Sorry, but I had to giggle.

Refurbs are very stressful. I had learned that before I attacked the house here. The way I did it was to work during the day when she was out working or on business trips, and then put everything back - as much as possible - so that everything would be "livable" when she came home. That was a bit more work, but it forced me to plan, to move on with it, and it avoided the feeling of living in a war zone.

I remember documenting it all with pictures on some forum. It went like "Empty kitchen, put in now flooring, put everything back, all in one day. Empty again, install new drywall ceiling, put everything back. Empty, paint ceiling & walls, put everything back."

Looking back at it I'm not sure I would have the energy to go through all that again.

For the dogs, we had to put in "strategic" wooden fences, so we could control more or less where and when they had access. I did this after I once was cleaning the pond filter, walking with the dirty filter material to the cleaning place, slipping over a huge dog turd, ending up in a bush being covered in fish & dog poo. It sounds funnier now than it actually felt.