I think the dealbreakers are:
- our dog’s health
- removing walls
- demolishing existing tile flooring throughout home
- changing drywall from textured to flat finish
If our dog were healthy and/or we weren’t doing these things, it would be easier to stay. We don’t have quotes yet so we shall see.
We are 4 1/2 months into a major remodel, with about a month to go. We did this with 3 people in the house, one dog, and 4 cats (started out with 5 but one cat died during all this -- not due to the remodel, it was a very quick aggressive cancer).
About your dog, it would be less expensive for the dog to move out for the duration rather than you move out. Most veterinarians that I have had have offered boarding. So, in this situation you might consider boarding your dog. You could even board him on week days when construction was occurring and then move him back on the weekends.
Anyway, so lot's to say. We have stayed in the house for the duration. Before we started we said that if it became unbearable we would go get a nearby AirBnB. Our real estate agent had commented to me that she had moved into an AirBnB house nearby while she was having her house painted.
Anyway, it has been difficult but I am glad we did it this way and didn't spend the money to move out.
What we did/are doing:
1. Completely gutted our master bathroom and redid a totally new design.
2. Revamped several closets. We reconfigured some and added one to the master bedroom.
3. Doubled the size of our kitchen pantry.
4. Removed a wet bar in our family room (being used as my office) and added that space and some storage space from the garage to the utility room. This more than tripled the size of the utility room.
5. Upgraded our electrical panel and put in a hybrid hot water heater
6. Replaced the 18 year old HVAC with a new heat pump
7. Completed removed a massive brick fireplace and chimney. This is the current project. The remaining part is to enclose our covered patio and make it indoor space (this involves not just building a wall, but raising the floor, removing siding on the patio to put in sheetrock, added HVAC to the new enclosed area. We are also removing what were the windows in our living room and making them French doors going into the new sunroom (the enclosed patio).
8. Oh - yes - we removed a window in our bedroom to put a door in that goes to the patio. We were tried of having to traipse through the entire house dripping when we came in from the pool.
9. Minor remodels of the half bath and guest bath. Half bath we are changing a pedestal sink to a vessel sink on a cabinet. Also putting in new hardware and lighting. But, we are keeping the existing flooring and toilet (toilet is only a year old). In the guest bath we are replacing the cultured marble countertop with granite and a new sink and getting new hardware except in the tub as we aren't changing out the tile around the tub. Keeping existing toilet and cabinets. This work is in process right now.
So -- this has been a massive project. One thing that made it difficult is that we had no open guest room to use. We have one but our son is occupying it right now. While they were doing the master bath we couldn't sleep in the master bedroom. DH slept on the loveseat in his office (with the dog). I slept in a recliner, mostly in our exercise room with the cats.
I am not a morning person. So this past Friday when they were taking down the brick fireplace early in the morning, it definitely woke me up. But, I got used to it. I use the computer a lot and those noise cancelling headphones came in handy.
The dust has been huge. The big things causing the dust were when they were moving our plumbing in the concrete in the bathroom and when they were doing demo work in the bathroom and the utility room. Oh -- also when the brick fireplace came down. We covered the living room furniture with plastic but there is dust everywhere.
We are now able to use our bedroom and the new bathroom and the new utility room and pantry. We bought our house last year and it was very storage challenged. We have really tried to improve the storage situation. We are using a lot of the expanded utility room space for storage. We had Elfa put in the master closet, DH's office closet and the new pantry. It has helped a lot.
It has all been very difficult. There were weeks that we ate out almost every day. We want someone there all the time so it makes it hard for DH and I to get stuff done. But, we have caught so many things early on by being here. I would be nervous to move out and not be here everyday seeing the work done.
The big dust things in what you would do are the removing of tile (huge creator of dust) and the re-texturizing. Moving walls is actually not that big a deal in terms of dust in my experience. Friday morning in my living room I had a massive brick fireplace with a large brick hearth (the chimney had already been removed). By the end of the day, the fireplace was gone, the huge hole in the wall and been framed and sheetrock put up to close the hole.
Anyway - if you decide to stay research where you might go if it gets to be too much for you. Given your dog's health problems though I would probably board him during the most difficult parts of this.
They talk about spending $10-20K on a bathroom, and I'm appalled. The components in bathrooms are just not that expensive--tubs, toilets and fixtures. And since square footage is so little, there's very little money spent on ceramic tile and flooring.
I spent about $11,000 on the tile for the master bath. That is about $5400 for the tile itself and the rest for the labor involved. Granted I had a lot of tile as there is no tub but there is an 8' long shower with a tiled bench. And, of course, floor tile. The tiles we used weren't the cheapest but were far, far from the most expensive.
Cabinets - $5400. We had a lot of cabinetry. DH has a vanity. I have a long vanity with a seated area. We have 3 large floor to ceiling cabinets.
Plumbing - about $4300. We kept our toilet in its existing location so as to not have cost to move it. We did create our shower in an area that didn't have plumbing lines so that was expensive to move lines there. My vanity is in the same area where we had a vanity previously. DH's vanity was in the area where the old shower was so not much moving of lines there.
Shower glass - About $2100. We have a long frameless shower. The glass is expensive.
Paint, TBT - about $5600. We moved the door to the room. Much of the ceiling had to be replaced. We had a lot of new sheetrock in the room. All of those cabinets needed to be painted. We put in a light hand trowel texture.
Electrical - about $2500 -- We had lots of new lighting and outlets
Doors - about $650 - pocket door to toilet room, new doors to bathroom
Mirrors - about $850 - Standoff mirrors for the two vanities
Carpentry work -- about $11000 - this includes demo, framing (we demolished two closets in the bathroom and built a new toilet room when there had not been one before), sheetrock, baseboards, installing all the hardware
Quartz countertops for the two vanities along with sinks - almost $3200
Bathroom hardware - about $6300 - two faucets, 2 vanity lights, toilet paper holder, hand towel rings, robe hooks, Toto washlet seat, full length mirror for toilet room, drawer and door hardware, hinges for doors, rainhead shower head, hand shower, grab bar
Before we bought everything I went back and priced all of the tile and hardware using cheaper materials. I could have saved several thousand dollars doing that. I could have probably have halved the cost of the tile and the bathroom hardware if I just looked for the cheapest alternatives. Also, if I just didn't do things like have a rainhead shower head and just put in a regular shower hear. Or I didn't put in the outlet for the Toto washlet and just got a regular toilet seat.
If I had kept more of the original footprint of the bathroom, I could have probably saved another $10k. But -- we gutted the bathroom because it was non-functional for us. I was very big on having a functional bathroom that worked for us. And, I love it. It has been worth every penny. I will try to gather some of my pics and post a before and after.
But -- it was very expensive. When I first started getting quotes I was shocked at how much it was going to cost to redo this. The minimum was $25k if I used the cheapest materials and basically didn't change the existing layout (a waste of $25k).