2 TIPS I LEARNED FROM MY CRAZY KITCHEN RENOVATION

This summer, Kaye and I hired a renovation company to remodel our kitchen. They found out pretty quickly that renovating the home of an indoor air quality expert isn’t just another day on the job. I think it really hit them when I handed over a fan on their first day of work. 

“Look, I’m an indoor air quality guy,” I said. “If you’re painting, sanding, or cutting anything inside the house, please open a window and use this to blow the dust outside. I also want you to put plastic on the doorways to isolate the kitchen from the rest of the house.” I don’t think they’d heard that one before! 

The workers didn’t know it, but I also decided to conduct a little experiment while they were there. I thought it would be interesting to track the particles of heavy and fine dust that accumulated in the air during the remodeling project. So, I set up my laser particle counter to take a reading every 15 minutes until the whole ordeal was over. 

The job Kaye and I needed was pretty simple. We’re building a new house, so we wanted to do a little remodeling on our old one before selling it. That meant repainting a few walls, expanding our pantry, replacing countertops and door handles, and resurfacing our old brick fireplace. It wasn’t a complicated project but, boy, was it disruptive and dusty! For two weeks, Kaye and I lived out of our master bedroom, and during the whole thing, my laser particle counter ticked on. 

From day one, it was easy to see an elevated level of dust in the air. This didn’t worry me too much — some dust is inevitable if people are sanding things in your living room — until one day I came home to see a whole cloud of it floating throughout our bottom floor! I grabbed the fan, dashed into the kitchen, and set it up to blow the nasty stuff out of a window. 

The contractors working watched me with a mix of alarm and guilt on their faces. They’d clearly forgotten my instructions, but after the looks I gave them, they never did again! From that point on, we finished the remodel almost without a hitch. 

I say almost because before I hired the remodelers, I asked for their insurance certificate and discovered the workers weren’t covered by workers’ compensation insurance. That meant if someone was hurt on the job, they could sue me! When I pointed this out to the head contractor, he promised his team had so much experience it wouldn’t be an issue. I agreed to work with them, but of course, on the very first day, one of the workers fell off a ladder. Fortunately, he only bruised his shin — but let me tell you, my heart stopped when I heard the crash! 

At the end of the whole ordeal, we had a new kitchen, there was no lawsuit in sight, and my laser particle counter had gathered nearly 3,000 data points. (To check out what I learned about the air Kaye and I were breathing during those 30 days, see my next blog post.)

If you’re remodeling your home or a section of a building you manage, you can learn a few things from my remodeling experience. First, always confirm that your contractor has workers’ compensation insurance and/or that their staff won’t sue you. Second, make a real, serious fuss about having the renovation team blow dust out of the house rather than into it. The same principles apply during a commercial building renovation on an occupied floor. Consider adding special air filters to your air handler unit to capture dust and insist that the contractors add air filters within the construction space. This will help filter the dust, particles, and smoke the remodel generates. 

Ultimately, in order to control the quality of your air during a remodel, you need to control your contractor. Take a leaf out of my book and deploy those dirty looks! The health of your tenants depends on it.