My wife and I are planning on having what basically amounts to the entire first floor of our house being done in the near future. People we have gotten bids from have been pretty consistent in estimating that the job will take about 4 months and all suggest we should not live in the house while the project is going on. We have 3 young kids and some pets so I am inclined to agree.

How do people usually handle this? We are thinking about renting a house month to month, but what do you do about furniture? We would have some living room furniture we'd have to move out for the reno that I guess we could take with us, but what about the bedrooms? Do you just move your kid's beds? Get air mattresses? Buy cheap mattresses you can donate or toss after?

I'm just trying to think this through in the most cost effective manner. Renting a furnished place would be great obviously, but I think trying to rent a furnished house on a month to month lease in our general area would probably be like finding a needle in a haystack.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Students are away during the summer so a furnished rental?
Movers offer storage as well
Caveat - it takes longer than estimated according to Murphy's Law
if you were a doctor, you would buy a smaller house
live it while remodeling then sell/rent it when done
Moving all or storing some options

We did a big remodel a few years ago.

Whatever you leave behind, you will meet to seal off that room very very well. Your stuff will get so much construction dust on it you'll be left wondering if you should just replace everything

Also, I moved stuff into the garage (hard surfaces items like washer/dryer). We weren't having work done out there but they used the driveway to make a lot of cuts. The stuff was really bad there too

Well, thanks for confirming all of my worst fears so quickly.

The house purchase/turn to rental property route has crossed my mind. My stomach is having a hard time coming to terms with spending the money on the reno plus a down payment on a second property. But honestly money wise that may be a wash after renting a property and finding a storage solution.

So, you think we need to seal off even the bedrooms upstairs? Will it get through the AC vents? Do we really just need to pack away everything, even on the second floor?

Even if you pack everything upstairs away, seal it off for the carpets.

We did a full renovation about three years ago. We rented a mobile storage unit for our stuff, and my in-laws graciously let us live with them during the remodel. What I thought would be a few months job ended up being one year and eight days. Thankfully, my in-laws house is very large, so we all had room for privacy, but after a year, we were ready for a break from each other.

Both our parents are nearby so we've discussed it. If I had to choose, I'd go with my in laws over my parents for my own sanity's sake.

My main concern with the rental would be the furnishing and having us be comfortable for our time there. I could survive with a camping chair and a cot, but my wife and kids have a little higher standards than I do.

But I guess if we moved some of the stuff out of the old house, we could use the rental in lieu of a storage unit and save some costs there.

Is there any option to do it room by room and live in the house during the renovation? This would obviously extend the timeline and likely increase costs due to reduced efficiency. The scope of you reno may be too much for this, but that is what I would try to do.

That is what I initially hoped for, but the contractor and posts on this thread have me thinking otherwise. And they have my wife convinced we can't, so I'd have to come with some pretty strong evidence to convince her.

We could easily all just live upstairs and do without a kitchen for a few months. We'd have more than enough space and bathrooms. But if the dust is as bad as it sounds like it will be, I don't think it's worth it.

I'd love to save the hassle and expense if I could, but I have to weight that against how much money is worth hearing "I told you so" for 4 months.

I'd be most concerned with keeping progress up in the gym. What's the plan?

If you live there during the renovation, the thing that will drive you and your wife up the wall the most is when no one is there making any progress.

Especially after you pass that first deadline of when you were hoping the project would be done. That's when your wife will start getting really vocal in her frustrations. Then you'll be calling your contractor and asking him why his subs aren't there at the break of dawn, and why they aren't staying until dusk.

Maybe I'm just projecting.

Yes, this has crossed my mind too. We were sold on it as, "Hey, if you aren't living here, my guys can be here any time any day so we don't have to work around your schedule!" Which, sure, in an ideal world I agree. But I've been around long enough to know that these guys need constant supervision and need to feel someone peeking over their shoulder.

I do trust the main guys and they come well recommended and work frequently with the designer we've hired, so I'm hoping that won't end up being the case.

Oh trust me, I'm letting my wife deal with most of the logistics since this is her baby. I already told her nothing is going to stop the gain train!

I'll keep the leafblower handy for dust in the garage. Fingers crossed, if we have to rent there is a house just down the street I'm hoping we can get a good deal on.

In regards to going room by room....just doesn't make sense unless you have an unlimited budget.

For example, they aren't going to rip up the floors in one room, haul off the trash, start laying new floors, then stop and start the process over. Especially when you consider they likely have a crew or work with a contractor that just does floors. They aren't going to have them there for multiple half days vs. just a couple consecutive days.

A few years ago we did a full kitchen reno and the flooring throughout the entire house. We didn't do storage, we packed up what we could in the garage, covered it well, and then move the remaining furniture around the house around where the crews were working, again covering it really well. If I were doing it again, I'd just do storage, but the contractor said they could move it around.

We also just stayed with the in laws. They have plenty of room, but the drive from their house in the suburbs into town for daycare and work was a beating.

I need to do a master bath, kitchen, and maybe whole first floor reno. Y'all may have just sold me on living with it forever. I don't mind the money but the disruption sounds terrible.

I renovated my first floor and lived on the second and would not recommend it. I had two zippered doors and a walk thru plastic curtain and dust went everywhere. My 3 months project went on almost a year.

If I had to do it again I would of rented something.

Interesting. We never had to shut off power to the house. We moved our wine fridge to the living room, plugged it in there, and it was fine. We turned the ac up because we weren't living there but still ran fine. We just isolated the circuits for where the workers were, for example mostly in the kitchen. Unless you're tearing down lots of walls and expanding, not sure why you'd have to turn off all power for a substantial period….

Walls were torn down, garage was turned into a new bedroom/bathroom...and we had a house with an unlabeled breaker box lol. And the GCs didn't want all that demo dust getting into the ducts. We weren't living there, I appreciated not turning on the power during the brutal summer of 2023.

We were very fortunate that my in-laws lived a mile down the road and had enough space for us!

I like the buy a smaller house & keep it for a rental idea if it's doable & there are affordable options in your area.

That makes sense in your situation. But wouldn't say it's the standard for renovations.

When we put new flooring throughout our house, we moved everything out. Put as much as we could in the garage and the rest in a POD in the driveway. As other have said, dust will get everywhere especially if they are removing any existing tile. You will want to turn the AC off anyways to prevent all the dust/paint spray being sucked up in your system, but sealing off any room or space that won't be remodeled is a must. Dust will still find its way into those areas, but with plastic and no HVAC running, it will be much better.

No recommendation on living situation, but I would not try to live in the house. With no kids it may be doable, but with kids it would be miserable. We lucked into a fully furnished home of a good friend.