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

36 replies

Musicalstatues · 21/05/2019 17:42

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!

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PazRaz10 · 29/05/2019 12:26

Do any friends or family have space in their lofts or garages that could store things for a few months?

Musicalstatues · 29/05/2019 14:55

Sadly not. I think it will have to be either a second storage unit or perhaps an additional garden shed if we can find something suitable

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Attache · 29/05/2019 15:41

Just get a second storage unit and aim to clear it quick as poss, or get a bigger unit which might not be much more expesnive. The existing store is a sunk cost anyway.

Musicalstatues · 29/05/2019 21:49

I think we’ll have to go with the shed option as the garage is mostly full of dh’s tools which he will be needing access to!!

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WhereDoesThisToiletGo · 29/05/2019 23:15

I've no idea how expensive they are, but you can actually hire an entire working kitchen either as a pod to sit inside a room not involved in the build, or as a unit that sits on your drive (if you have one!)
www.thetemporarykitchencompany.com/
Is one company, but there are others. I suspect they are pretty London-centric

Musicalstatues · 30/05/2019 09:08

I think we will be able to keep a little of the kitchen space for a while! So we will still have a sink, fridge, maybe even the dishwasher!! We can keep the oven in there if we move it but won’t have a working gas hob as the boiler is in the part of the kitchen that will go straight away and we will have nowhere to put it so will have to manage without for a while..... that will be interesting!!

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MrsBobDylan · 30/05/2019 09:34

I have just come through this (and did it five years ago also with young children).

Paper plates and cups. Don't try and wash up in a bowl or bathroom sink it is too depressing for words.

I wish I'd thought of this before but hire a large metal storage container for your drive/front garden.Get as much stuff out as is humanly possibly as the dust gets everywhere and furniture gets damaged.

It will not be as bad as you think although you will be very pleased once it's done. Try and time some of the work for the school hols so you can stay with your mum. We did a week with the ILs and it was bliss!

BiddyPop · 30/05/2019 09:35

We did it. And the boiler blew for good the weekend before the builders came in, so no hot water for weeks either. And they had to knock out the back wall (covered with a sheet of plywood) in the first 2 weeks, and it wasn't sealed again for about 10 weeks. Our build lasted from the 1st week of September to originally 1st week November but we actually said goodbye to the builders on 23rd December!

We had a cold water tap in the kitchen throughout - the builders would reconnect that daily before leaving (although the actual unit migrated all over the room as needed!). We had a cooker for most of it (the old one would be worked around) but about 4 weeks where we only had a microwave. We had moved most "kitchen" things to the spare bedroom, and almost had a "camp kitchen" set up in the sitting room - the things we really needed (small set crockery, 2 pots, 1 pan, I'd mix things in the cereal bowls, 1 chopping board, 1 decent knife and 1 wooden spoon). I worked on incredibly simple meals, and we had a lot of takeaways. And we only had just enough crockery for 1 meal left there too - and plenty of mugs for builders. The rest went into boxes upstairs. There were lots of meals using paper plates, and I used loads of paper towels compared to normal (any Jcloths or teatowels left out would be used by builders to mop a spills or similar and they'd be ruined).

The mess was depressing. Even the rooms where doors were kept closed got incredibly dusty. Laundry was difficult so I used to race to catch up on weekends (I would undo the sink, we'd haul around the washing machine and tie that into the cold water line, and we'd undo that again once finished and reconnect the sink - luckily DH and I are fit and handy with our hands!).

With hindsight, we should have moved out. Even for a couple of weeks in the worst of it. We had offers to go for dinners in a DAunts' house which we kept in our pocket for "when it gets really bad" - and always said it wasn't so bad yet. (We seem to be quite resilient really). It was a time when we mostly just "kept calm and carried on".

But the first night after they were gone, after I had managed to clean the final mess they had made (that nearly made me cry as I had already deep cleaned twice that week!), got a basic Christmas tree and crib up, and got to lay in a bath of hot, clean water - that was absolute bliss!!

BiddyPop · 30/05/2019 09:54

Sorry, I've just seen the update that the kitchen is not possible.

Do you have a gas BBQ? Or any actual camping equipment - gas ring, little wood burner, a Kelly kettle? Or could you borrow some from someone? Can you "play camp" by cooking in the garden some evenings?

Definitely get the numbers of the good takeaways - maybe see if you can do a deal with any that you are likely to use a lot in the next few weeks, go in when it's quiet, explain that you have no kitchen and will be buying dinners for your family of X for Y days each week for likely Z weeks, and could they do a discount?

Can you borrow a slow cooker from someone (or buy one)? That can give you other options for more stew type dinners, or things like a joint of meat.

Oven means you could do baked potatoes or oven chips, and I know Ive seen recipes on here (although I have no idea where to link, sorry) for oven -baked risottos. I often cook lamb chops in the oven if I have it on anyway to roast baby potatoes rather than turn on the grill. And DM used to "roast" the breakfast fry on Christmas morning in the oven while we were out at mass, and that worked fine on low temperatures (for her it was about not grilling and having it ready when we all got in - for you it's more about practicality, so higher temps for shorter might work too).

Couscous only needs boiling water to "activate". I generally cook "petits pois" style peas by only pouring boiling water over then and not actually turning on heat. Spinach is also wilted to perfection by just putting it into a colander and pouring a whole kettle of boiling water through it (letting water drain down the sink). And while I haven't tried it, if you used freshly boiled water, and maybe renewed it once, you might be able to cook fresh pasta without needing heat (at least the smaller ones like spaghetti and tagliatelle - maybe not quite the ravioli parcel types).

If you have your freezer available still, do you have time before they take the gas hob to make a batch of family sized lasagnas to freeze, or maybe things like cottage pie, chicken and mushroom in white wine/cream sauce covered in mash, or smoked fish and broccoli in white sauce covered in mash - different meals that only need an oven later on? Even if you have one or 2 per week, this could make a big difference.

Some nights, get a rotisserie chicken from the deli and a loaf of crusty bread and some salad for a nice meal that doesn't need any cooking.

Look at the camping threads for ideas for cooking in the open air or search camp cooking or backwoods cooking. You can make tinfoil parcels of food to cook on a BBQ/fire - we do things like small strips of salmon with finely chopped carrot, onion and potato which is nice. Skewers of vegetables (peppers, onion segments, tomatoes, mushrooms, courgettes etc) all work well. Mushrooms in tinfoil parcels with some butter and seasoning. I suspect that small diced potatoes could also work. Bananas with some chocolate in tin foil or in the banana skin makes a nice dessert. Or apples sliced with sugar, cinnamon and some raisins.

Musicalstatues · 30/05/2019 11:14

Thanks for those huge posts BiddyPop!!
Now I know we can retain a bit of the kitchen space I feel a bit better. I do have a slow cooker and thanks for loads of other meal ideas! I’ve also seen on another thread a portable induction hob from Ikea so will probably invest in one of those.

I just want to get started now. I think the anticipation of how bad it might be is the worst bit and once we get started and actually see how it’s all going to work it will be better (I hope!!)
We can be away for a fair amount of the summer holidays if we choose, however I don’t think they will actually be doing anything that invasive by that point, probably still digging the foundations!! We’ve used these builders before and they are really nice, do good work and are cheap but also rather slow which is going to be painful!

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BiddyPop · 30/05/2019 12:47

Sorry, mine were a bit of a "stream of consciousness" ramble....

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