01
Where the refrigerator lives
Decide before demolition, and put it on a circuit that is not part of the work zone’s panel run. An unheated garage through a Reno January is not the same appliance it was in your kitchen.
How to live in the house during a remodel
Staying put is a scheduling decision before it is a comfort decision. What containment actually consists of, which rooms go offline in what order, and the stretch nobody plans for.
- Published
- 6 October 2026
- Subject
- Site life and phasing
- Decided at
- Schedule stage, before demolition
- Faster than reading
- (775) 200-0648, Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM
01Stay or go
Staying costs schedule. Leaving costs rent. Neither one is free.
Every homeowner asks whether they can stay in the house, and the honest answer is that they usually can, but the decision carries a price nobody quotes them. A crew working around an occupied house builds and rebuilds containment, works shorter hours beside a home office, carries material along a protected route, and cleans to a standard that lets a family use the building at five o’clock. That is real time, and it shows up as calendar days rather than as a line item. Moving out costs money you can count instead: rent, a second set of utilities, storage, the friction of two addresses.
So the choice is between a cost you can predict and a cost you have to live inside. What makes it decidable is knowing what the disruption is, week by week, before demolition starts, rather than being told afterwards that this is simply what construction is like. Stay or go is one of the decisions planning a Reno remodel end to end sets up, and the rest of this page is the information that decision needs.
02How the house goes offline
Rooms do not go out of service all at once, and the order is a choice.
-
01
Before anything comes out
Containment goes up first: a hard barrier at the boundary of the work, protection along the crew’s route, and a temporary kitchen you can actually reach. Demolition before containment is why households give up in week two. You get a marked crew path, a sealed clean side and a working temporary kitchen
-
02
Demolition
The loudest and dirtiest days of the job, and the shortest. Everything coming out comes out in one run rather than spread across the schedule. You get the dates in advance, and an open room documented in photographs
-
03
Structure and rough-in
Framing, then plumbing, electrical and mechanical. This is where the scheduled outages land: a day without water, an afternoon with a circuit dead. Each is a planned event with a date, never a discovery. You get a written list of which service is off, on which day, for how long
-
04
Drywall
The dust peak, and it arrives after the dramatic part is over. Sanding produces the finest dust on the job, the kind that defeats casual containment. You get containment upgraded for sanding, not the same barrier as demolition
-
05
Finishes
Quiet, long, and where a household relaxes too early. Cabinets are set, a counter is templated, then there is a gap while it is fabricated. The room looks finished and does not work yet. You get the fabrication gap on the schedule as a named period, not a surprise
-
06
Punch and close-out
Containment comes down, the final clean happens, and the list is walked together. The house comes back in one piece rather than room by room. You get a signed punch list and the barrier gone on a stated date
03Containment
Four elements, and sheeting taped across a door frame is none of them.
- Element one
- A hard barrier with a real doorA framed and sheeted wall, or a tensioned system with a zippered opening, at the boundary of the work. It has to survive being walked through forty times a day.
- Element two
- Air moving the right directionThe work zone is held at lower pressure than the rest of the house, with filtered air exhausted outside, so air moves into the work rather than out of it. Most often skipped, and decisive.
- Element three
- One protected path, and only oneProtection from the entrance the crew uses to the work zone, everything else off limits. One route means one thing to clean and one surface to repair.
- Element four
- A close-down at the end of each dayCleaning, tools stowed, the barrier shut and the path swept before anyone leaves. It is the difference between a house you can use in the evening and one you camp in.
04What we cannot promise
Containment has two limits, and you should hear them before demolition rather than during it.
The first is dust. Containment reduces it; it does not eliminate it, and anybody promising a dust-free remodel of an occupied house is describing a sales position rather than a jobsite.
The second is what is already in the walls. Houses built before the late 1970s can contain materials with their own handling requirements, so where that is possible the work is tested before it is disturbed. Until that test comes back we cannot tell you the sequence or the price, because both of them depend on the answer. We would rather say that plainly than give you a number we would have to take back.
05The plan we draw first
Before the demolition plan there is a plan of where you will be living.
The study beside this text is the drawing an occupied job gets: the work zone, the barrier line, the single route from the crew’s entrance into the work, the side of the house that stays clean, and the spot where the temporary kitchen is set up. It takes an hour to draw and it settles most of the arguments that would otherwise happen in week three.
