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Blissfully Organised Top Tips On How To Plan For Building Works At Your Home

How To Plan For Building Works At Your Home

planning for building works; packing up for home improvements; getting organised for budiling worksLiving with the builders needn’t be a nightmare

As St Albans’ own lifestyle management guru, Tracy Ross makes a living out of helping other people organise their homes.

blissfully organised; tracy ross; expert organiserTracy Ross, Expert Organiser

As St Albans’ own lifestyle management guru, Tracy Ross makes a living out of helping other people organise their homes.

This means she’s ideally placed to manage five months of living amid a home renovation project – which is handy, as that’s what she had to do earlier this year.

The single story extension on her family’s home in Bernards Heath was completed in July, and being well prepared before the build began helped her enormously – as she explains.

“If you are reading this the chances are that you have already made the decision to stay in your home whilst your building works are being completed. I have helped many of my clients prepare their homes for building works to commence and I am currently living at home during building works with my family.” Tracy Ross.

I thought it would be really useful to share a few of my tips to help you stay sane and create a bit of order through the temporary chaos.

 

home improvements; home extensions; planning for building worksCareful planning can reduce stress on the home front

How can I prepare for building works?

We had to wait 4 months for our builders to start work which gave us plenty of time to get organised before the start date. If this is your first time living in during building work it’s hard to imagine what it will be like and how you can best prepare before work commences.

You will need to reorganise your home to enable you to live as comfortably as possible whilst allowing the builders to keep working around you and not holding up the schedule of works. Accept that things will feel out of order and you will be living in a much smaller space than normal. It’s only for a short space of time and the end result will be worth it.

Decluttering And Home Organisation

As you will be living in a much smaller space during the build it’s a good idea to review the current storage space in your whole house and allocate space to store things temporarily. You may need to create additional space in your loft, garage or bedrooms to store boxes during the build. Be realistic about how many boxes that you will need and make sure you think ahead about things that you might need access to during the build that you don’t need every day (sports equipment, suitcases or camping gear). If you start this process early you will have plenty of time to sell unwanted items on EBay or local Facebook pages. I have found the St Albans Mums and the Items for free and for sale in St Albans and local areas Facebook pages great for selling unwanted white goods. I am a big fan of sustainable living and recycling what we no longer need.

 

decluttering; home organisationTracy lived among the chaos of an extension project for five months

Setting Up a Temporary Kitchen

Before work commences you need to talk to your builder about where they will set up a temporary kitchen and living space and what will be possible. This is important so that you can plan for how you will cook, wash up and store the essentials you need each day.

Washing Up

I didn’t realise how much I loved my dishwasher until we had to start washing everything by hand. Some of my clients set up a temporary dish washing space in their bathroom. Our builders built a wall to separate us from the building work and used our old sink, draining board and old cupboards to build a temporary washing up area. We even had small shelves to store essential cleaning products (rubber gloves, anti-bacterial wipes and spray, room spray, floor cleaner and my essential item mop & bucket).

Cooking

There are a number of options that you can consider here. We used an electric hot place, slow cooker and microwave. If you don’t already I would recommend having your shopping delivered during the period of the build and planning your meals for each week. It’s more difficult to be spontaneous with a limited kitchen.

Storing the essentials

Think about what you absolutely need to use each day and how you will access these. We had a shelving unit from IKEA that we moved into the kitchen. Everything is on display and it’s very easy to see what you need.

Laundry

Living without a washing machine for several weeks has been my biggest challenge. As a family of 4 our washing machine rarely gets a day off. Neighbours and friends have been fantastic letting me do washing at their homes and using their clothes lines. For bigger items like towels and sheets it’s better to go to the launderette as you can get everything washed and dried in one go. You do need to plan your washing ahead as it’s not always easy to wash what you need at a time that’s convenient to you i.e. school uniform or sports kit.

building works st albans; building works harpenden

Neighbourhood Harmony

When you are having building work done at your home it can also be disruptive for your neighbours too. There will be deliveries (not always at the most convenient times), more vehicles parked in your road, a skip (changed several times) and in our case a portaloo (organised by our builders but essential if you don’t have a downstairs toilet). If you live in a busy road it’s respectful to let your neighbours know when your work will start and also when you are expecting any big deliveries. You may need to ask them to move a car.

Make sure you have your party wall agreement in place before building work commences. I can recommend Sarah Garside from McNeill Lowe & Palmer.

Our builders have been very tidy, particularly making sure to sweep up curb side and ensuring items in the skip are secure.

building works; temporary kitchen; blissfully organisedTracy’s temporary kitchen

living through buidling works; blissfully organisedAll the essentials…

Sourcing Fixtures and Fittings

Once the work commences you won’t have as much time to look for the items that you need to source. The builders will expect you to have thought about lighting, windows, sockets/switches and plumbing so when they need to install items you already have these in place. We had a very detailed schedule of works prepared which made it clear which items we needed to source and those that the builders would provide.

Start looking through magazines and Pinterest to get an idea of the style that you like and create a simple mood board for each room. It’s also good to talk to people that have completed similar building work to ask if they have any good recommendations and if they are happy with the decisions that they made. The Facebook page St Albans house renovations is a great source of local advice.

