Clearing furniture out of a remodel zone entirely, rather than shuffling it from room to room, protects your belongings and gets the contractor finished sooner. Crews work faster in empty rooms, dust travels further than anyone expects, and furniture parked in a hallway for six weeks tends to take more damage than furniture that just left the house.
As a premier moving company in Lake Elmo, MN, our team at Daymakers Moving & Storage handles renovation empty-outs across Washington County, moving belongings into our humidity-controlled facility here in Lake Elmo and bringing everything back once the work wraps up.
Owning both the trucks and the storage means we can hold your dates flexibly, which matters when a contractor’s schedule slips, so we usually recommend booking the empty-out for the week before demolition, not the morning of.
What a Remodel Actually Does to a House Full of Furniture
Construction dust is finer than household dust, and it gets everywhere, including inside cabinets, behind closed doors, and into upholstery. Plastic sheeting over a sofa slows it down without really stopping it, and a sanded floor or a demolished wall kicks up enough airborne grit to settle through an entire level of a house.
Fabric holds onto it, and so do the tracks and mechanisms in anything that slides or reclines. It’s one reason so many homeowners start looking into local storage options before demo day even starts.
Traffic does the rest. A renovation brings trades in and out for weeks, carrying tools and materials through doorways that were never sized for them, and anything left along that route gets bumped sooner or later.
Lake Elmo homes with finished basements and split levels tend to have one primary staircase, which becomes the only route for both the crew and whatever furniture you tried to relocate downstairs.
Moving Furniture Out Beats Moving It Around
Shuffling furniture between rooms feels cheaper, and honestly, for a single-room project it sometimes is. Past that, though, it creates a house where nothing is really usable, the contractor loses access to half the space, and every piece gets handled repeatedly by people whose job is carpentry, not furniture handling. Repeated handling is where the damage happens, more often than not.
A full empty-out changes how the project runs. Trades move at their own pace without working around a dining set, dust control gets simpler, and you stop living in a house where the spare room doubles as a furniture warehouse. Our local movers wrap and load in one day for most projects, which beats the weeks of improvised shuffling it replaces.
Where Remodel Belongings Go While the Work Happens
Renovation timelines move, and storage needs to move with them. Our units take both short-term and long-term arrangements, so a four-week kitchen project that turns into a nine-week kitchen project (it happens) doesn’t mean renegotiating anything fundamental.
We treat this as temporary storage in the truest sense, holding humidity between 35 and 55 percent with monitoring around the clock, which protects wood furniture from the splitting and cracking that dry winter air tends to cause.
Access during the project is worth planning for too. You’ll want something before the work ends, usually a specific box or a piece of furniture, and reaching it shouldn’t turn into a whole production.
Call our office and someone from our team will meet you at the facility, shifting stacked items to reach whatever’s buried underneath. We also run dust suppression and pest control at the facility, which is a pretty relevant contrast to a garage or a barn sitting out on the property.
Noticed the crew’s about to start and you’re still deciding what needs to leave the house? Give us a call at (651) 317-8713, and we’ll help you sort it out before the first wall comes down.
Protecting Floors, Trim, and Stairs During the Empty-Out
The empty-out itself can damage the parts of the house you’re not even renovating. Finished floors, freshly painted stairwells, and original trim all sit along the route between the furniture and the truck, and heavy pieces travel that route repeatedly.
Our crews run floor protection and pad doorways and corners before anything moves, the same approach we take on a standard move when we’re protecting hardwood floors and carpets.
Weather gets factored in as well. A Minnesota empty-out in March means wet boots and grit tracking across floors that are staying put, so the path from the door to the truck gets covered too. If the remodel includes the entry or the stairs, just mention it during the walkthrough, and we’ll plan the route to avoid the work zone entirely.
What to Move Out of a Remodel Zone First
Not everything needs to leave, and honestly, a good empty-out is selective. These should go first:
- Upholstered furniture and mattresses, which hold construction dust permanently
- Electronics and anything with a fan or a vent, since fine dust reaches internal components
- Wood furniture and anything with a finish that scratches under repeated handling
- Artwork, mirrors, and glass, which are the most common casualties of a busy hallway
- Anything irreplaceable, including documents, instruments, and inherited pieces
Items that can stay are usually the ones the contractor is replacing anyway or the ones you’re prepared to see damaged. Work through it room by room before the estimate so the quote reflects the real volume, not a guess.
If a renovation is on your calendar this year, our team can walk the house and build the empty-out and the return around your contractor’s schedule, rather than against it.
Getting the House Put Back Together Afterward
Redelivery is the part people underestimate. Furniture comes back to a house with new floors, new paint, or a new layout, and setting it down in the nearest available spot is how a fresh remodel picks up its first scratches.
Our crews bring items in with the same protection they left under and place pieces where they actually belong, rather than wherever the truck happened to stop.
Rooms often need rethinking after a renovation, since the space just works differently than it did before. Our interior design placement service covers that step, positioning furniture and decor to a plan instead of pushing it against the nearest wall. Coming back from storage into a finished house should feel like the end of the project, not the start of another weekend of work.
Have questions about timing your empty-out, or just want to talk through the plan first? Contact us, and we’ll help you figure out the right next step. You can also reach us at (651) 317-8713 or daymakersmoving@gmail.com.
