Living in the House While the Kitchen Is Out

Every article about kitchen remodeling covers cabinets and counters. Almost none covers the nine weeks in the middle when you have no kitchen, and that is the part households find hard. It is manageable, and the difference between manageable and miserable is planning that costs nothing.

Setting up a temporary kitchen

Pick the location before demolition, not after. A dining room, a utility room, a garage in the cooler months, or a spare bedroom all work. What it needs:

• The refrigerator, relocated rather than switched off. Most crews will move it as part of the job if asked. Check the circuit where it is going can take it.
• A microwave, a kettle and a toaster. Between them these cover more meals than people expect. A single induction hob is a useful $80.
• A sink you can live with. A utility sink or a bathroom basin becomes the washing-up point. A dish rack and a washing-up bowl make it bearable.
• A working surface. A folding table is fine. Standing at a low surface for nine weeks is not.
• Boxed-out essentials only. Pack the kitchen properly and keep one box of what you use daily. Everything else can be sealed and stored.

Budget for eating out more than usual, and be honest about the number. On a nine week project, an extra $80 a week is $720, and it belongs in the project budget rather than arriving as a surprise on a statement.

Dust, and what containment should look like

Kitchen demolition produces a lot of very fine dust, and in a house that is sealed and air conditioned for most of the year it has nowhere to go except into the return air and around the house. Good containment is visible and specific:

• Plastic sheeting sealed floor to ceiling across every opening, with a zip door for access
• A fan or air scrubber exhausting to the outside so the work area stays at negative pressure
• Return air vents in the work area sealed off so dust is not drawn into the HVAC system
• Floor protection along the whole route from the kitchen to the exterior door
• Daily cleanup rather than a single clean at the end

Asking how dust is handled at the walkthrough is worth more than it sounds. The answer tells you a great deal about how the rest of the job will be run, and it is a question that experienced remodelers expect and welcome.

Changing the HVAC filter when the job finishes, and again a month later, is a small habit worth keeping.

Access, parking and the HOA

Sugar Land neighbourhoods are deed restricted with active associations, and while an interior kitchen remodel is generally outside what a declaration reaches, the visible parts of a construction project are frequently inside it.

Worth checking with the association before the skip arrives:

• Whether a dumpster or storage container can sit on the driveway, and for how long
• Whether it can sit on the street, which is usually more restricted
• Permitted work hours, particularly at weekends
• Where contractor vehicles can park
• Anything that changes an exterior wall, such as a new hood duct penetration or a relocated exterior vent

Texas Property Code Chapter 209, the Residential Property Owners Protection Act, governs how associations operate and how they enforce. What an association can require of you comes from its own declaration and covenants rather than from that chapter, so the document to read is your own community's, and a five-minute email to the management company at the start avoids a letter in week three.

Surviving the countertop gap

The hardest week is not demolition. It is the one to two weeks after the cabinets go in, when the kitchen looks nearly finished and there is no work surface and no sink, because the counters are being fabricated from a template that could only be taken once the cabinets were set.

Many crews will screw a temporary plywood top over the sink base so the space is usable and the sink can be reconnected. It costs almost nothing and it is worth asking for specifically at the walkthrough rather than hoping.

Plan the trip, the visitors or the busy work week around that fortnight if you can. It is the one part of the schedule that is predictable well in advance.

What to agree before demolition

1. Where the temporary kitchen goes, and who moves the refrigerator
2. Which bathroom the crew uses, and whether there is a preference
3. Start and finish times, and whether weekend work is expected or excluded
4. Where materials are stored and where waste goes
5. How the house is secured at the end of each day, and who has keys or a code
6. Who the single point of contact is, and how questions get answered during the day
7. What happens to the appliances being kept, and where they live in the meantime

None of these are contentious. All of them are much easier to settle in a five-minute conversation beforehand than in a tense one on day three.

Pets, children and working from home

Doors get propped open on delivery days, which is the moment a cat leaves. Agree how pets are handled before the first delivery, and keep them in a closed room on demolition and cabinet days.

If you work from home, be realistic about noise. Demolition day, slab cutting if there is any, and tile cutting are loud enough that calls are not practical. Those days are known in advance, so ask for the schedule and plan around three or four noisy days rather than assuming the whole project is unusable.

The timeline guide sets out which weeks are which, and the main guide covers the project end to end.