Drawing it forces the awkward questions early. Where does the refrigerator go. Does the crew route pass a room somebody works in. Is there a second bathroom, and if there is not, what happens the day the only one is out of service. The plan is yours to argue with, and that is the point: it is far easier to move a barrier on paper than to move it once the framing is up and the air machine is running.
- WORK ZONE
- TEMP KITCHEN
- CLEAN SIDE
- BARRIER
- CREW PATH
- OCCUPIED-JOB ZONE PLAN · SCHEMATIC
06The kitchen gap
Six decisions set how bad the weeks without a kitchen are.
The gap runs from the day the sink comes out to the day the counter is set and the plumbing is reconnected, and it is longer than most people assume. Its length is set by the order a kitchen is built in, not by how fast anybody works.
02
Two appliances, chosen deliberately
A portable induction hob and a microwave cook most of what a family eats. What cannot be improvised is a hob and a full oven at once, so pick the two you actually use.
03
A sink you can reach
A laundry sink, a bathroom basin, or a hose bib with a table beside it, on the clean side of the barrier. A sink reachable only through the work stops being used by week two.
04
How dishes get done
Either a wash station with a drying rack, or a decision to eat off disposables for a defined number of weeks. Both work; discovering in week one that neither was set up does not.
05
What gets packed, and what stays out
Pack the kitchen as though it were a move, then keep out a short list: two pans, plates, the coffee routine, the knives, one board. The rest becomes clutter you clean around.
06
The stretch nobody plans for
After the cabinets are set the counter is templated, then fabricated, and the fixtures cannot be connected until it lands. Ask for that period as a date range on the schedule.
07Both directions
We hold ourselves to four things, and we ask four of the household.
An occupied job runs on a short set of agreements, best written down at the schedule meeting rather than assumed. Ours: a stated start and stop time, a named person on site, a look-ahead each week saying which days are loud and which service is off, and the close-down at the end of every day. If framing slips a day, you hear it from us that day.
Yours: pets and small children stay on the clean side, because a barrier only works if nobody props it open; the crew path stays clear; decisions land on the dates the schedule asks for them; and nobody moves the barrier or the air machine.
The other lever is the schedule itself. A change order, the written amendment that adds work to the job and re-prices it, costs calendar as well as money: one that adds two weeks adds two weeks of exactly what this page describes, which is why a change order silent on schedule is only half a document. So if you are weighing how much work you take on, the scope, against how long you can stand living beside it, settle that trade on paper at the schedule meeting rather than in week three.
08Questions
Households that stayed put asked these three questions.
A door the dog is behind that the crew has no reason to open, and one person responsible for it during working hours. The real risk is not the dog and the crew meeting; it is an exterior door propped open while material is carried in. Tell us at the schedule meeting and the route gets planned around it.
Usually yes, and it is worth planning rather than hoping. Two things put laundry at risk: it sits on the wrong side of the barrier, or it shares plumbing or a circuit with the work zone. Both are visible on the zone plan before anything is opened.
No, and most households are not. What is needed is an agreed way in, an agreed way to reach the person running the day, and decisions answered inside a day when one is asked for. A weekly look-ahead and a named contact do more for you than standing in the hallway.
09Where to go next
Four pages answer the questions this one keeps raising.
01
How a job runs, phase by phase
The six phases, the document each one closes with, and where the schedule this page describes is actually set.
02
Permit timelines, and what stalls them
The weeks before a crew arrives, which is the other half of how long you live alongside the job.
03
A planning range before anybody draws
Room type, size, finish tier and whether structure moves, for when the question turns from how long to how much.
04
How an ADU is reviewed and built
If the project is a detached unit rather than work inside the house, the disruption has a different shape.
10Start a conversation
Tell us the house and who is in it. We will tell you which weeks are the hard ones.
Bedrooms, bathrooms, whether there is a second one, who works from home, pets, small children, and what you are thinking of building. That is enough to say honestly whether staying put is realistic and what it does to the schedule.
Fastest way to reach us
(775) 200-0648
Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM. A person answers, and it is somebody who has run an occupied job. The form goes to the same place, one business day behind the phone.
Question received.
We will call you back within one business day with the answer for your address. If you would rather not wait, call (775) 200-0648 now: Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM.