Renovating While Living in Your Apartment (Sydney): Stay or Move Out?

Almost every "living through a renovation" guide online is written for a house. In a house you can renovate one room at a time, put a portable toilet and a caravan in the yard, run a barbecue for cooking, and catch up on weekends. An apartment takes all of that away. This guide is for Sydney apartment and unit owners deciding whether to stay put or pay for somewhere else, with the real constraints a strata building adds.

Can you live in your apartment during a renovation?

For a single-room renovation, usually yes. For a bathroom that is your only bathroom, or a full-apartment gut, usually no. The honest answer is set by scope, not willpower. Here is the call we give owners across 1,000+ Sydney apartments, before any work starts.

A bathroom that is also where the washing machine lives takes the laundry out too, which catches a lot of unit owners by surprise.

Why an apartment is harder to live through than a house

Because every workaround a house owner relies on is gone. There is no yard for a portable toilet, a temporary shower, or a caravan to sleep in. There is no second living area to seal off and escape to. And in an apartment the builder usually has to take the whole unit as a single job site, rather than working room by room around you.

Three apartment-only realities drive the difference: you share air, water and walls with your neighbours, so dust and water shut-offs are not just your problem; strata by-laws cap when work can happen; and access for trades and materials runs through common property and the lift, on the building's terms, not yours. None of these apply to a freestanding house.

The dust is the part people underestimate

Demolition day is the worst of it, and in a sealed apartment the dust has nowhere to go. Cutting tiles, render and concrete throws off respirable crystalline silica, which is a real health hazard, not just a mess. Without proper control it settles on every surface in the unit and recirculates through the air you breathe.

Dust control is a skill, and it is the difference between staying and fleeing. A proper apartment crew seals the work zone with plastic zip-wall barriers, runs negative-air extraction that vents out a window so air flows into the work area and not out of it, protects floors and hallways, and does a clean-down at the end of each day. Done well, the dust stays behind the barrier. Done badly, it is in your wardrobe and on your toothbrush.

Water and power shut-offs in a strata building

Mostly the water stays on. The plumber isolates it for a few hours on demolition day to make the area safe, then works around the fixtures for the rest of the job. The apartment-specific catch is that you cannot just shut your own water off. Isolating the building's water riser affects other units, so it has to be booked through the building manager and your neighbours given notice.

Power to the rest of the apartment normally stays on, so the fridge, lights and the rooms you are living in keep running while the work zone is isolated.

Work hours, noise and your neighbours

Your strata by-laws set the hours, and they are usually stricter than the law. The NSW standard for residential construction noise is 7am to 6pm Monday to Friday and 8am to 1pm Saturday, with nothing on Sundays or public holidays. Most apartment by-laws cut that further, commonly to 8am to 4pm on weekdays only, with no weekend work. That removes weekend catch-up, which is the main reason an apartment job takes longer than the same work in a house.

One practical reality of the on-and-off trade schedule: tradespeople do not always turn up on the day you were told, so it helps to have someone able to let them in. Owners who work from home, or who give the builder a key and clear access, keep the job moving instead of stalling between trades.

Living without a kitchen, or without a bathroom

A kitchen you can work around. A bathroom, if it is your only one, you usually cannot. That single fact decides most stay-or-go calls in an apartment.

For a kitchen renovation, set up a temporary kitchen in another room before demolition starts: a microwave, a kettle, a benchtop induction hob, a toaster, and the fridge relocated nearby. Wash up in the bathroom or laundry sink, and lean on simple meals and takeaway for a few weeks. It is annoying, not unliveable, and people get used to it faster than they expect.

The bathroom is the hard one. During the strip-out and waterproofing you have no working shower or toilet for roughly two to three weeks, and in an apartment there is no yard for a portable toilet, and strata will not allow one anyway. The common workaround owners use is a gym or public pool to shower, plus staying with family for the worst stretch. If you have a second bathroom, you stay. If you do not, this is usually the point to move out.

When to stay, and when to move out

Stay for a cosmetic refresh or a single-room renovation where you keep a working bathroom and a way to cook. Move out for a full-apartment gut, for an only-bathroom strip-out lasting more than a few days, or whenever someone in the home is dust-sensitive. Then do the simple maths: a few weeks of a furnished rental, against weeks of dust, restricted hours, no wet area, and the strain it puts on everyone in the home. For a lot of owners the rent is the cheaper stress, and the work finishes faster with the unit empty.

Frequently asked questions