Tips for Escaping from Kitchen Renovations

Kitchen renovations are so exciting - at the end you know you'll have a wonderful place in which to create fresh meals at home. But the renovation period itself can be quite stressful, leaving you without a kitchen and without the ability to make the meals you want:

Here are a few tips for escaping the nightmare of a kitchen-less home for the duration of kitchen renovation:

Set up a temporary kitchen with a microwave, refrigerator (your old one, the one that's going to be installed in your new kitchen, or a small undercounter model), and toaster oven. We had a setup like this in our living room during our small DIY renovation a few years back. While it was tough, it did help us get by without eating out all the time.

If you're using an undercounter fridge (we did) set up a large cutting board on top of it for a prep surface. If not, use a protected tabletop for supporting a cutting board, microwave, and toaster oven.

If you have other small appliances that would help you through the renovation (like a rice cooker), set it up in your temporary kitchen, too. We wouldn't necessarily recommend going out and buying new appliances for this purpose, but if you already have them put them to use!

Think partially homemade: pick up soups at the grocery store that can be combined with fresh foods for a homemade/preprepped hybrid.

Prep freezer meals in advance that can be microwaved when you need them. Here are a few from The Kitchn: Good Question: Make-Ahead Frozen Meals Sans Canned Soups, What Sorts of Recipes and Meals Freeze Well?

This isn't pretty, but dishes will probably need to be done in the bathroom sink. If you have a separate shower and bath, try to deep clean the tub and designate it for dish cleaning only (the bathroom sink can be tiny when it comes to this task. Try to stick to single-dish meals and curb your dish usage until the renovation is complete.

(Image: Kitchn reader, Julie)

Comments (6)

Ugh - yes, yes, yes! Excellent advice... although, I've been going through a renovation since oh, February and I'm so sick of my toaster oven & microwave in the LR, the knives in our bedroom, plates under the stairs, storage containers in the kids' rooms, etc. etc. etc... I'm ready for it to be finished. I've been doing a lot of the work myself, so maybe the key is to hire someone else to do it all (quickly!).

When I redid my kitchen, I went to Italy for 6 weeks. I highly recommend it.

ilovebutter -- great suggestion!

A temporary kitchen is a must for DIY renovations. We set up shop in our dining room (adjacent to the kitchen). Paper plates and plastic silverware, and pots and pans were often washed over our compost pile.

My husband and I are renovating our kitchen mostly DIY (someone will be installing the cabinets for us, but we've done everything else ourselves--and still have a bit left to do). We are lucky in that we have another house to live in, temporarily rent-free. But we've been at it since the beginning of March. We planned to do a relatively minor face-lift, but discovered some problems which required more significant repairs. I don't know what we would have done without a fully functioning kitchen. I'm so glad we can reno the kitchen in our house before we move in!

Although, if I had the money to contract the whole thing and also take a wonderful trip, I would be thrilled to take ilovebutter's advice.

We spent nine weeks without a kitchen/dining room and we did the following:
Set up the dining room table, with a protective sheet of plywood and a wipeable cloth, at the back of the living room with microwave, toaster and a double camping gas stove on it.
Put the fridge/freezer out in the garage.
Got some temporary cheap shelves for pots and pans and plates etc so they had somewhere to be.
Froze a lot of ready-cooked food beforehand.
Used the BBQ when we got desperate for grilled food (we ate a lot of bolognaise/chilie/curry/stew) even though it was February. Who knew you could roast potatoes on the BBQ! But charcoal was hard to find in winter.

We managed not to eat out/get takeaway more than we would normally, maybe once a week or so, plus meals at friend's houses and we did survive.

We planned it all well in advance and made sure we had proper storage for stuff so that it didn't feel like we were living in a kitchen.