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Tips for Renovating a Home with Young Kids

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Last Updated on January 12, 2021 by lindseymahoney

After renovating four homes (while living there), Chris and I have a few tips for renovating a home with young kids. Over those 10 years, we both had full-time jobs and were raising two rambunctious kiddos and still survived living through construction zones.

Tips for renovating a home with young kids | Building Bluebird

Top Tips for Renovating a Home with Kids

1 | Focus on One Room at a Time

By focusing on a single room at a time, your home will begin to slowly feel put together. This can be hard to see sometimes when there are a million little projects you want to tackle throughout the house.

In our new home, Chris and I decided that our primary focus would be updating the first floor. We love to entertain and the sooner we could update those rooms the better. Start with whatever room will make you the happiest and complete every project in that space.

Our dining room makeover is a great example of focusing on one room at a time. I finished the dining room renovation in 6 weeks and I am so happy that every detail is complete! It feels really good to be able to check that entire space off my list and enjoy the beautiful room.

Tips for renovating a home with young kids | Building Bluebird
2019 Fall One Room Challenge

2 | Make a List of All Projects within One Room

To simplify the secret to our success, we turned a large project into “bite-sized”, manageable projects. It can be overwhelming to begin a renovation project, especially when you are raising children and can only work for short periods of time.

Tips or renovating a home with young kids | Building Bluebird
Unfinished Basement Makeover

Start by making a list of every task you need to complete in a room and check them off one by one. As you finish more tasks on your list you will see your space transform! This is such a great feeling and always motivates me to keep going. Breaking down large projects into a bunch of small projects really helped us to feel like we achieved something each week.

3 | Create Clean Living Zones

It was important to create a renovation-free zone in your home before you start major projects. Before we moved into our current home, we made sure our kitchen and family room were done. This allowed us a comfortable space for our family as we worked through our remaining list of home renovation projects. Trust me, you will want a clean, quiet area to get away and relax.

Tips for renovating a home with young kids | Building Bluebird

In our third home, we really needed to renovate the two full bathrooms and our master bedroom at the same time. We decided to the first renovation would have to be the basement bedroom and bathroom so that we would have a clean place to sleep and a functioning bathroom for the family.

Tips for renovating a home with young kids | Building Bluebird

Once we finished the basement bathroom and bedroom, we tackled our master bath and guest bath upstairs. I made sure our master bedroom and bathroom were finished before I gave birth to our second child!

Tips for renovating a home with young kids | Building Bluebird

4 | Get the Kids Involved

This is a really hard one, but it is also incredibly rewarding in the long run. We try to involve the kids in all of our DIY projects, even if it is for a short period of time. When our kids are involved, they are so proud of the finished product and want to show all of our friends and family the updated space.

Tips for renovating a home with young kids | Building Bluebird

Here are a few DIY and renovation projects for kids to participate in:

  • Demo’ing walls
  • Painting walls
  • Cleaning
  • Gopher for tools
  • Helping screw in nails
Tips for renovating a home with young kids | Building Bluebird

5 | Keep the Construction Zone Clean

Whether kids live at home or not, keeping the construction zone clean while renovating a home is important for safety. At the end of the day, we swept up the floors, organized tools into a corner, and tidied up the room as best we could.

6 | Be Patient and Enjoy the In-Between Moments

Remember to enjoy your home during the renovation process. It can be hard to share your home with friends and family during this time with rooms not fully put together, but it is worth it. Renovating a home can take years and it’s important to love your home through every stage!

We celebrated our daughter’s birthday at our new home and the inside was completely gutted! The fridge in our garage was stocked, the bathroom had toilet paper and we were ready to party! We created wonderful memories in our new home, even if we could only access a small part of it.

Tips for renovating a home with young kids | Building Bluebird

Renovating a home with young kids is not always easy, but following these 5 tips helped us to keep our sanity and create a space that we loved.


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