Moving out for a renovation is expensive. Staying put is cheaper and, for most projects, entirely doable — as long as nobody is expecting it to feel normal.

Here is what it is actually like, and how to make it work.

Decide honestly whether you should stay

Staying is usually fine for a kitchen, a bathroom, a single-room refit, a loft conversion or a rear extension where the existing house stays broadly intact.

Think harder about it if:

• The whole property is being rewired or replumbed, meaning extended periods without power or water
• You are having floors up across most of the ground floor
• Someone in the house has a respiratory condition — dust management helps but does not eliminate dust
• You have a newborn, or you work from home on video calls all day
• The kitchen and the only bathroom are both out at the same time

A short stay elsewhere during the worst two weeks is often a better answer than a full move or a miserable three months.

Dust is the thing people underestimate

Not the noise. The dust.

Good practice means dust sheets, taped protection, zip doors on openings, and hoovering down at the end of each day. It makes an enormous difference and it still will not be perfect. Fine dust travels, and it will find its way into rooms nowhere near the work.

What helps:

• Empty the working area completely rather than covering things and hoping
• Take pictures and soft furnishings out of adjacent rooms too
• Keep wardrobes and drawers shut, and bag anything that matters
• Accept that a proper clean at the end is part of the job, not a failure along the way

Set up a room that stays yours

Pick one room, ideally upstairs and away from the work, and keep it clear. Clean bedding, a kettle, somewhere to sit that has nothing to do with the project. When the rest of the house is a building site, having one door you can shut matters more than you would think.

The kitchen question

If your kitchen is out, set up a temporary one early rather than improvising daily. A microwave, a kettle, a plug-in hob, a table and access to a sink somewhere. A utility room, garage or even a garden table under cover works fine. The households that struggle are the ones that never set anything up and ate takeaways for three weeks.

Water, power and heating

Ask, at quotation stage, which days you will be without what. Isolations are usually short and planned, but knowing on Monday that Wednesday has no water is completely different from finding out at 9am on Wednesday.

Children, pets and parking

• Pets need a plan. Doors get propped open and gates get left open. A day at a friend's or a shut door with a sign on it prevents a bad afternoon.
• Children cope better than adults with mess, and worse with early starts. Ask what time the team arrive.
• Parking and deliveries are worth agreeing with your neighbours in advance rather than apologising for afterwards. Materials arrive on lorries and skips need space.

Tell your neighbours first

A short conversation before work starts is worth ten afterwards. Roughly how long, roughly what hours, and a phone number if something is genuinely a problem. Most neighbour disputes are about surprise rather than noise.

What to expect from the people doing the work

Reasonable things to ask for, and to have agreed up front:

• Agreed working hours, and no early starts without warning
• Protected routes through the house
• Site cleared down at the end of each day
• One point of contact who actually answers the phone
• Notice before anything gets isolated

The difference between a bearable renovation and a horrible one is almost entirely communication, not the amount of dust.

Planning work around a house you're still living in

If you are weighing this up, tell us how the property is used — who is home during the day, whether anyone works from home, children, pets, and which rooms you cannot afford to lose at the same time.

We will build the programme around it and set out in writing which stages affect what, so you can decide what to stay through and what to plan around before anything starts.