How We Renovate With a Baby in the House

In the past few days husband and I both have been asked the same question several times, "How do you do all that painting/renovating/etc. with a baby in the house?"  So, this post is our answer!

While sometimes it would probably be nice to let someone watch Henry for a few hours so we can get things done a little faster, I can assure you that he's with us 100% of the time.  In fact, the last time we had anyone else watch him was actually while we were closing on our house!

That may make us sound like crazy losers who have no life, or control freaks who don't let anyone else watch our child, but it is what it is.  The reality is that everyone else in our lives who we trust to watch him, is also super busy on the weekends.  Just about all of our friends have kids, and most of them have babies that were born in the last year, so we try not to add to their workloads unless it's a real emergency.

The honest truth is that it really doesn't seem like a problem having Henry in the house while we're doing all this work.  We do work around his nap and sleeping schedule a little, but that means that we actually have to take some time off from house work and spend quality family time together.

Not the worst thing in the world.

Because the bathroom that we're working on redoing right now is one of our biggest projects to date, I thought it might be helpful to explain just exactly how we've worked on it.

This was our weekend...

Saturday

H woke us up around 9:00, (that never happens, and before you think we're lucky ducks, let me tell you he was up from 11:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. the night before).  I nursed him while husband fixed us coffee.
After Henry had his milk, husband took him and fixed breakfast while I did all "cutting in" paint on the bathroom walls with a paintbrush.
I finished up about the time breakfast was ready, so we all sat down together to eat breakfast, (oatmeal for the boys a caprese omelet for me).
After breakfast we both played with Henry in the playroom until nap time.
While Henry was napping husband painted the bathroom walls with a roller while I took a shower and got ready for the day.
Henry woke up around 12:30, nursed, and we left the house to eat lunch out and run some errands.
The rest of our Saturday was just normal family Saturday stuff, errands, and playing with Henry, dinner at home, (pasta with kale pesto cream sauce, and raw veggies), and Henry's bath and bedtime routine.
After his bath, I nursed H and put him in bed while husband loaded the dishwasher.
After H was down for the night husband and I took the doors off the bathroom cabinets, washed them really well, sanded them down, washed them again, and headed to bed around 11:00.

cabinet doors late Saturday night - all prepped and ready for stain

Sunday
H woke up at 7:30, (that's his normal wake up time).  I nursed him while husband fixed us coffee.
We fixed breakfast together, (homemade tortillas and breakfast tacos).
Henry played in the floor for a little while, and then got fussy so husband wore him in our baby carrier while we finished up breakfast.

After breakfast husband and H played in the playroom while I started sanding the base of the bathroom cabinets.
After Henry went down for his nap, husband joined me in sanding and cleaning the bathroom cabinet base, and we started staining.
Because we only have one brush, I stained the cabinet base and he stained the cabinet doors while I took a shower.
He was still working on the cabinet doors when H woke up from a way-too-short nap.
So H and I played and from the living room watched Daddy working on the cabinet doors in the sunroom.

I watched H and made lunch, (fish tacos and refried beans), while husband took a shower.
After lunch we played with Henry and then all three took a Sunday afternoon nap.  Side bar-aren't Sunday naps the best?
Sunday night we had dinner at my parents' house for my aunt's birthday.
After Henry was in bed Sunday night, we sat on the couch and watched old episodes of 'How I Met Your Mother,' because we were still waiting on the first coat of stain on the cabinets to dry.  And we were a little sick of working on the bathroom. ;)

So yeah, that's pretty much a normal weekend around here.  We usually do one intense weekend of working on the house, (like this past weekend), every other weekend, and run lots of errands and do a big grocery shopping trip on the next weekend.  It's busy and the weekends always seem too short, but we're pretty pleased with this arrangement.  Yes, we might be able to get a lot more work done on the house faster if we had someone watch Henry, but this allows us to still spend lots of quality time with him and still get stuff done.  Actually, the way it works out usually, he's up during the times when we'd just be sitting around literally waiting for paint to dry anyway.

Some things that make it easier to renovate with a baby in the house:

Teamwork!
Husband and I have been together for almost 11 1/2 years, and we work really well together.  We have no problem starting something, only to switch off in the middle and let the other one take over.  We also don't have a problem stepping out of the traditional gender roles.  Husband does plenty of dishes and laundry and I do plenty of staining and painting.

There are some things that I almost always do, (like cooking meals, etc.), and some things that he almost always does, (hanging things on walls, painting the walls, [I'm too short!], etc.), but for the most part we work on things together.

Our Baby Carrier!
We like to joke that Henry does a lot of the house work and renovations too!  He's really good at playing independently some times, (always where we can still see him, that kid can get in to stuff so fast!),

Trying to go through the cat door, he doesn't fit thankfully! ;)

but other times he's extremely clingy and is perfectly happy to be worn in the baby carrier and see everything at eye-level.

Patience
We know that we're moving along at a slow-and-steady turtle pace on the house, and we're perfectly fine with that.  No, we're not as far along as we thought we'd be by now, but we're also very happy with what we've gotten accomplished so far!

Motivation
We like to remind ourselves that all of these weekends full of hard work should be temporary.  We know there will always be upkeep and normal maintenance on the house, but there will come a day when all the rooms in the house are painted, there's not an inch of oak stain left on anything, and we'll be able to just sit back and enjoy a house that actually looks like "us."  Looking at before and afters of our living room alone are big motivation for us.  We're so happy with the way things are looking!  Even if we're not done yet the progress pushes us to our end goals!

An Empty Room
Right now our sunroom, (seen here as Henry's playroom), is basically empty.  We moved his playroom to the front dining room for the winter, which left only a few 1/2 unpacked boxes in the sunroom.  We're able to work on things like staining the cabinet doors, or painting our interior doors in the sunroom where we can close the door off and Henry can't get in to things.

So that, my friends, is how we renovate with a baby in the house! Anyone have any tips that you think might help us more?

Jennifer