Extending with a baby

[Robs20]

We are about to complete on a lovely house but it needs redecorating and extending. However, I am pregnant with twins (due end of April). Looking for advice from people that have extended with small children! We can get the redecorating done in time, but need to extend the kitchen. Would it be best to a) start asap and move in with my parents when they are tiny (they live 2 hours away but I’m assuming we won’t be doing much in the first few weeks anyway and could use the extra help...) or b) wait until they are bigger c) not extend at all and have a small kitchen (no space for a table) as the disruption will be too much.

Has anyone done a single storey side extension and can give any indication on how long it took? Next door have just done exactly the same so we will ask them when we move in...just trying to plan as much as possible!

I fell in love with this house 2 years ago so pulling out and finding somewhere else is not really an option.

I'd just get it done as soon as you can. Easier with tiny babies that are portable, especially if you have family you can stay with, than crawling babies / toddlers.

One thing to bear in mind is that if you're 2hrs away how will you oversee the work? Or will you have an architect project manage it for you?

I think that is a good idea although slightly scary! Depending on cost we will get the architect to manage, but otherwise DH will be in the area regularly for work so can help to PM.

I did it with a 4 month old and it was hell. HELL.

Under no circumstances do it with twins.

It can wait.

@mumdom oh no!! Did you live at the house whilst it was being done? Think maybe I am being too optimistic....

Yes, I really don’t want to rain on your parade but it was stressful with even a singleton and I actually can’t contemplate doing it with twins. You know a lot of twins come early, right?

We rented a place for the first part of the build when I was pregnant but - as these things do - it ran over and we didn’t want to rent for another lease. There’s also something quite primal about wanting to bring your baby home to your own place, however makeshift.

Problems included -

DC1 not being a sleeper. Builders start at 8am because daylight makes their job a lot easier, but the constantly interrupted sleeps (the baby’s and mine) drove me crackers.

Poor decision making - we made a LOT of very expensive mistakes as we were tired and wanted to be done ASAP once the baby arrived. Some of these are really fundamental errors which we’ll probably never get the chance to rectify. Your architect or project manager doesn’t know your family or how you like to live and shouldn’t be trusted to make unilateral decisions. We’d also have benefited from getting to know the house and garden as we chose things like our kitchen on a computer and I’d now lay it out completely differently.

Things I struggled with

posted too early

Things I struggled with but you might not were

• breastfeeding in front of the builders
• showering, going to the loo, cleaning up lochia when the loos had no locks and could be opened by anyone at any time!
• keeping a routine for the baby as no two days on site were the same

@mumdom thank you. That is all v useful to hear. I’m struggling with getting the planning right....dd1 was in hospital for 4 months after birth and if that happens again we will have plenty of time (!) but of course no energy to focus on an extension. Totally agree about the want/ need to bring the babies home to their new home straight away.

Alternative would be to knock together kitchen/ dining room and put in a small new kitchen. That could be done in time....starting to think that might be better! I struggled when we had the bathroom done in our last house and the builders kindly left me a bucket in place of the toilet, and this is another level of disruption.

Currently have a single storey rear extension plus new kitchen started when I was pregnant and still going on with newborn.

For us it's a nightmare because we are living in the living room which is tiny and can't move for stuff.

Baby is disturbed by drilling etc.

The amount of dust! We should have moved out but that also seemed like a nightmare.

I wish we'd got it done earlier.

You might be better waiting for a bit.

We have just started a renovation this week, with a 2 year old. We’ve had 4 days of building work (cutting hole in wall to add external french doors). 3 days I have been at work and DD at nursery. We visited family on the day at home and came back at teatime. It definitely seems easier at childcare age than when I had the kitchen plastered on maternity leave, at home with DD.

I couldn’t have imagined having major works done when she was a tiny baby. I started thinking seriously about renovations when she was about 6 months (probably watched too much Homes under the Hammer on mat leave!)

I don’t know what it would be like if I wasn’t working and out of the house though.

We're doing it now though my kids are older. We had our drawings done in May, sent to planning in July, planning approved in September then had to wait for our builders to be free so started four weeks ago. Honestly it's fine! It's all done outside for the most until they knock through.

Having done 2 extensions and embarking on a new project.
I would say do it before baby. Or wait until they’re older.
It’s always messier and more stressful then you think

Single storey took about 3 months. With most of the house decorated. Lived in it. Was pregnant with my first. Was really messy. However the upstairs wasn’t touched apart from decorating and new carpets

We had a year of major building work with a baby in the house. The builders arrived when baby was 6 months, and started with a new roof, followed by loft conversion, then rear extension. It actually wasn’t too bad. I’d definitely wait until the babies are past the newborn stage, having people in your space is tough and I couldn’t have done that in the immediate aftermath. The timescale for the extension was: broke ground in may (baby 10 months), broke through to house in mid June with limited/no kitchen for about 8 weeks, inside works continued for a further 3 months. Entire timescale in baby terms: 10-17 months, messiest/most disruption 11-14 months.

The project took longer because we kept our existing kitchen until the new one was fitted (in a different location). This was really important with a baby in the house but the kitchen itself was located in the building site so I didn’t have easy access to it during the day when on my own with baby. Once the new kitchen was installed it was actually fairly easy but we had builders turning the old kitchen space into a utility and shower room.

Honestly, I probably would do it again, it wasn’t so bad (even though I had significant PND and a traumatic birth and a difficult baby), and I conceived our second child just after the new kitchen was put it. The builder was the first person to know our news in the hope it might hurry him along! I wouldn’t plan to stay with your parents though, you actually need to be onsite most of the time to make sure they’ve not done anything silly. You need to be out of the house for really dusty periods, but that was fairly straightforward with baby groups, nct friends, trips to the zoo etc.

You need to agree a plan with the builder that enables you to stay in the house, so keeping some kind of kitchen etc. You need to accept that you will eat ready meals or eat out a fair amount, but if you get a chest freezer you could batch cook/get food from cook and you will be ok. I’d also recommend big kitchen disruption over summer because shoving something on the bbq with some salad is quite easy.

5 years on and the same builder is booked in after Christmas to remodel the kitchen in our new house!

TL;DR: you should definitely do it because if you need the space and have the money you’re just going to get annoyed at the house. You should wait until babies are not still in the newborn phase.

I think @mumdom has given excellent advice about living somewhere for a while before you start work. The points about how you use the space are very important but so is how the light falls across the year. This impacts everything from what walls to put in or take out to how hot a flat roof extension will get in the summer.
Also, the dust!! I’m going through this now (Only a loft) with older children that understand that the builders are here and that things get dirty but despite our best efforts there is Fine plaster dust everywhere and I’m not sure I’d have coped with a small baby and the need to keep things clean and sterile.

We need to do a kitchen extension too and I thought I’d hate the kitchen a lot more than I do but actually I adjusted to this quite quickly and I’m satisfied by taking my time now.