Renovating with a baby

Someone asked me the other day how we find renovating with a baby. As today is said baby's first birthday (don't ask me where a whole year went!) I thought it was an appropriate day to expound upon this.

Just a few hours old and blissfully
unaware of the turmoil his DIY
wannabe parents will thrust upon him.

The short answer: it's much slower and trickier than without a baby!

The worst part is having large areas of the house very much un-childsafe, which means we've been spending a lot of time in certain rooms. The downstairs bedrooms, which we finished before we moved in for this purpose, are safe, but still aren't ideal for playtime; our freshly folded clothes seem to be mysteriously strewn across the floor more often than I'm fully comfortable with.

We find ourselves trying to get a lot done during naptime - but these are becoming less frequent... And as any parent will know, the day I really want him to have a nice long sleep because I need to finish a coat of paint will be the day the nap only lasts half an hour.

Sometimes we ambitiously try to get things done with the small helper around, but more often than not this ends with one of us fully focused on the boy to prevent him from eating screws / playing with saws / falling through holes in the floor.

Which is not to say that the baby-wrangling is bad - it's lots of fun and for every set of challenges there are rewards too (we like him!). But it does definitely need to be factored into the planning because it... changes things.

Baby loves Bunnings!

And the most helpful thing: I'm currently unemployed (a recent development of my own doing) but we have kept our part-time childcare arrangements in place, as I will seek work again soon. This means I get some time to spread out the tools without having to worry about little fingers, which definitely supports progress!

If only I could work out a way for these self-indulgent projects to also generate enough income to make this more than a temporary arrangement... Anyone want to pay me to project manage their renovations? ;-)