Living in a reno

[CJones11]

So, we have been renovating now for just over a year and rooms are starting to come together. The issue is cashflow has slowed and I'm due our second child in 15 weeks. I'm considering moving in and continuing the renovation while living in the house.
Looking for advice, personal experiences and just tips on how to make it manageable. I'd say we have around 4 months left of work🙃 e.g. bathrooms still haven't been fitted, no flooring, radiators not connected, and it's a bit of a dumping ground...

How can you move in with a baby with no heating or bathrooms? It seems you are doing all rooms at once. We have lived/are living through a full renovation but we have done it room by room over the past 18 months and have the kitchen hall, stairs and landing left. You can't move in if the whole house is in disarray.

@OhhhhhhhhBiscuits 🤣🤣🤣 I didn't mean move in with no bathrooms or heating. That is our position now. The bathrooms are being done next and then all radiators can be connected.

Yes we are doing the whole house in one go because it needed a whole new heating system, electric rewire, roof etc. But now I'm think we need to move in within the next 6-8 weeks and so we are prioritising certain rooms (kitchen, bathrooms and bedrooms).

From my experience if you have a kitchen bathroom and a bedroom ready you’ll be ok, it’s harder with toddlers if they crawl ,walk everywhere but with a newborn you shouldn’t have this problem

@pompei8309 I'm thinking of leaving the living room and utility room completely and doing those as we live there. The dining room can be used as our living space and as long as we have a washing machine we don't need to rush and spend ridiculous amounts on a fancy utility.
I think I'm struggling with the idea of it not being 'complete' when we move in😣
Was there anything useful that helped you organise your time and cope?

We did an extension that meant we had no kitchen or main bathroom for five months. We couldn’t afford rent elsewhere so just had to live with it. The requirement to the builder was we always had a one toilet and always had one sink. We sometimes had to bathe DD in the sink and I showered at work for months etc, but we got through it.
it was helped as our dining room wasn’t touched so we moved fridge, toaster, microwave etc to dining room and decamped kitchen to there.

Spent many a night dreaming of the end product to try and stay sane!

Didn’t dust for five months, just totally pointless.

I am living in a Reno now.

kitchen is ripped out - I have a lovely little makeshift kitchen in the dining room. While back of the house is open and boarded up.

it’s cold and sometimes I worry about security! But it would cost an extra £1k a month to rent somewhere else and that is money that could go toward this money put project!

I think you should have an honest conversation with your builder/contractor about how much longer/more cost you living there will add as it may be a false economy. All trades like unfettered access to all of the house as they may tell you they plan to be in x room but then if they hit a snag/finish early they move into y room…which may have all of your things in. Be warned, no contractor ever thought…”ooh I’ll just move this box/clothes rail before drilling/painting/plastering”. It doesn’t make sense to you or I, but literally it’s as if they can’t see your stuff. Plus you have to listen to Shite.FM for the 8 hours they are there 😂. If you really have no choice, I’d get one living room done and finished plus one clean bedroom that no one is allowed into. Corex every finished surface that could get damaged (worktops/flooring etc) and mist coat and paint behind the rads before they go up to avoid the cost of taking them off again shortly to do exactly that. Don’t hang light fittings where ceilings are yet to be painted/plastered just hang a plain light batten with a bulb. Then you need to all agree a schedule so that everyone knows what is in/out of bounds. And hire a portaloo for non-family members to use and make clear what is permissible in terms of using your kettle/tea/coffee/sugar else you’ll get through tons. You do not need to be cleaning up after everyone. I’ve done it before, it’s a bit like childbirth in that it is hard at the time but long forgotten afterwards. Good luck!

@PettsWoodParadise oh gosh, the cleaning 😵

@Stripedbag101 we've been lucky to stay with my grandad the past few months because of the cost of renting and renovating. I really didn't anticipate being here now and had hoped we would have been in and settled!

@Netaporter we are doing the majority of the work ourselves to save on the costs of a contractor. We've had trades in for the important jobs like plumbing and electrics but otherwise, it's an after work and weekend project 🙈 maybe if we were living here, more would get done more quickly though!

@CJones11 if you are in charge of it all then you can definitely live in it… don’t forget to paint behind the rads before they are hooked up though. Made that mistake just the once 😂 Good luck !

@Netaporter that's the main reason they aren't all connected yet🤣 we've got the column radiators which you can see atdiaght through, so we need at least the walls with the radiators to be complete before they go on haha