Reno stories: we have a starting date for our project!

That’s right, we have a starting day for our reno project! The first official day of renovation is in mid-November. It took us nearly a year to get to this point, 11 months since we appointed our architects and 3 months after the planning permission was granted. That may sound like a long time, but there was so much to do since the planning was approved that November really was the earliest possible starting date for us.

Moving out

We knew from early on that living in the house whilst the reno had started wasn’t an option. We are gutting the whole house to improve the layout and building a new floor on our bungalow, so living there would have slowed the process down too much. And having lived through our two previous projects, I really wasn’t up for it anyway.

If you follow me on instagram, you might already know that finding a temporary rental flat took a few attempts. Our first choice for rental was located on our road, but unfortunately that didn’t work out as the owners wanted to sell it instead so we lost it. After viewing a few more options we have now paid a deposit on a really cute 2-bedroom flat and will move in early November. I think it’ll make a great bolthole whilst the reno is in the progress!

The plan is to move in to the flat with only a selection of our stuff and put the rest into storage. We do have a big garage, but the builders will need to access electrics & plumbing in there so we’ll have to pay for the storage. We’ll have a go at more minimalistic lifestyle!

According to our newly appointed builder, the project should take about 6-7 months if everything goes to plan (fingers crossed). That means we might be moving back in April-May time already! Our builder provided us a schedule of the reno works so we’ll know when we need to order windows, cladding, bathrooms etc. I’ll share that soon.

Edit. Project has started and here is my first weeks roundup post!