Kitchen Renovation - What made yours less stressful?

[violetbunny]

Please share your tips on what made your kitchen renovation less stressful!

We are having our kitchen ripped out and replaced in the new year. We are using a kitchen company who will organise the various tradespeople to come in at the right time, which should make things easier, although total process will take around 4 weeks to complete.

Our kitchen/living space is open plan, so I've purchased a floor-to-ceiling dust barrier that will hopefully help protect the living space. Planning to move the fridge, dining table, microwave etc into the spare room and use as a makeshift kitchen.

What things made your renovation easier? E.g. for food prep, looking after pets (we have 2 cats), keeping on top of the chaos?

We decamped to a fairly local airbnb for 5 days when they were jackhqmmering up the floors tiles, cos we had MIL staying and I didn't think it was fair on her to stay in a noisy dusty house with no kitchen. We quite enjoyed the break too, but we were close enough to pop in every other day to check on builder.
We also had 6 days abroad late in build which should have been at the worktop template hiatus stage but was actually at the skim plaster and decorate stage which was brilliant as someone other than me had to make space clean enough to painter to work!

For us, definitely having a separate (albeit tiny!) utility room on another floor that we set up as a camp kitchen, with kettle, sink and microwave. It made the whole thing bearable. Even though we weren't extending, it took 6 weeks start to finish. The final two weeks, almost nothing happened, because we had to have everything else fitted before they could template for the worktop, and had to just wait it out until it was cut, delivered and fitted.

We didn't have any cooking facilities other than the microwave, and we managed fine - there were a lot of sandwiches, takeaways and microwave meals!

You can hire temporary kitchens which come in a trailer thing and plug into the house. I saw one last summer and though what an amazing idea!

@Geneticsbunny

You can hire temporary kitchens which come in a trailer thing and plug into the house. I saw one last summer and though what an amazing idea!

Wowsers, that sounds amazing!

Thanks so much again for all the suggestions, I have written a lot of them down so I can get organised!