A homeowner in Alta Vista called me last spring, two days before our crew was set to start a main-floor reno. Her question: where does all my stuff go? She had a sectional, a dining table that seats 10, a piano, two bookcases, and a basement already packed with kids' bins. Nothing was going to fit anywhere.
That conversation happens in almost every project. Furniture storage is the part of a renovation nobody plans for, and what it costs depends entirely on the option you choose, the volume you're storing, and how long the reno runs. Here's how to figure out which option fits your project.
The four real options for Ottawa homeowners
Forget the fifteen variations storage companies advertise. In practice you have four choices:
- In-home staging. Move everything into rooms not being renovated. Cheapest, most fragile.
- Portable container in the driveway. PODS, BigSteelBox, or Dymon. Locked, weather-tight, sits on your property.
- Off-site climate-controlled unit. Dymon, U-Haul, Public Storage. Drive your stuff there, retrieve it when done.
- Sell or donate. Underrated. A renovation is the cleanest excuse to thin out anything you've stopped using.
The right answer is usually a mix of all four. The mistake is picking one and forcing everything into it.
Option 1: In-home staging
If you're renovating a single room with the rest of the house intact, this works. A kitchen reno, for example, doesn't usually require moving the living room couch. The dining table goes to the garage; the bar stools go to a bedroom; the small appliances go on a folding table in the basement.
What kills in-home staging is dust. A real renovation generates fine drywall and plaster dust that floats through the air and settles on every horizontal surface for two blocks. If you leave a fabric sofa 15 feet from a demo zone, it will need professional cleaning when the project ends.
The plastic sheet rule
Anything staying in the house gets wrapped in 4-mil plastic sheeting (a single roll from Home Depot covers a lot of furniture) and taped shut. Furniture, art, electronics, the piano. Any furniture left uncovered within 30 feet of the work zone will need a deep clean afterward, and that costs far more than the plastic.
I also tell homeowners to seal off the work zone with proper temporary walls, not just plastic taped to the doorway. ZipWall poles with 6-mil plastic, plus a rented air scrubber, contains 90% of the dust for a small daily cost. Worth every dollar.
Option 2: A container in the driveway
This is what I recommend for most full-room renovations. PODS, BigSteelBox, and Dymon all drop a steel container in your driveway. You load it, lock it, and either keep it on-site or have it picked up and stored at their warehouse.
The line items you'll be quoted on, in Ottawa:
- Container delivery: a one-time drop-off fee
- Monthly rental on-site: billed per month while it sits in your driveway
- Monthly rental off-site: usually a little less per month than on-site
- Pick-up fee: a one-time charge at the end
The total is driven by how many months you rent and whether the container stays on-site, so the length of your reno matters more than anything. A short kitchen project costs a fraction of what a multi-month full-home reno does.
The advantage of on-site storage: you can grab anything you forgot at any time. The disadvantage: it sits on your driveway and takes up two parking spots all winter. If you're in a denser neighbourhood like Hintonburg or the Glebe with limited driveway space, off-site is the better bet.
"Driveway containers fail in two weather scenarios. One: a heavy ice storm pins the door shut. Two: a city plow buries the back end. Both are recoverable but annoying."
For Ottawa winters, raise the container off the asphalt with 4x4 timbers if you can. It prevents ice forming around the door seal and stops the bottom from freezing to the driveway.
Option 3: Off-site climate-controlled storage
Use this when your renovation will run through summer humidity or you have anything sensitive: real wood furniture, artwork, books, electronics, vinyl records, musical instruments.
Climate-controlled means the unit stays between 13C and 25C with humidity below 55%. That matters in Ottawa. An uncontrolled storage container hits 35C in July and -25C in January, and the temperature swings warp solid wood, crack veneers, and ruin upholstery glue.
Dymon's central Ottawa locations (Carling, Innes, Greenbank) rent climate-controlled 10x10 units on a monthly basis. A 10x10 holds the contents of a 1,200-1,500 sq ft home if you stack properly.
The cost trap: most facilities require a 4-week minimum, and many force you into autopay so the bill keeps running if your reno overshoots. Build a 4-week buffer into your storage budget. Half my projects take longer than the original timeline; about 10% take significantly longer.
Option 4: Sell, donate, or trash
Before you pay anyone to store anything, ask whether you'd be sad if it disappeared. The answer is no more often than people admit.
What I tell homeowners to get rid of before a renovation:
- Anything bought at IKEA more than 8 years ago. The MDF is delaminating and the cam locks are stripped. It won't survive being moved twice.
- Mattresses older than 10 years. Replacement cost is similar to two months of storage plus moving fees.
- The "guest" couch in the basement nobody sat on for the last three years.
- Bins of paperwork older than 7 years (CRA only requires 6).
Habitat for Humanity Ottawa ReStore picks up furniture, appliances, and building materials for free. Junk Brothers and 1-800-GOT-JUNK charge by the truckload. Both clear the same volume in 90 minutes that you would spend a weekend wrestling into a container.
The packing rules nobody tells you
If you're loading a container yourself (most homeowners do), three things matter more than you'd expect:
- Heaviest items go on the bottom and against the walls. Bookshelves, dressers, washing machines. They anchor everything else and won't shift in transit.
- Wrap upholstery in moving blankets, not plastic. Plastic traps condensation against fabric and you grow mould in two weeks. Moving blankets are cheap to buy and you can usually rent them with the container.
- Disassemble anything that comes apart. Bed frames, dining tables, modular sofas. Bag the hardware and tape it to the underside of the corresponding piece. Reassembly without hardware costs you a Saturday.
Keep one box clearly labelled "first night back." Coffee maker, sheets, towels, basic kitchen tools, a roll of toilet paper. After 8 weeks of living around a renovation you don't want to dig through a container at 9pm to find a frying pan.
What we actually recommend
For a kitchen-only project: in-home staging plus a small driveway container. The cheapest workable combination.
For a full second-floor renovation while the family stays in the home: in-home staging in the basement plus an off-site climate-controlled unit for the temperature-sensitive pieces, rented across the length of the project.
For a whole-home renovation in Ottawa where the family moves out: a 20-foot off-site storage container, climate controlled, with all temperature-sensitive items consolidated. This is the most involved option, and the cost is driven by the number of months and the volume stored. We can refer movers we trust for the load and unload.
Whatever you pick, decide before demolition. The worst version of this decision is making it on day one with a Bobcat in the driveway and the cabinets already on the truck.
Dream Touch handles whole-home renovations across Ottawa, Kanata, Orleans, and Nepean. We coordinate trade scheduling, dust control, and storage logistics on the projects we run. Call 613-862-4555 for a free 48-hour feasibility review.