Remodeling can be a pet’s peeve too

If only Dr. Dolittle were a contractor.

As humans know, the noises and smells that come with remodeling can be irritating. For animals that are used to a quiet home environment, the process can be stressful. As workmen come and go, the possibility that a pet may be inadvertently injured, or escape the house, also looms.

When Paula and Steven Kopald decided to renovate their Brentwood home, one of the biggest factors in choosing a contractor was finding someone who’d know how to work around their Gordon setter, Jack.

“Jack really believes he’s a human being, and the house is his territory,” Paula Kopald said. “He wants to participate in everything that’s going on, and if he’s not involved, he becomes loud, obnoxious and depressed. From last July to now, he’s been restricted from more and more areas of the house.”

Fortunately, contractor Les DeMarco and his crew have became Jack’s buddies, figuring out ways to work around the dog while keeping him safe and happy in the process.

“I’m one major animal lover, so we take a lot of precautions on jobs because animals, to us, are like family members,” said DeMarco, owner and president of Right Action Builders in Valley Village.

DeMarco uses ZipWall, a plastic device that confines dust to a construction zone, and away from the area where an animal might breathe it. Safety netting is also used to keep animals out of hazardous sites.

“We set timers to remind ourselves to let the dog out to go to the bathroom,” DeMarco said. “With the permission of the homeowner, we may also give the animal treats so that they’ll be comfortable around us.”

Dogs, the contractor said, seem to be more accepting of strangers coming into their domain than cats, who usually hide when workers appear. The most unusual pets DeMarco has encountered on the job were a pair of iguanas and a bearded horn dragon, which occupied a house in Bell Canyon, along with a dog that was part Dalmatian and part pit bull.

“We had to keep track of where they were at all times,” DeMarco said. “They were allowed to run free in the house, and were really fast.

“If you’re making tiles, you’re going in and out of the house all the time, and the dragon was like a chameleon, blending in with its environment.”

DeMarco said his crew never let the animals out, but the owners’ children sometimes did. “Fortunately, the dragon liked to swim, and we always found it in the pool,” he said.

A willingness to work around animals makes good business sense. A 2005-06 survey by the American Pet Products Manufacturers Assn. found that an estimated 63% of U.S. households own a pet. More than 43 million homes have at least one dog in residence, and 37.7 million have at least one cat.

How well animals deal with construction disruptions will vary from pet to pet, said Melissa Bain, a clinical faculty member in the Veterinary Behavior Service at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine.

“Cats don’t like it when they can’t find the litter box, can’t get to it when the construction worker has closed the door, or the owner has forgotten to change it in four days,” Bain said. “With dogs, it’s important to maintain a consistent schedule. If your dogs are used to sleeping with you, take them with you to where you’ll sleep. Feed and walk them at the same time every day.”

In general, Bain said, if construction noises such as hammering or sawing hurt a human’s ears, the sound will hurt an animal’s ears as well. And remember that an animal’s sense of smell is more refined than a human’s.

“Birds are the ones you have to worry about with toxic fumes because their whole body is essentially a lung,” Bain said. “If you burn a Teflon pan around them, they’ll die from the fumes.

“If you’re doing a heavy-duty, weeklong project, you may want to just board your pet, though some get more stressed in that environment than at home.”

Sandy Rosker-Kelley, owner of the Cat Hotel in Burbank, says her facility often boards cats during home renovations. The facility’s cages are lighted to create a calming atmosphere for their feline guests, and several even have color TVs and miniature sofas in them.

Sun Valley resident David Zamora boarded his cats there during two renovation projects, while repiping with copper tubing and when he had all the windows in the house replaced.

“I have seven cats of differing ages, and boarded them to avoid their getting stressed out,” he said.

The copper piping process is very noisy because it requires sawing through the metal. “You can really feel it all through the house,” Zamora said. He made sure to vacuum and dust the house thoroughly after workers left, checking that no nails had been left for the cats to play with, or dust left to lick.

If you have curious pets that may want to lick or sniff newly painted surfaces, contractors suggest using interior paint that’s low in smelly, volatile organic compounds.

Benjamin Moore, for example, offers an EcoSpec paint line that has virtually no solvent and, as a side benefit, is almost odorless. Carl Minchew, director of product development for the company, said the line is widely used by hospitals and hotels because what smell there is dissipates more quickly than with conventional latex paints.

For Diane and Trevor Morris, helping their dogs Max and Maddy through the renovation of their kitchen and family room meant finding a place where the pets would be safe and out of the way while their San Marino home was being worked on.

First they put them in the pool yard, which worked fine “until Max found every loose piece in the wrought iron fence and got out repeatedly,” Diane Morris said. Eventually the contractor rebuilt the fence, and Max’s days of wandering ended.

As for Jack the Gordon setter, he became great friends with DeMarco and his crew, waking the Kopalds every morning at 7 when the workers arrived.

“We discovered he has an affinity for sitting in the passenger seat of cars,” DeMarco said. “So we open the door of one of the guy’s vans, and the dog goes out and sits in it all day, just watching us work.”