Home renovations?

So I'm looking at buying a condo or townhouse. Quite likely I'll need to do some renovations. Painting, of course. Quite possibly hardwood laminate floors, etc. I was wondering if anyone else had done any renos while they had birds? Is it enough to keep them in a separate room, or perhaps better to have them totally out of the house. I'm just worried since parrots are so sensitive to chemicals... And goodness knows what is in some of the products we put in our homes.

For the most part, you're in luck because today's paints & flooring laminates are available in both low-VOC and zero-VOC versions. If your painting project is going to be a whole-house endeavor, you might be wise to find & do some advanced discussions/negotiations with a painting contractor now, well in advance of your move.....get him/her in to look at the condo/townhouse ASAP or even take some good pics of each wall in each room, start in the upstairs back & work out the front door, before the move-in. Time and costs will be less.....same goes for self-painting projects. As long as your flooring will be true hardwood laminates, you should be good there, as those products are interlock or nail down or a combination of both. If any adhesives are to be used, obtain a MSDS (material safety data sheet) before anything is opened. Not sure about Canadian requirements, but those are usually available from the manufacturer's websites, for downloading. The trend has been movement towards water-based adhesive products, so you're probably safe with those type adhesives. The only problem area I can see is if you are installing wall-to-wall carpeting.....make sure that the vendor can & will roll out carpet, in their warehouse facility before it is delivered to your home, otherwise plan on your birds being out of the house for 30-45 days. New carpeting offgasses chemicals, as does some backings/paddings. If you get an agreement about pre-installation layout, be sure it is in writing and drop by the layout facility during the layout period. Normally, small vendors do not have the facilities to rollout carpet & leave it out to breathe & offgas for a week or two. Similarly, anyone purchasing a new stove/range/oven should have it operated/burned in for 24-48 hours at the vendor, outside on their back porch or garage before installed in the home, so that any oils, coatings, cleaners are burned off before installation.....many of these products are used in the assembly of new appliances and are dangerous to birds.

I had no idea they made VOC free laminate. That's fantastic to know. Thanks so much for the helpful post. And I despise carpeting, so that's not a concern haha. I also would never have thought to ask that a new oven be run for a day or so, but it makes perfect sense.

As for painting, I'm renting right now and really cannot afford both rent and a mortgage... So it'll probably be a room-by-room endeavour... So that may be a bit tricky. Though most of the townhouses I've looked at have two or three floors, with multiple bedrooms... if I keep Pixel in a bedroom on a different floor than I'm painting long enough for the paint to offgas, should that be sufficient?

We painted the main room before moving in and we use low voc paint and as we progress over the years remodeling room by room we use low voc paint and pergo flooring. Then the birds were ready to move into their bird room in a day after installation.

MikeyTN said:

We painted the main room before moving in and we use low voc paint and as we progress over the years remodeling room by room we use low voc paint and pergo flooring. Then the birds were ready to move into their bird room in a day after installation.

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We're going through this same process through the whole house.

I think the noise and "Change" bothers MAC more than any fumes etc.

We tend to open up and air out even though we are using low VOC paint.

Seems each day there are major changes and MAC eyeballs the changes with some concern. He settles down quickly but can't understand why the furniture keeps getting moved around!!