Storing Your Home During a Renovation

Storing your home’s contents during a renovation keeps furniture safe from dust, damp and damage — and gives the builders a clear space to work. We collect everything from the door, store it in a dry warehouse, and redeliver when the work is done.

Building work and furniture don’t mix. Dust gets into everything, wet trades raise the humidity, and tradespeople need room to move. Clearing the contents into collected storage protects your things and speeds the job up — then it all comes back to a finished home.

Why store furniture during a renovation?

You store furniture during a renovation to protect it from the dust, paint, knocks and raised humidity that building work brings — and to give the trades a clear, safe space. Furniture pushed into one room and sheeted over still gets dusty, damp and in the way; collected storage takes it out of the firing line entirely.

A sheet over the sofa won’t stop plaster dust, damp or a stray boot — the only real protection is getting it out of the room.Why people clear the room

What should you store during building work?

Store anything the work could damage or that gets in the way: soft furnishings, wooden and upholstered furniture, electronics, artwork and anything valuable. Keep only what you need day to day, and let storage hold the rest until the dust has settled — literally.

• Sofas, beds and wooden furniture — dust and damp are hardest on these.
• Electronics, art and valuables — keep them well away from the work.
• Soft furnishings and rugs — they hold dust and smells.
• Anything in the trades’ way — a clear room is a faster, safer job.

How much of the house do you need to clear?

How much you clear depends on how much of the house the trades will be working in, and on how far the dust travels. A single-room job can often be handled by emptying that room and the one next to it; anything involving plaster, floors, rewiring or a staircase usually means the whole floor, because plaster dust does not respect doorways.

Each container holds 250 cu ft — roughly 5ft × 7ft × 8.6ft, about the contents of a one-bedroom flat — so a three-bedroom house cleared in full usually lands around three. The rows above are a starting point rather than a quote; the crew confirms the number as they load, and you pay for the containers actually filled. Our storage size guide breaks the same maths down room by room.

A worked example: a two-bed house having the kitchen and bathroom done

Take a two-bedroom house having the kitchen replaced and the bathroom refitted over an eight-week programme, with the family staying put. Out goes the dining table and chairs, the kitchen’s contents apart from one box of everyday plates and pans, the sofa (the living room is the route between the two jobs), the rugs, the pictures and the spare bed that has to move so the plumber can reach the pipework. That is a single container.

One container is £21 a week for storage and insurance, with collection and redelivery quoted upfront as a separate charge worked out by volume and distance. So an eight-week programme that slips to eleven simply means three more weeks at the same weekly rate. Two containers cost £42 a week, three £63 and four £79, all on those same terms — the weekly figure is the storage; the collection and redelivery quote sits alongside it. The full picture is on our pricing page, and the service itself is explained under container storage.

How does storage work around a renovation?

Storage works around a renovation on flexible weekly terms, because building projects rarely finish on time. We collect and seal your contents into your own container, keep it in our dry, alarmed warehouse for as long as the work runs over, and redeliver in stages or all at once when you’re ready.

Because the warehouse is dry and ventilated, your furniture is better protected than it would be under a sheet in a damp, half-finished house — see how a dry container protects furniture, or our furniture storage service.

A renovation storage timeline

Most renovation storage follows the same shape, and it is worth booking around the trades rather than around your own diary:

• Two to three weeks before the start date — book collection. Builders’ start dates move, but it is far easier to push a collection back a few days than to find a slot at two days’ notice.
• The week before — box up the small items. The crew arrives with blankets and wraps and loads your furniture; boxing the smaller things is down to you, or our packing team can do it as a paid extra quoted upfront. Our guide to packing furniture for storage covers the parts people usually get wrong.
• Collection day — we wrap and load, build and seal your container on the doorstep, and take it back to the alarmed, CCTV-monitored warehouse at Ashington. The house is handed to the trades clear.
• During the works — your container sits in our warehouse rather than in a drive-up unit you let yourself into, so anything you find you need is brought back out to you rather than fetched.
• As rooms finish — redelivery can be staged. Bedrooms usually finish before kitchens, so the beds can go back while the rest waits.
• Snagging and decorating — keep soft furnishings and rugs stored until the last coat is properly dry, not the day the decorator packs up.

Because there is no minimum term and no deposit, that timeline can move without penalty — you pay by the week for storage and insurance, with collection and redelivery quoted upfront as a separate charge. If the job is genuinely short, short-term storage is the same service over a few weeks; and we collect right across the county, so see areas we cover for the towns on the round, or our page on storage in Horsham for a sense of how a local collection runs.

Can you access your things during the renovation?

Yes — if you need something back mid-project, we redeliver it on request, usually on 24 hours’ notice. So if a room finishes early, or you realise you need a particular item, it doesn’t have to wait until the whole job is done.

What if the renovation overruns?

If the renovation overruns — as building work so often does — your storage simply continues on the same flexible weekly terms, with no penalty and nothing to rearrange. You pay only for the extra weeks, and we redeliver whenever the work is finally finished.

Should you keep valuables out of storage during the works?

Keep small valuables, cash, jewellery and important documents with you during a renovation rather than in any store. Everything else — furniture, electronics, soft furnishings and the contents of the rooms being worked on — is better off collected and stored safely until the dust has settled.

What to keep at home while the work runs

The mistake people make is clearing so thoroughly that daily life becomes impossible and half of it has to come straight back out again. Keep a deliberate site kit behind:

• A kettle, one set of plates, mugs, cutlery, a pan and a chopping board — kitchen jobs always run longer than planned.
• Bedding and towels for however long the works last, not just the first week.
• A vacuum you do not mind ruining, plus dust sheets, bin bags and a decent doormat for each threshold.
• Basic tools, a torch, extension leads and a step ladder — you will want them, and they are no use to you sealed in a container.
• Cash, jewellery, passports and key documents, which are better kept with you than in any store.

White goods deserve a specific mention. A fridge, freezer or washing machine stores perfectly well once it has been emptied, drained and fully dried with the door left ajar — but a machine put away still damp inside will smell by the time it comes home. The same logic applies to anything that has been near a wet trade: plaster, screed and new render all release moisture as they dry, so give pieces time to air before they are wrapped and boxed. Our guide to what you can’t put in storage covers the rest, including the paint, solvents and gas bottles a renovation tends to leave lying around, none of which can go into storage at all.

More questions about storing during building work

Can you store our things if we are living in the house through the works?

Yes, and that is the more common version. You keep your site kit and the rooms you are still using; everything from the rooms being worked in, plus anything sitting on the access route, goes into the container. It is usually one container rather than three, and it keeps the trades moving.

Can the builder let you in for collection if we are at work?

What matters is that somebody who knows what is going and what is staying is there while we load, because the crew works to whatever has been agreed on the day. Arrange for that person to be present, whether it is you, a relative or the builder, and mark anything that must not be touched clearly before we arrive.

Do you store building materials, paint or tools during a job?

Tools and non-hazardous materials are fine. Paint, varnish, solvents, gas bottles and fuel are not — they are flammable or pressurised, and UK storage rules and insurance exclude them. We also do not store vehicles of any kind, so a caravan parked on the drive during the works is not something we can take.

Can we get the sofa back before the whole house is finished?

Yes. Redelivery does not have to be all or nothing — individual items or whole rooms can come back on 24 hours’ notice as spaces become usable, which is exactly why the labelling you do at packing pays off months later.

Is the garage or a friend’s spare room not cheaper?

Cheaper on paper, usually worse in practice. An unheated garage swings through the dew point whenever the temperature drops overnight, and condensation is what actually ruins furniture — the same effect set out in our guide to winter furniture storage. A dry, ventilated, alarmed warehouse with the contents insured is a different proposition from a cold concrete floor, and at £21 a week for one container’s storage and insurance, with collection and redelivery quoted upfront and charged separately, the gap is smaller than most people assume.