When Your House Is Also the Jobsite
“Can we really stay here while you tear the kitchen apart? And if we do, what does a normal Tuesday look like?”
Those two come up most.
In this post, you’ll learn when staying makes sense for an Odessa project and when 360 Construction will tell you to go, what a temporary kitchen actually holds, how we sequence the work so your kitchen stays whole longer, and what to settle before the first wall comes down.
How Do You Live in Your House During a Remodel?
Most homeowners can stay in the house during a remodel, and whether you should depends on the project.
For a kitchen remodel in Odessa or Midland, you don’t have to move out.
We help you set up a make-shift kitchen and section off the work area from the rest of the house to keep dust down.
For a full whole-home remodel, we recommend that you arrange to live elsewhere while construction is underway.
How to Keep Your Home Livable during a Months-Long Remodel
Livable means the parts of your day you never think about still work, because those are the first ones a jobsite takes away.
Dishes, laundry, showers, snacks, and getting everybody out the door on time.
So set your expectations honestly.
We’ll be in your house from 8 in the morning until 5 in the evening, banging on things and building things, and we’ll keep it as clean as we can.
Remodeling is still dirty and dusty.
On whole-home projects we phase the work to keep key rooms usable, run dust control and daily cleanup, and keep safe paths open for kids and pets.
It’s not convenient.
Any remodel, especially a big one, isn’t convenient, and you’d rather hear that from us now than work it out three weeks in.
What a Temporary Kitchen Setup Can Look Like
A temporary kitchen is a microwave, a small table, and your refrigerator, set up somewhere everybody in the house can reach and well clear of the construction zone.
At a bare minimum, we usually move the microwave and the refrigerator out of the work area ourselves.
What you’re not getting is a full kitchen.
You’ll be washing dishes in a bathroom sink for the length of the kitchen work, and that one fact changes how a family eats more than anything else on the list.
How Thoughtful Scheduling Keeps Daily Life Moving
We don’t pull out what still works until the replacement is actually built, which shortens the window during which your kitchen is unusable.
Until the new cabinets are built, we generally don’t remove the old ones from your kitchen.
We try to leave everything intact as long as we can, until it’s got to go.
That sequencing is only possible because we build the cabinets in our own shop.
A remodeler ordering cabinets from a supplier demos on the supplier’s lead time instead of yours, so the room sits torn up while everybody waits on a delivery date that keeps moving.
We set the build date, so we set the demo date.
It’s still an interruption.
We just keep it as short as the work allows, and on the older Midland houses we’re often in, that window is the whole difference between annoying and unlivable.
The one piece we don’t control is appliances, and you’ll feel it.
Homeowners order them for March 1st; they’re not here March 31st, they’re not here April 15th.
Then the order changes, and we’re two and a half or three months out, and a lot of times you end up changing your decision just to get appliances in the house.
How Daily Check-Ins Keep You from Guessing What Happens Next
We check in with you personally every day, so you find out what’s happening in your house tomorrow, the day before, not when the truck pulls up.
That’s the point.
Your project also has a dedicated project manager who coordinates the trades and checks the work daily, so you always know who’s in your home and what’s happening next.
Questions don’t sit either.
We adhere to a mandatory 24-hour response rule for every question and concern.
Good news or bad news, you get it clear, and you get it early.
How the JobTread Client Portal Shows You the Schedule in Real Time
We run every project through JobTread, and your portal puts the schedule, progress photos, and daily updates in one place you can open yourself.
No need to call around to find out what week the tile guys start.
On whole-home projects, you also get a weekly look-ahead, so you can see what’s coming before it lands on your week.
We picked JobTread over BuilderTrend because it was easier to use for our team and for you.
What to Plan for before Demo Day so the Household Keeps Running
Sort out six things before the first wall comes down:
- Where you’ll wash dishes once the kitchen sink is out.
- Where the laundry gets done.
- Which shower stays in service the whole time?
- Where the kids’ snacks live, outside the work area.
- Where do the pets go during work hours?
- When your appliances are ordered.
These are the things you do every single day without thinking, which is exactly why they’re the ones that catch people.
If you’ve got multiple kids, they want snacks.
And if we’re in your kitchen and have torn it up, those snacks need a home that keeps everybody out of the work area and safe.
Pets are planned for too, and we do try to accommodate as best we can while we’re working.
One client had aggressive dogs that had to go out three times a day, so we built a temporary fence while we were working there.
The dogs had their space, and our crew had theirs.
The household list is the same on a Greenwood job as it is on one five minutes from our shop.
Should You Stay or Should You Go? Ask 360 Construction
The short version is that staying is usually doable, and how rough it gets depends on what you settle for before the first wall comes down. Figure out dishes, laundry, showers, the kids’ snacks, and where the dogs go, and the rest is noise you can live with.
If you’re weighing whether to stay or find somewhere else for a stretch, fill out our contact form or give us a call today. We’ll walk through it with you.
