Stay safe during a remodeling project

My sister is an emergency room nurse, and she’s always telling me horror stories of children who have been seriously injured and/or killed. The stories are enough to make your blood chill. Last summer, an 18-month-old about my daughter’s age at the time fell into a pool during a big family gathering and drowned. Everyone thought someone else was watching the baby, but the baby had other ideas and was toddling around after the big cousins, found the pool and fell in. The baby died.

I couldn’t stand for something like that to happen to my darling daughter.

So I try to always be careful.

Now, I know I can’t be so careful that she’s never able to do anything or learn anything. I like to think I am walking that balance between safety and smothering. I’m sure she’ll tell me someday when I erred on either side.

For now, my focus has been on keeping her safe through our major remodeling project.

Luckily we’re not living at the house while we’re tearing it apart. I don’t know how I’d manage that although I know that other people have lived through such chaos before and somehow survived. For me, keeping a toddler’s hands away from the power tools and leftover carpet tacks isn’t something I want to do 24/7. So we live in an apartment and are weekend and evening warriors.

I have to confess I do my best to leave our little girl at home. Well, not exactly at home, but a babysitter’s home. Lucky for me, my best friend lives just down the street from our apartment. She’s been seeing a lot of my daughter and just a little bit of me for the past few months. (When will this project end?!)

There are a million dangers at the project house.

We’ve torn up all the flooring and left the carpet tacks where we plan to reinstall carpet. Where we tore up the linoleum, we were left with millions (I swear!) of tiny staples that took an extreme effort to pull out. We tore out a wall in the living room and had a few holes in the floor while we decided what to do about various vents. Then there are the loosely stuffed toilet vents that we poked old carpet padding into while we redo the bathroom floors. The constant sheetrock dust that gets into your nose and chest. The trim we pulled off with the nails sticking out. The pieces of sharp tin from the heating vents. The fireplace sitting in the middle of the room that a climber could easily pull down. The uncovered sump pump hole.

Like I said. A million dangers.

I’ve done my best to remove things to the dumpster out back as quick as I can, but it seems like as soon as I haul something out another two items replace it. It’s endless.

So when our little girl comes to the job site, I keep a close eye on her. She wears shoes (which she always wants to rip off), she’s dressed in her own “work clothes” (overalls and old sweater), and she has to stick close to mom. I don’t get much done when she’s there except that I unplug a lot of power tools.

I have 2 important rules:

1) Our two-year-old isn’t allowed in the house when momma’s painting. I don’t want her to inhale those nasty fumes. Even though I’m using the low VOC paints, I want to expose her to as little as possible.

2) She’s not allowed around when we’re sanding sheetrock. That dust settled in my chest and gave me problems for weeks.

For a long time, we kept just a slice of carpet in the living room area for her. I’d sit her down there with snacks and toys. Now that the carpet is gone, I plop her in a chair; she likes big people chairs, so that keeps her in one place for awhile. Oh, and she LOVES climbing into the old center island we’ve got hanging around and playing hide and seek. I like that game and that location. It is completely safe as long as she stays inside the cabinet. I’m about to lose that now this weekend when we install the new wood floor. But when we install the Bellawood, that floor will finally be safe. Oh, there is an end in sight!

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We plan to move into the house after the remodeling is done, but then embark on an addition. I’m not entirely sure how I plan to handle safety when we are living in a work zone, but I’m pretty sure it will involve doors, locks and stern “Do not go theres.”

Here’s a few other tips from Consumer Reports.