Staying in the house during a renovation
The contractor’s schedule covers the construction. Nothing in it says where you eat on the fourteenth of next month, or which room the children sleep in while the floor is up. That plan is yours to write, and it is easier to write before the first day than during the second week.
Read these in order: the sequence of the work decides the order of everything else. Each step below names the one chapter to open first.
Running the construction. Choosing the work and hiring the people who do it is the Hiring a Trade route; containing dust and securing the site is the contractor’s job, and in writing. This route is only the half you live in.
The route
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Before the first day
General Contracting
Which rooms go out of service, in what order, and for how long. You are not managing the build here, you are reading its calendar: the week the water goes off is the week you need to have planned for.
Open atHome Construction Sequence: Steps, Inspections, Lead Times
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Deciding which room becomes the house
Space Planning
One room has to absorb cooking, eating, work and somewhere to sit. Planning it around what people actually do there beats pushing furniture until it fits.
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Before anything gets stacked
Space Planning
Stacked furniture, a blocked exit, a space heater and extension cords in one room is the real hazard of living through the work. Check the layout against this before you load it.
Open atFurniture Safety: Tip-Overs, Exits, Heaters, Cords, Windows
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Clearing the work area
Plan Your House Move
Numbered boxes and a register, so the thing you packed in week one can be found in week six without opening nine boxes. This is the step that decides whether the months are livable.
Open atHow to Label Moving Boxes: Numbers, Room Codes, a Register
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What cannot leave the house
Plan Your House Move
Protecting what stays put: the piano, the art on the wall of the next room, the appliances. Dust and traffic reach further than the plastic sheeting does.
Open atPacking Dishes, Art, TVs, Appliances and Furniture to Move
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The week before the kitchen goes
Meal Planning
Cook ahead, cool it properly, label it and freeze it. A freezer stocked in the last quiet week is worth more than any appliance you rent.
Open atMeal Prep and Batch Cooking: Cooling, Labels, Freezing
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Cooking without a kitchen
First Home Basics
The smallest set of equipment that still counts as a kitchen, and the food safety that gets harder when the nearest sink is the bathroom.
Open atSetting Up a First Kitchen: Equipment and Food Safety
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Every week the work runs
General Contracting
The look-ahead schedule and the weekly meeting. Living there, you will see the problems first; this is how you raise one so it is recorded rather than remembered differently later.
Open atCoordinating Trades: Look-Ahead Schedules, Meetings, Changes
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Putting the house back
Plan Your House Move
Unpacking in an order that makes the house work again by the end of the first day, instead of a hallway of open boxes that is still there in spring.
Open atUnpacking After a Move: First Night, First Day, First Week
Everything here is free, needs no account, and can be opened at any chapter. The other routes · all the manuals.