Hit me with how to live through an extension

[BananaPie]

Building work to extend the kitchen will start in a few weeks. We will be without a kitchen and without a dining room for a few months. Planning on setting up a temp kitchen (microwave and hob) in the living room, and putting some furniture into storage. How did you cope? What did you do about cooking, washing up, laundry? I’m getting a bit stressed!

Hi OP

How kind is your builder? Mine removed my 30 year-old kitchen and fitted it into my dining room. He connected the sink (cold water only) and my old washing machine. I had my microwave, kettle and a camping halogen 'hob'. Fridge freezer went under the stairs.

The room was still able to fit a small dining table and a 3-seater sofa.

I was having the whole back of my house demolished & rebuilt, so I needed something to enable me to cope for a while! I think it was around 5 months. The front room was completely re-wired and re-plastered once the old kitchen had been removed.

I put my whole house contents into storage (after a good sort out) and only brought stuff back one room at a time once the work was finished.

I hope it goes well for you.

Our builder managed to keep us with a working sink always and a hob for a long time but with no worktops and it was difficult . We put microwave/kettle in lounge but we had loads of boxes of kitchen eqpt in there too and the dining table shoved up in a corner with loads of kitchen stuff on it too. We lived off a combination of microwave meals and the odd takeaway/pub meal but to be honest we all felt quite ill/unhealthy after 3 weeks. Not much fresh veg, rubbish micro meals.

Eating off paper plates with disposable cutlery balanced on laps didn't help the experience although better than trying to wash up in the awkward kitchen set up. If you have a working freezer, I'd fill it with decent batch cooking. If I had to do it again, I'd fill the bedrooms with the kitchen eqpt so we could sit down at the table and eat.

Moved out - it's a very messy period!

Failing that, Valium.

Move out..

Otherwise, wine.

Just be ready for arguments, tension and lots of meals out. If we go into lockdown, that won't be fun.

We've moved out. Honestly there is absolutely no way we could have lived there.

It's possible if your existing house is big so you can fence yourselves off. Our was a three bed semi with only one reception room so just not possible with kids.

Hmm, not as reassuring as I’d hoped! @goldierocks that doesn’t look too bad, hopefully we’ll be able to do similar!

OP in the case of my extension we lost our bathroom as well as our kitchen so moving out was essential really. The other factor is the DUST. It's so much worse than you think.

It really depends on your tolerance for disruption. Mine is zero. I have friends who enjoy camping etc who lived through their extension quite happily

We moved out. Just not worth the misery.

Moved out like others above - put up with it for as long as possible but last couple of months I had no bathroom so wasn't an option to stay. And yes, the DUST! OMG. But it was totally worth it.

Some people down our road hired a mobile kitchen in a large static caravan that looked great

I lived through a major kitchen rebuild.. We had a microwave, kettle and electric mini stove, and had cold water in a bathroom for washing dishes. We had to go to the launderette.
We found it fine actually. We had a living room that was unaffected thankfully.

I did a two story full length extension. I dodnt live there during it. If you can at least move out when walls come down even for a few days.

You can never underestimate the dust. Seal all doors with masking tape and leave nothing in the room even blinds. Do not what ever you do leave cans etc in the food cupboards or anything at all out on surfaces.

I'm still finding dust and I had to wipe down the entire house a few times over a mo th as the dust settled out.

But it was so worth the mess

We lived through a side return extension with new kitchen in our old house. (Standard Victorian terraced house). We didn't put anything in storage, put lots of boxes in a spare bedroom. Builders set up a temporary kitchen in the dining room - we used the dining table as a work surface with a microwave/kettle/toaster and plumber plumbed in washing machine and a sink. No oven/hob.

It was fine (although this was pre-children). Upstairs was largely unaffected. We ate a lot of microwave meals/takeaways! Was a bit cold when they knocked the back out of the house. Easily done though. Even the dust wasn't that bad. Maybe we were lucky!

Ooh, this sounds more positive. When we had the loft done the dust wasn’t as bad as everyone said it would be. Maybe I have a high tolerance for dust (crosses fingers)

Watching with interest. We are hoping to be able to keep our current kitchen going as it’s going to become the utility. And seal off the bits be8ng done.

Just had the bathroom done and the dust was awful. We didn’t really prepare enough for it. Put everything away.

OP - do you have kids? We have had 2 extensions (different houses!) first one pre-kids, both working full time so largely missed the builders as were at the office. Messy, dusty, ate too much takeout, but do-able.

Second one this year with a toddler and WFH - moved out. It wouldn't have been safe for DS and we would have had no where to escape the endless mess and noise. Luckily my FIL let us stay (bless him! Patience of a saint!) so we didn't bankrupt ourselves.

A lot depends on your circumstances with work, kids etc - but if you can get out I'd do it!

Currently 5 months into extension/complete house renovation and we are living in it. It's hard, I'm not gonna lie, but we're now seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and it will be worth it. It's been important to us to be 'on site' so to speak as the questions have been constant. And yes, the dust is shocking!

We were lucky when kitchen got done. We have an integral garage and we created a temporary kitchen out there using our dining table, camping kitchen, combi micro oven and slow cooker. The washing machine is also out there so we were able to swap plumbing between it and the dishwasher, depending on which was needed at the time. We were also able to use the outside tap.

We are on week 3 with no kitchen, we have a temporary kitchen in the dining room and we are washing up in the bath.
We are cooking on a mix of microwave, air fryer, camping gas rings and slow cooker. I won’t lie it’s been hard work and we’ve had 4 takeouts this week. We still have another 2 weeks of it yet 😢
We couldn’t find an affordable rental for just 2 months so we’ve had to stay in the house.
We’ve done a double storey extension and DD is sleeping in the dining room too so my house is an absolute bomb site with packing boxes in every room! Oh and I’m having to do my laundry at my MIL house as we also have no plumbing for my machine.

When we had kitchen extension done that side of the house was totally sealed off with builders accessing it from the back garden only. We still had access to our spare fridge freezer and washing machine in the utility room, fortunately.

We set up a kitchen/diner in our loft room with a circular patio table, crockery on bookshelves and a baby belling oven/hob, a microwave and toaster etc.
Also got a mini-fridge from a kind person on Freecycle which we used to keep milk etc in. Each night I'd transfer food from the fridge downstairs into the mini fridge for the next day.
We hand-washed dishes in the bathroom sink.

Funnily enough, the kids found it all rather exciting and it was fine!