#6 of the top 10 Sanity Savers When Remodeling

We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this review or post, but all opinions are our own.

Plan ahead for your pets.

What are you realistically looking at. Are you moving out? Is the house going to be safe? Plan for the project taking longer than scheduled, and ask yourself if that changes what you are planning for your pets.

At the onset of our project we had two dogs, a cat, about 20 chickens, a large pet Tom turkeys and a bachelor duck. Our weird menagerie was not going to be moving to the city with us. I felt like we were asking a lot of the town we were moving into with the 10 kids. Our situation was unique in that we had 17 days notice to find a place to live for the next 6 months of construction. Hopefully you have more time to consider your situation. We had not planned on leaving our home so we were scrambling to do some planning for our animals.

We had already thinned down the chicken flock because construction for the garage was going to overlap the chicken house. In the end we decided against building a new chicken coop and caring for the flock from a distance. Instead we chose give the girls away. My kind and dear friend volunteered to take in the flock, as well as my remaining Tom turkey and lonesome duck.

Two weeks were not nearly enough time to teach the dogs town skill so we arranged for them to stay at the house during construction. Men were working on site every day and with our restaurant nearby my husband planned to stopped over and make sure they were cared for. Our dogs are country dogs. They run pretty free and are always in a pair, so we altered their life very little with this arrangement. The dogs looked forward to their daily lunch breaks and grew a bit fat on crew scraps.

The arrangement worked for the most part but there were times that the dog snuck into the house and did not get let out until the next morning so, I would caution against this arrangement if you can not visit your site daily.  Consider your job site as well. Is it going to be secure. Consider your animals bad habits. Does your cat or dog chew cords or foreign objects. On a small job you might just need the loan of a kennel for a few day and some extra walks. For a larger project relocation might be part of your plan.

For our whole house remodel we would no longer have the same floor plan. The litter area would be in the middle of our new family room in the basement. Not going to happen. Since the cat is mostly an outside dweller. Knowing that, we moved the litter box into the new garage as soon as construction on it was finished, so he would be used to the new location when we returned.

Animals are curious and will get them selves into messes. Thinking about them before you begin a job will save you and them a great deal of stress. Making arrangements before hand will save you money.