Ask anyone who’s renovated and they’ll no doubt tell you it can turn certain parts of your life upside down — particularly if you happen to be doing it while also living in your house.
From living out of boxes to surviving without functioning kitchens or bathrooms, these are the nuggets of wisdom from a few couples on what saved their sanity during the process.
Sponge baths and takeaway food
Roísín and Zac Tarrant are no strangers to renovations, having done up two houses and building a following online by documenting their DIY adventures on Instagram.
They first had a crack at renovating their Brisbane home and more recently worked on a cottage in Toowoomba.
Zac said one of the difficult parts of their Toowoomba renovation was “making provisions” during their bathroom makeover.
“I think the tricky one is when you have one bathroom, and you’re renovating a bathroom, and you then have no bathroom while it’s being gutted,” he said.
“We had an outhouse that had a toilet and we would live here (inside) and we would have the toilet out in the outhouse and we would sponge bath ourselves.”
“That sounds so gross — it was only for, like, two nights I swear,” Roísín clarified.
“We literally used our newborn’s portable bath, it’d be like ‘OK, now it’s my turn to get in the baby bath’.”
The pair added that if you’re facing more than a couple of nights without a bathroom, hiring a portable ensuite might be a good option, or shacking up with family if you can.
Bathrooms are one hurdle, the other is kitchens.
Lucas MacLean and his wife Mackenzie are in the middle of their latest renovation, including dealing with a non-operational kitchen.
“I think it’s easier to not have a bathroom than to not have a kitchen, or we’ve struggled with not having a kitchen,” Lucas said.
“Cooking, everything’s 10 times harder, so it’s like, I’ll just have cereal because that’s easy.”
When it comes to other food, takeaway was another popular option, so too was using camping equipment if you’re interested in a ‘home-cooked’ meal.
Fridges in the lounge room
Though not entirely practical, one piece of common advice was to embrace the disorder and remember it won’t be forever.
“I think the key is you’ve got to be prepared to live in chaos,” Mackenzie said.
“Be prepared to know that in the morning, it’s going to take five or 10 minutes to make a coffee because you’ve got to unplug this cord, move this thing, just to find your coffee cup.
“Our fridge is in the lounge room, our pantry is in the walk-in robe and our kitchen sink is in the ensuite, so it takes a while to get around the house and find things.”
She also recommended not unpacking anything prematurely.
“Once we do a room, then we can unpack things in that room, but right now we’re living bare minimum and we’re just trying to keep things dust-free with the plastic shaving everywhere,” she said.
Memories of living in a building site aren’t too distant for interior designer Tamiko Gleeson and her husband Daniel.
They renovated and extended their two-bedroom, one-bathroom 1960s house in NSW while living there, doing some of it themselves and getting professionals in for the more substantial build.
“For a while we had scaffolding inside, like we would put all our furniture into, say, the living room, and there would be no furniture,” Tamiko said.
“We’d just eat dinner like that — it was takeaway dinners, it was scaffold inside.
“Yeah, everything was dusty, but I think you just need to know that it’s not forever and you just need to roll with it.”
The other common feedback from all three couples was that, despite the chaos and moments of frustration, the process was usually pretty fun and always rewarding.
“We never felt like we were coming home from work and thinking, ‘oh, gosh, this is a bomb site’,” Tamiko said.
“It was just, ‘Oh, they’ve done this today. That’s exciting. And are they doing that tomorrow? That’s exciting as well’.”
Not hard enough? Throw in a baby!
One of the big differences between Roísín and Zac’s two renovation projects was the arrival of their first baby not long before they got stuck into their Toowoomba house.
“When he was a newborn, we were kind of shocked at how much we were able to still get done in between, you know, feeding every three hours,” Roísín said.
“But now we’ve just had to adapt to things that are just going to be slower and we will have to pay for more things.”
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The pair’s tip for parents considering embarking on a similar path is to know when to “divide and conquer” and lean on those around you for help.
“We were a very, very close partnership, like physically when we would have been together doing everything before,” Zac said.
“And then when he came along, we became a partnership in that one person would always be looking after him and the other person would be in the traditional role.
“I would do all the molding and then I’d take him and Rois would do all the painting … we just had to divide and conquer.”
“Until we can train them to help out,” Roísín joked.
It might sound obvious but for Tamiko Gleeson and her husband, working with and around their newborn’s routine was the key to successfully juggling a renovation with family life.
“You just can’t work nine to five, like we’d done before,” she said.
“Let’s say my husband was on the tools, I would just say ‘OK, Georgia is napping at this time, you need to do something else during that time’.
“Or if we did have builders on site, because they were installing floors, or they were doing the decks. I would take Georgia for a walk in the nap or I would go in the car for a nap.
“I guess my advice is… to be flexible and to know it’s not going to last forever.”
‘Budget to finish when you start’
Another thing Tamiko is credited with making her live-in renovation manageable was maintaining good communication with her builders.
She said she and her husband initially felt caught off guard having to answer questions about the next stages of the build or materials and so they made a concerted effort to make sure it didn’t happen again.
“I would just keep saying to our builders, what’s next? What do you need from us?” she said.
“What do I need to get prepared to help you so that both of us aren’t in a rush.
“I was finding at the start, we would get hit with ‘OK, where’s your vanity? And where is it going?'”
Similarly, Roísín and Zac’s advice for working smoothly with a builder is to “always have a budget to finish when you start”.
“If you run into any kind of snags with your budget, your renovation can blow out by months,” Zac said.
“If you’re living in the home, that’s going to affect you so much more than if you’re not.”
The couple also highly recommend getting all materials well in advance to avoid delays and give yourself time to replace things if they arrive broken.
“[With our bathroom renovation] we had organized all the materials to be delivered ahead of time, so everything was under the house ready to go,” Roísín said.
“We had paid for everything already, so there were no delays when it came to the work actually beginning.”
And finally, if you can, plan out some contingencies and go through other potential options in case things go pear-shaped.
“We always have multiple plans that we want to execute on and then if things are more expensive than we expected … we always fall back to those options that we’re still happy with, but it’s going to allow us to realize the renovation earlier, “Zac said.
“Exactly, have your options A, B, C and D,” Roísín added.
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