Top 5 Child Safety Tips During Home Renovations

Renovating your home can be a stressful event, especially if you have decided to continue living in the house while construction is underway. With workers coming and going, tracking dirt and debris all over the house, you’re sure to have extra cleaning to contend with, not to mention noise and a high level of inconvenience overall. But if you’re remodeling certain areas, the kitchen, for example, you’ll have bigger problems to deal with due to the loss of living space; in this case you won’t have a place to cook or store food. Unfortunately, that may be the least of your worries if you have children in the house. Not only are they more susceptible to ailments that could be caused by cracking open your house and letting the insides out, but there are a number of other hazards that could befall them during the renovation process if you’re not prepared to protect them. Here are just a few safety tips that should help to keep your kids in top form throughout your home upgrades.

1. Test beforehand. You never know what dangers could be lurking in your walls when you open them up. While you might not see dry rot or building code violations that have compromised your structure until the construction crew comes in and starts demo, you can certainly test for hazards like mold and asbestos before you start renovations. This can help you to determine whether or not it’s safe for you and your family to remain in residence or if you should call in a professional hazmat team and move your kids to Grandma’s house or a hotel.
2. Seal the work area. Any time you have work done on the house, chances are that the construction crew is going to kick up some dust, and how. So do what you can to seal off the rooms being worked on in order to contain dust and debris as much as possible. By taping up a neoprene barrier you should be able to minimize the transfer of construction waste into your living area.
3. Clean thoroughly. Okay, if we’re being honest, there’s no way you can stop the ingress of dust and detritus from construction into the rest of your house, although you can certainly keep it to a minimum with temporary barriers. The point is that you should schedule in some extra time for cleaning to make sure that the dust doesn’t settle everywhere and that small yet harmful items like nails and screws don’t roll all over the house for crawling babies and toddlers to find.
4. Use air purifiers. In addition to cleaning the house you’ll probably want to keep your interior air as clean as possible. Air purifiers can help by pulling dust and allergens out of the air and locking them into specialized filters.
5. Cordon off construction zones. You don’t want your kids wandering into areas where floors, walls, and ceilings could be missing, live electrical wires could be exposed, and any number of other hazards could be lurking. In addition, construction workers going in and out all day will likely leave doors and windows open for ease of use and some fresh air while they work. Since you probably don’t want your child wandering out through an open door or falling through a window, much less stepping on nails, falling through the floorboards, or grabbing live wires, your best bet it to keep them away from construction areas completely. Consider locking interior doors, installing baby gates, or simply keeping small children in a baby play yard when you need a little break from chasing them around.