in our lounge. We kept a small drawer unit from the kitchen too and used it for kitchen storage. Our old kitchen partially remained in the building site for several weeks so we had cooker (freestanding) and sink out there. Washing machine moved around in the building site and tumble dryer went to another room. We were like that for around 5 months of a12 month build, with a 9mo baby. It wasn’t so bad - lots of microwave rice and batch cooking. Lots of fresh food. Going to go through it again in the next year, but just a knock through and new kitchen which might actually be worse, not sure.

Oh god. We are facing down something like this if plans get the go ahead. I have a toddler and am currently pregnant so will have two small children. Also quite house proud! I guess we will have to suck it up! Good luck! I hope it's not as bad as you think it will be! X

The Ikea induction rings are brilliant - £35 ish I think, from memory.

We used the BBQ a lot, even in the rain, just cooked under an umbrella and then ate inside. Ate a lot of meat and salad meals.

Paper plates for breakfast.

Builders plumbed washing machine in in the garage.

Washing up in the bath is my least favourite memory...!

Meals - if you have a largeish supermarket nearby with a hot food section, that plus salad will see you through lunches and suppers.

Dust is the worst, it gets into untouched rooms into boxes and bags somehow, and we even had a thick layer of dust on the walls somehow, it wasn't until we vacuumed the walls that the dust stopped appearing.

In advance of the build, pack away EVERYTHING that you don't need for everyday life, even if it means living in rooms surrounded by boxes - label them though, in case you suddenly need something. As everyone has mentioned dust gets everywhere.
Be prepared that areas not actually part of the build plans may also be affected by the build - we weren't touching the upstairs, but to do rewiring and plumbing, plus inserting steels means the upstairs now needs re-plastering (The builder make good, but our plaster is too old!) and needs re-carpeting - again, they have refitted it, but it's never quite the same.
Lower all expectations. Get used to the builders seeing you in your PJs (they don't care!). Be prepared that your garden will not be the same! You may also not be able to park on your drive if you have one - due to skips and material deliveries.
Get spare keys cut, you will need them - you can't expect to be there when they arrive/leave every day.
Warn your neighbours - within the first day of ours we had to remove fence panels to get the digger through, so I was pleased I'd warned them.
Do not use your hoover, brick dust buggers them. Either make sure they do the hoovering or get yourself a second hand Henry which can handle brick dust.
It's hard, but so so worth it. We paid our settlement figure this weekend and had our first gathering of 15 kids and parents for my DS birthday and it was amazing to enjoy the space and fit everyone in!

Sorry about your planning app OP So hard when you’ve got your heart set on a design but I’m sure it will be a lovely home regardless. Better to have tried and not gotten it than always wonder!

We’re a few months off a similar project and I’ve also heard good things about the Ikea induction hob - laundromats also often do a wash and dry service for laundry which might come in handy. You might want to get some slippers with a proper sole on them as otherwise you’ll be wearing proper shoes inside for the whole build!

ooh yes, slippers for all the family!

Crack on so as much work is done in summer as possible. If you can afford it work a completion bonus into any contracts. It's much more bearable if you know when you'll be done by. We set up a tiny "kitchenette" in corner of the one room that wasn't being touched so keep out the bare minimum that you'll need, 4 bowls, 4 plates & so on. We bought a half size fridge off gumtree (& sold it again when we were done) and a plastic washing up bowl for washing dishes in the bath. We covered the carpet with old Lino and had a table with kettle & microwave and a box with cereal, squash, biscuits etc. Get used to doing a quick daily shop, which is a faff but you can the daily conditions into account eg/ nice day get the bbq going; builders been doing something really noisy or want to work late to get to a certain point, then make those the days you eat out and so on. Will the kids have a hot lunch at school and be happy with carpet picnic type teas? Any friends going on holiday while your work is going on? I watered plants and fed gold fish for a couple of friends in return for use of washing machine and their oven.

We had 2 ring Andrew James induction hob from Amazon, slow cooker, microwave for rice and steaming veg.

We used disposable plates and cups (cardboard so recyclable) and luckily the builders left the sink unit still plumbed in in what became the middle of the kitchen once they had knocked the wall out before all the pipe work got moved.

We used a large Ikea Samla tub to wash up in rather than the bath or bathroom sink. As it was in the summer we did a lot of cooking and washing up outside, felt like camping.

We bunked the children in the same room and used Ds1's room as a place for all the kitchen contents.

Tape up doors with plastic sheeting otherwise the dust does get everywhere. We were lucky our builders were incredibly tidy.

Thank you all for some great tips!!

I know everybody’s build and experience will be different but out of interest in your particular situation how long would you say it was actually really hard going for?

We did this for 6-7 weeks and I had a crawling baby who was in to everything.
Disposable plates, cutlery etc so minimal dishes to wash
Set up a rota of people to do meals for you. We had three sets of parents doing evening meals one set day a week and then my dad did a big breakfast buffet for us at his house on weekends.
Cereal bars and readymade smoothies for breakfast for kids on weekdays
You can eat incredibly cheaply at supermarkets, Morrison’s do a meal for a family of four for a tenner
We had a set budget for all the meals out/takeaways we would need.
It’s hard to make decisions one after another but really try to put thought into everything. I wish I’d got a pan drawer as I’ve got a pan cupboard in the new kitchen and it just isn’t practical.

I’m now sitting with the sun pouring in through my bifold doors watching the birds on the lawn and it was so so worth it. Keep that in mind.

Just a cheeky bump as the builders told dh today that the garage will definitely have to come down and be rebuilt plus we can’t keep part of the kitchen operational as we’d hoped as that will have to come down straight away too 😂 The best laid plans and all that! So that leaves a ton of stuff to somehow find a home for (we already have a storage unit that is full as we downsized to come here and can’t fit everything in until we have the extension) plus the boiler will have to be moved straight away.......