How to renovate your home while living in it

The process of renovating your house without vacating it is one of the difficult tasks to undertake. Whether you like it or not, everything in the house, including your bedroom, will at some point be moved from one position to another to pave way for the new changes. This demands a lot of cautiousness especially when moving fragile items involving breakables. 

For instance, Andrew Tumuhameho recalls renovating his home in 2007. He thought repainting his living room and part of the dining room was going to be a walkover. Unfortunately, he realised the new paint was not compatible with the old one.

Tumuhameho joined his team to embark on the challenge, though, as the painting was underway, he learnt that despite the caution they undertook, it had sprinkled on one of the seats.

He had moved the double sofa seat to the middle of the room and covered it with tarpaulins, along with his glass dining table. This was to create room for all the back and forth movement he expected from the painting job.

“I moved the dining chairs and single sofa seats that could not be covered with the other furniture to the garage where we had created a temporary dining area as renovations went on,” he adds. 

Moving property

Tumuhameho says, regardless the extent of the renovations one is undertaking, they disorganise the entire house. As such, you need to come to terms with living in an untidy house until the renovations are complete. Plus, if you are not participating in the process, he advises that you sacrifice time to be present to supervise every step of moving your property around the house.

“When you leave it to the personnel doing the renovation, you will find many things damaged,” he says.

Painters, Tumuhameho observes, may not attach as much value to some of your property such as wall photos and other household items. 

“Moving breakables is quite challenging, I moved the glass dining table from one corner of the house to another but I was afraid that it could accidentally be hit. If you do not handle such items yourself, be ready to incur losses or damages. Once the work is done,” he says.

In the same way, in 2016, Ezra Sabiiti recalls having a budget of approximately Shs12m to carry out renovations inside his family home in Kungu, a Kampala suburb.

He had bought it two years before the onset of renovating.

Sabiiti says that some sections of the house that required new layers of paint were the ceilings, some parts of the corridor, dining room, living room whose paint was peeling off and the bathrooms whose tiles too needed replacement among other things.

Planning the job

Because he had bought the house whose construction stages he did not witness, Sabiiti says he had to seek leave from work to oversee every step of the renovation. He also embarked on the process during holidays when children were home to help in moving of different household items that required moving.

Sabiiti says the areas he gave priority were the lower parts of the walls because removing the old paint that was already peeling off and preparing the same wall for new paint layers raised dust that would spread all over the house. 

“I started with the living room and stuffed all the furniture that was there into the dining room. Some of the single seater sofas that could not fit in the dining room were kept in some of the bedrooms that had some space,” Sabiiti says. 

“When repainting the living room and fixing the wall skirtings was complete, I moved the furniture to the living room so that the dining room could also be renovated,” he adds.     

As all this went on, Sabiiti and family had set up a temporary dining room with outdoor furniture on the verandah of the house. He however, advises that moving furniture from one room, corner to another has to be done after a discussion and agreement with the personnel carrying out the renovation to avoid double work at some point. This in most cases leads to extra unforeseen costs that can stretch out your budget.

For example, if you are to change the ceiling design after painting the wall, it becomes inevitable for the sand used in making the new design to sprinkle on the freshly painted wall. 

Sharing space

When it came to repainting the four bedrooms, Sabiiti suggested that his children temporarily move into just one of the bedrooms, something they agreed to much as it was inconveniencing.

“The bedrooms were smaller than the living and dining rooms. There was no way we could push the beds to one side of the bedroom like I did with the living room to create space for the painters. At some point, the beds had to be lifted and leaned on the wall to create enough space for the works to proceed,” Sabiiti recalls.  

Sabiiti concludes that renovating the kitchen was not as inconveniencing as the rest of the rooms because the old wooden kitchen cabinets and the sinks were taken out and replaced with new ones.

Besides, the cooking area had also temporarily been moved to the back of the house verandah. 

According to Ibrahim Kajjoba, a building technician, looking for a house elsewhere to rent as yours is undergoing renovations may not be the solution. He opines that it (moving) in a way puts you in a comfort zone and you find that renovations that could have taken, for instance two months, taking much longer.

Besides, the process of moving into another house normally comes with rent advance payments, normally three or four months, a budget you may not readily have at the time.

Chance to learn about the house

Then also, it gives you a chance to find out the quality of materials that were used in the original construction when the renovations are done as you are staying in the house. For example, the house could have been built using bricks made out of soil, unburnt bricks or any other substandard materials.

And beyond just substandard materials, you may also get to find out some sections that were poorly built during renovation. It could be the way the water connections or the electrical wirings were made and how the house columns were built.

This, Kajjoba confirms, helps you make a well thought through and informed decision on whether to go ahead with the renovations or break the entire house and build it afresh.

All in all, Kajjoba advises that most, if not all house renovations, just like house construction, have to be planned, much as it may not be as hectic and complicated as house construction. He explains that most renovations are more or less of house finishing because it may not require interfering with the initial house plan or structure, but rather giving the house a new look.

For instance, when it comes to renovating internal bathrooms and there is no provision of an external bathroom, the family or house occupants may first agree to share the bathroom used by the children as the one in the master bedroom is undergoing renovations.

At every stage of the renovation, Kajjoba advises that you take time to source for experts to correct any mistakes that could have been done by the initial house builders or technicians, but not those who learnt on the job regardless of how many projects they could have worked on. This, he concludes, not only helps you realise value for your money but it also helps determine the period of durability of your house before you can think of building another one or razing it down to build afresh.