Every so often, our homes need a facelift. You could be newlyweds putting a personal spin on your first shared place, or you could be redoing the house you bought together 30 years ago. It may be minor or it may be major, but eventually, it will happen. Many homeowners put off a minor one until it has to be a major one, and the delays are always due to a reluctance to deal with the inconvenience and mess of a renovation. People get the idea that the entire home has to be out of sorts for months and months, driving them to the brink of insanity with the mess and dysfunction of the upgrades.

But that is not necessary. Home renovation and redecoration can be done in stages so that you don’t have the whole place turned upside-down at once. Yes, you will have some mess somewhere all through that period, but you’ll be able to keep much of the house intact until it’s time for that particular room.

Call it a progressive renovation, a planned series of projects through the various spaces and functions of the home that culminate in a cohesive final result that doesn’t disrupt your life nearly as much as a renovation done all at once.

Planning a progressive renovation should involve prioritizing the spaces you want to do first, both emotionally and functionally. For most families, that means starting in the kitchen.

The kind of kitchen remodeling & design Mountain View residents choose is appealing for two reasons: visibility and function. The kitchen is often the space we see the most, and that our guests see the most. It is also the place in the house that does the most work, with food preparation as the obvious main task but also with everything from homework to bill paying.

Kitchen renovations typically focus on more than just the aesthetic. It is a good rule of thumb to note that when wall treatments and floor coverings have gone out of date, the appliances and fixtures have done so as well. So start with removing those bulky items, do your cosmetic work, upgrade utilities as needed, and install the new appliances. A few nights improvising dinner with the grill or the toaster oven and you’ll be back to normal.

Where do we go next? It’s largely up to you and your lifestyle. You may not even want to do the next space indoors but rather with outdoor spaces like a garden or porch.

Make your decisions based on what you do most. Maybe the youngest child’s bedroom was just redecorated when she was born three years ago. Save that room for much, much later and instead go to your own bedroom, which has been neglected as the kids came along. Crash a few nights on the couch and get your room done.

Think about entertainment spaces. Some families have kids in the house all the time, and you might want to save those beaten walls and stained carpets until everybody grows up a little bit. You might focus on heavily-used foyers and entryways, which are fairly easy to work around during a renovation but will give you a lot of encouragement about your progress once they’re done.

You get the idea. First, there’s no right sequence for everybody, just whatever makes sense to you. And second, try to contain the project to a single functional space at a time. You might be improvising in one room or another for a year, but you won’t be improvising in all rooms at the same time. You might call it containing the inconvenience, and that’s the idea of a progressive renovation.