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Writing documentation for your house

luke.hsiao.dev

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Re: Writing documentation for your house

#141

Post by StingyJelly »

efitz wrote: post #17

For my last house, I had spent years on smart home automation, I had a binder that contained clear instructions I wrote for everything, and receipts for every upgrade I ever made on the home, warranty docs, QR codes to download smart home apps to control the devices, plot maps, floor plans, a 1-page list of repairmen for everything- you name it. I made short YouTube videos for everything like turning the water on/off…

Smart home automation isn't for everyone. Many relatives see it as that weird hobby I have and don't see much of the value. (And I agree given the time I spend tinkering.) Even I would likely rip out most of the inherited smart home stuff in order to replace it or at least flash opensource firmware on it. Another important point I learned is that everything should work as a dumb home when the wifi, gateways, HomeAssisant or some sensors are down.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#142

Post by mavhc »

kaycebasques wrote: post #76
superultra wrote: post #65

This didn’t happen to me but to a friend. She lives in an old home and has a neverending list of projects, many of which she took up during the pandemic. She would often livestream her rehab at nights just to connect to people as she worked. One night she was streaming the teardown of a bathroom wall. There, in between the walls, was a clipboard with some notes. She slowly took the clipboard up and started reading. O…

My uncle lives in an old house in Lodi. He took down some kitchen walls for a major remodel. Somehow, a bunch of letters from the 1920s had slipped between the cracks and got stuck in the wall. It was a bunch of heartwarming, innocent correspondence between the family members now living in California and the ones who stayed back in Oklahoma (or somewhere like that). Uncle chokes up every time he reads those letters.

Behind the wallpaper I removed was a marriage proposal to the previous owner, her relatives still live next door so I got to show them

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#143

Post by mozey »

nerdponx wrote: post #109
mgsloan2 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoah, that interpretation seems pretty wild to me. They put a lot of effort into building a pizza oven and someone else tore it down, and they should feel nothing about this?! If an artist sells their painting they shouldn't care if the new owner paints over a section? Beyond the sentimental attachment to the pizza oven, I'd be bothered by the sheer inefficiency of it.

> I'd be bothered by the sheer inefficiency of it. This is the part that hurts me the most. I don't like when good things go to waste.

Been renovating an old house with a large garden for almost ten years now. I tell myself this is better than building something from scratch, but it definitely doesn't always feel more efficient. It helps that I didn't have the option back then, but now maybe I do? Sometimes it's also hard to tell, in the moment, which things to keep and what to rip out.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#144

Post by knallfrosch »

weirdkid wrote: post #34

Awesome advice and a great way to prepare for unexpected death or incapacitation (if you are the one in your family who usually handles all this stuff). I only would add that if you do go ahead with this, use tools or a medium that mere mortals are familiar with. Assume the person who needs to read it only knows git as a Larry the Cable Guy reference ("git 'er done!").

I think this overly technical approach from the OP is terrible for a handover. You're now tied to this exact stack of technologies and after your death, it won't be updated even once.

I tape the manual and the transit bolts of a dishwasher to the top of it and that's it. For heating and stuff, a laminated sheet of paper attached to the pipe does the trick. If you love all things digital, create a shared online folder filled with .docx documents. For those you'll find a tool to open and edit them in 40 years time.

Sure, for some the creation of the digital stack is the purpose itself. But documentation that lasts decades? I don't believe it.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#145

Post by mavhc »

28304283409234 wrote: post #113
Larrikin wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I will just be pickier about who i sell it to. Honestly this kind of mindset is a huge problem in the US. You built the oven, you enjoyed the oven, and you decided to sell the house. Why do you feel the need to dictate what the owner does with the house after? If you wanted to keep the pizza oven as some kind of monument to yourself you could have kept the home. This kind of mindset leads to stale neighborhoods, whe…

But why buy a house if younger going to tear everything down or change it? Why not buy something that you already like? Why not accept that tearing down and rebuilding is expensive, for you and for the planet? Why not just accept “good enough”?

It's too cheap to pollute the planet, the solution is to price in the externalities, tax everything the amount it costs to clean up the pollution it causes, then spend that money cleaning up the pollution

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#146

Post by darkwater »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #48
efitz wrote: post #17

For my last house, I had spent years on smart home automation, I had a binder that contained clear instructions I wrote for everything, and receipts for every upgrade I ever made on the home, warranty docs, QR codes to download smart home apps to control the devices, plot maps, floor plans, a 1-page list of repairmen for everything- you name it. I made short YouTube videos for everything like turning the water on/off…

To be fair, smart homes absolutely suck. Especially about four or five years removed, or, in this case, an owner change. This is like writing code vs figuring out someone else's code. Those are totally different things, and code is a bunch of readily accessible text files. Smart homes? Some device in the attic, some device in the basement, some wiring that goes who knows where, where does all this info go? What was t…

I have a (mostly) DYI smart-home, I mean, DYI as in "a Frankenstein of vendors and devices glued together by Zigbee, MQTT and Home Assistant", with some hard-deps on it in a couple of rooms and that gave me some bad nights when thinking about "what if I sell the home one day?" but reading the threads here I feel reassured: they will probably just rip it away and put some low-tech solution and call it a day.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#147

Post by agumonkey »

superultra wrote: post #65

This didn’t happen to me but to a friend. She lives in an old home and has a neverending list of projects, many of which she took up during the pandemic. She would often livestream her rehab at nights just to connect to people as she worked. One night she was streaming the teardown of a bathroom wall. There, in between the walls, was a clipboard with some notes. She slowly took the clipboard up and started reading. O…

unless the previous owner was a rockstar renovator who only left "the work is self documenting" on a postit

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#149

Post by ozim »

efitz wrote: post #17

For my last house, I had spent years on smart home automation, I had a binder that contained clear instructions I wrote for everything, and receipts for every upgrade I ever made on the home, warranty docs, QR codes to download smart home apps to control the devices, plot maps, floor plans, a 1-page list of repairmen for everything- you name it. I made short YouTube videos for everything like turning the water on/off…

Home automation is for me exactly the same as designer kitchen or designer day room.

Yeah it was great for the previous owner but it sucks for me as I have different tastes and needs.

I am going to rip it all off and do what I want.

But in reality I just don’t buy anything that is advertised “one of a kind” because I know it will be more of a hassle to deal with it even if it looks cool.

For me cool looking fancy stuff does not add value but rather lowers the value because I know I will have to rip it all of which is just more work. I also rather buy apartment/home with some default IKEA kitchen because I know then it will be super easy to rip it out and replace with what I want. Where most of the time I think I would just stick with that default IKEA depending on how long I plan to own the place.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#150

Post by littlelady »

I do this already. We have a binder that contains all of the projects that we have done since moving into our home sorted by area and then by year.

I wouldn't do it digitally, because I also keep paint samples and notes that I've taken during the work in the binder. If I had to re-enter those notes I don't know that they would happen.

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