We found it took a long time to make a decision on the kitchen tiles. We visited several local showrooms and brought samples back. When we eventually settled on the tile we wanted I ordered them straight away as there was a 4 week lead time. They are now sitting in a local warehouse until we need them.

Paperwork Management

Day to day life can be more time consuming during the build and in addition to that you will need to schedule meetings with your builders, source new items and manage your budget. It’s a good idea to create 2 simple spreadsheets for the things that you need to buy and to track suppliers contact details and spend.

Pre Build: Items to source – refer to your schedule of works

Payment Record: Suppliers contact details, items purchased, value and delivery dates

Discuss with your builder how and when you will be billed for works completed.

The Builders

It’s really important to have an open working relationship with your builders. You will be living with them for your entire build. We are using Eagle Design and Build for our extension. I would highly recommend them. Jimmy who owns the company is a great project manager. He is very easy to speak to keeps you fully informed on daily progress. When the unexpected happens he has come up with some practical solutions.

We had several meetings with the builders before work started so had the opportunity to ask all the questions that we needed to.

home improvements; blissfully organisedThe stress will all be worth it!


If you need help preparing your home pre building works or post building works please Contact me at Blissfully Organised Home Organisation and Decluttering to find out more about how I can support you to get organised.

September 27, 2016 By Tracy Ross

Filed Under: Renovations Tagged With: building works, getting organised, home improvements

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  • Tracy is amazing. We were renovating our house and finally was able to plan some extra storage. Tracy helped us to plan out new fitted wardrobes and then came back a few months later to help me get into a system with my laundry ( one of the things as a family I find hard to keep under control! ). She is kind, non judgemental, motivational & inspirational! I would say most people could do with a bit of Blissfully Organised in their lives!

    thumb Laura Dannan
    December 14, 2020
  • Tracy is exceptional at what she does and is generous in what she gives. Highly recommend.

    thumb Jayne reah
    February 23, 2022
  • Tracy helped my young girls and I declutter before a house move. In particular I was impressed with how Tracy got on well with the girls (7 yrs and 3 yrs) straight away and explained the sorting process simply. This has had a lastly impact on my children, getting them to appreciate you can’t keep everything!! I too enjoyed spending focused time with Tracy looking at my wardrobe. I will definitely be implementing the learnings for my clothes purchases such as reducing my tendency to buy some items in too many colour ways! Thank you Tracy for all your help. Jo

    thumb Joanna Dew
    August 25, 2020
  • I first met Tracy in 2019. I live overseas and wanted to help my Mother clear a downstairs room to become a bedroom, I needed a gentle, trusted professional to complete the task after I had returned to my home. We all met and agreed upon a plan, but it was not to be as my Mother’s health deteriorated very quickly and she passed away. Although I did return to the UK a few times that year, decluttering wasn’t a priority. Then Covid put an end to my being able to return. Finally, in spring of this year, flight restrictions were lifted and I saw an opportunity to return to the UK, now faced with the task of clearing the family home. I contacted Tracy and thankfully, despite short notice, she had some free days to help me. We arranged 6 days throughout my 2 1/2 weeks to help me stay on track and motivated. Tracy helped me stay focussed and helped me believe we could achieve a fairly daunting task of going through a lifetime of memories, papers, photos and possessions. I had to be very disciplined about what was kept as whatever I chose to keep was to be shipped back to my Country. Tracy gave me time to tell a story about an item and why it made the “keeper”, or “think about it” pile, yet didn’t break stride in her work whilst listening. It was a very cathartic process. I felt like I was talking to a long time friend. She has a talent for putting you at ease, and for helping you see objects with a critical eye. Not once did I feel she was making the decision, more that she helped me verbalize my attachment, or not, and that really builds a bond of trust. After each session, I had “homework” to complete before we met again and a follow up email charting the successes of the day and the plan for the next session. As I was on my own during my stay in my family home, this could have been rather lonely, but knowing that Tracy was coming, both broke up the monotony of going through endless boxes and kept me on task such that the job was successfully completed.

    thumb Andree Stow
    May 9, 2022
  • Tracy has helped me many times over the years, and I think I must have known her for 10 years now! When I first contacted her I had reservations about letting someone into my home, making judgments and telling me what I should do. But Tracy's service is NOT like that at all. She did a full home audit and we chatted about what I hoped to achieve. For years I'd been frustrated by our storage area, a large room under the house which was hard to access and full of things we hadn't seen for years. We agreed to tackle it and Tracy suggested that to start with, we took everything out. I thought she was completely mad at this point. Three hours later we had done just that, assessed what was there, got rid of some of it, sorted some and made plans for the rest. It was like a massive weight had lifted from my shoulders. After that she helped me organise rooms, and filter through boxes of stuff. More recently she helped me prepare for a big move. It's always an absolute pleasure to see Tracy and she is very thoughtful in her approach. Her service is life changing and I am very grateful that I contacted Tracy all those years ago. Contact her now, you honestly won't regret it.

    thumb Clare Suttie
    June 11, 2020

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Call Tracy on 07818 423376 or email: tracy@blissfullyorganised.co.uk

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