Life is what happens while you're busy making plans is what my grandma always used to say (or at least a Dutch version of it). Hope you got the building works out of the way now! From the times I've let my tank 'go' so to speak it usually meant I didnt refill CO2, didnt give ferts and didnt cut back plants. All I kept doing was weekly 50% water changes and feeding 2x per week (normal regime). Algea would eventually recede by themselves as the tank became more and more of a jungle, but more demanding plants would die or were in a bad way by this time. Basically all I had to do was replant with some healthy new plants and add some floaters, remove surplus plants that did enjoy neglect (java ferns, anubias, bolbitis, crypts etc), set my lighting scedule to 'starting up' (meaning back to 6 hours and lower intensity) and start the CO2 again (building up over a day or 2-3 to find the sweet spot) and start dosing ferts again regularly together with resuming normal maintenance. I didnt do anything 'special', just picked up where I left off and it went fine. Cant tell you if thats the recipe for succes or just a fluke, but thats what I did.