Remodeling Process
What you will actually be living without
People plan for the cost and the timeline. Almost nobody plans for six weeks without a washing machine.
3 min read
Homeowners ask what a remodel costs and how long it takes. Both are fair questions and both have answers. The one that catches people out is a third question they rarely think to ask: what will I not be able to use, and for how long?
It is rarely the room you expect
On a whole-floor renovation the kitchen is the obvious casualty, and people prepare for that. What tends to go unplanned is everything attached to it.
On one job the homeowners had their washer and dryer downstairs, inside the work zone. That meant trips to the laundromat for the duration, not a disaster but a weekly errand nobody had accounted for. Their coffee station ended up on the far side of a wall. They cooked outside when the weather allowed, and washed dishes with an outside spigot when it did not.
None of that appears on a schedule of works. All of it appears in your week.
One of the things that people forget to take into consideration is how long you will be without certain things.
The list worth making before you start
Walk the floor being worked on and write down every fixture you touch in a normal week. Kitchen faucet. Range or cooktop. Washer and dryer. Downstairs bathroom. Then ask which stage of the job each one comes back in.
Some return sooner than you would guess. A bathroom often comes back before a kitchen does, because plumbing, baseboards and a vanity are a shorter tail than cabinetry and countertops. Ordering the work so the most disruptive losses are restored first is a scheduling choice, and it is one worth raising at the walkthrough rather than discovering in week three.
Why we raise it unprompted
Because the honest version of a remodel is not only the finished photograph. A crew that talks solely about the result is describing one day out of forty.
If a particular loss is going to be genuinely hard, whether that is a home business, a newborn or someone with mobility needs, say so early. Sequencing can often be arranged around it. It almost never can be once the floor is up.
