Stay in the house, or move out for the renovation?

People decide this after the demolition date is already on the calendar. By then the contractor has priced an empty house, the short-term rental is gone, and someone is sleeping on the couch next to a shop vac.

Staying is cheaper on paper and slower in the rooms you still use. Leaving is a second monthly bill and a cleaner job. Neither is the grown-up choice. The choice is which costs you are willing to pay.

The jobs that are not livable

If the only bathroom is coming out, you are not living there. A toilet in the basement that still flushes, with a door that closes, is a different project from a gut bath on the only floor you have.

Same test for the kitchen, with one exception. A hot plate, a microwave, and the fridge parked in the dining room can carry a household for a few weeks. They cannot carry a household through a winter if the gas is off and the temporary setup is a kettle.

Dust from old plaster, lead paint, or anything that might be asbestos is not a lifestyle inconvenience. If that material is being disturbed, sleep somewhere else until the containment comes down. The asbestos guide is the cost side of that decision. This one is the calendar side.

What an occupied house actually costs the contractor

A crew working around your life is slower. They plastic off doorways every morning, they haul debris through a path that still has to look like a home at 6 p.m., and they lose the hour they would have spent with the radio on and the floors unprotected.

Ask for that premium in writing, as its own line, before you compare it with leaving. If the quote just says "occupied," you cannot tell whether you are paying for daily cleanup or for a number someone typed because you said you might stay.

• Floor and stair protection that gets replaced, not reused until it shreds
• A dust barrier that is actually taped, plus a shop vac at the end of each day
• Work hours that stop before bedtime if a bedroom shares a wall with the job
• A longer schedule, which is where the labour cost hides

What leaving actually costs you

Rent is the obvious line. Storage, eating out, a longer commute, pet boarding, and the security deposit you do not get back are the ones that make a "cheap month" into two. Write them down as a lump before you tell the contractor you will be gone.

Insurance is the line people skip. Many Canadian home policies change the coverage when nobody is living there, and the cutoff is in your wording, not in a national rule. Call the insurer before the first night away and ask what they mean by vacant, and whether a renovation is already an exclusion. Do not guess a number of days from a forum.

Heat still has to run if you leave in January and the envelope is open. A house with the furnace off and a wall missing is how pipes fail. Budget fuel for an empty building, or do not open the envelope until spring.

A practical split that is not all or nothing

Demo week, the days the kitchen or the only bath is out, and any day old finishes are being cut: leave. Cabinet install, paint, and flooring in rooms you can shut a door on: you can come back.

Put both numbers on one page. The occupied premium, the extra weeks, and the rent-and-storage lump. Then pick. If you stay, the contingency still has to cover a hotel for the week the toilet is in the driveway. That week happens.