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Writing documentation for your house

luke.hsiao.dev

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Re: Writing documentation for your house

#231

Post by bombcar »

chimprich wrote: post #154
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> What was the model of this shit? Oh it has NOTHING on the front because serial numbers are gauche. I'd really like some kind of standard for model IDs. Maybe something like a domain name and a model number. It would also be good if devices came with a QR code printed on them that linked to the manual.

If it has an FCC ID you can search in that. Can be hard to find.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#232

Post by bombcar »

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.

Reminds me of the tale of the guy who was told by his realtor that he could put $20k in new windows and sell the house for $50k more. He did and it sold, and was immediately torn down.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#233

Post by bombcar »

hoseja wrote: post #134
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.

You are allowed to be inefficient with things you own. Again, shouldn't have sold the house if they wanted to keep control of it.

Or be a rat bastard and tie a covenant to the land forever muahahahaha

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#234

Post by bombcar »

toast0 wrote: post #129
28304283409234 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”?

The house I want isn't available, so I'm going to buy the closest thing and make the changes I want... building a pizza oven is a lot of time and effort, but tearing it out isn't. I'm not sure how much a pizza oven adds to the price of a home, but I'm guessing, not that much because most people aren't going to understand its value ... anyway, as a buyer it's not like I'm getting a list of features I can refuse some o…

Exactly. One person bought a house and added a pizza over because he wanted it, another bought it and removed it because he didn’t want it.

It’s nice to think we might do something that lasts a long time but the more nonstandard it is, the more likely it will be changed someday.

A similar effort on a fancy “outdoor kitchen/barbecue” in a more outdoorsy state than WA may have lasted a long time.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#235

Post by bombcar »

Larrikin wrote: post #139
peebeebee wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things can have sentimental value. We need more of this sentiment in the world, not less. Certainly for architecture. It’s that detached mindset that is also partially responsible for all the horrible empty architecture nowadays. Just a box to live in.

I actually agree with this statement, but people should be allowed to build the sentimental value. They shouldn't have the sentimental value of someone else's past ideas dictate the new. An awful local law may have dictated that the OP should not have been allowed to build a pizza oven in the first place, because people want to preserve the look and feel of the neighborhood when they moved in. But I also view it as e…

The latter can happen with historic designated buildings, and can often be applied widely in unexpected ways. Some will basically say you can’t modify the exterior look, others will say everything up to and including bulb changes must be approved by the historical society.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#236

Post by t0mas88 »

Many stories from people creating documentation only for it to get thrown away. Let me share an opposite one:

I bought a house that was empty after divorce, both had moved out some months before. We mostly dealt with the agent, only saw one of the previous owners for a very short time at the signing meeting with the notary.

Then in the house we found a "congratulations on your new place" card, a bottle of sparkling wine, and a binder with everything about the house. Building plans, updated plans for changes made, exactly where every cable and connection was, and manuals, invoices and warranty certificates for equipment in the house. And a hand drawn map of the garden with what type of plant was where, and links to plant care instructions for some of the more exotic plants.

Super nice of the previous owner to arrange these things, and I'm still thankful every time I need to get a cable somewhere or do some small construction things. Having detailed and accurate plans and overviews saves a lot of time.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#237

Post by bombcar »

xyzelement wrote: post #41
chezball wrote: post #25

So, i sold a house i had in north Seattle after a divorce in 2018. We had bought it in 04, i was working at Microsoft at the time. We raised our son there. I even built a 8’x8’x8’ brick oven for baking pizza and bread (plans from Ovencrafters). I rented an excavator for a week and dug around the entire house and put in 12’ deep footing drains, with clean-out pipes every 20’ down the 100’ to the road. A new 2” pex wat…

Thank you for sharing that story. Don’t be too upset about the pizza oven. You built it for you and your son and hopefully you got to enjoy it for a while. There is no expectation for the new owners to share the prior owners interests. Maybe they are gluten free. Maybe they are the kinds of people who have zero inters in baking, whatever. You can’t expect them to use the 64 sq ft of their yard as a monument to someth…

A corollary of this isn’t you don’t mind things like random pizza ovens, you can ask the realtors to bring houses with “odd features” to your attention, because they often have no or negative value.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#238

Post by bombcar »

varjag wrote: post #138
masklinn wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not been the case for a while in developed economies. The vagaries of modern life and work means most people can’t live where they grew up, make their life elsewhere, possibly multiple elsewhere, and only go back to visit. Unless there’s a real business to inherit e.g. a farm or hotel or some such. That was already the case in my grandparents generation. On my father’s side is a large farm, but my grandparents…

I think it's not even the case in developing economies, with substantial economic and population growth. It simply can't work like that.

Even with significant growth it can happen - existing houses stay in the family, but the majority of people live in new housing.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#239

Post by bombcar »

saalweachter wrote: post #176
ryandrake wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less sentimental, but just as infuriating (to me): My last house we bought had an old hot tub out back from the early 90s. My agent said don't price that POS into your estimate of the home's worth--it's probably never worked. We bought the house and lo and behold it did not work, but I carefully rehabbed it, replaced the pumps and sensors and cleaned everything up, made a custom topper for it, and went on to enjoy 8…

When I bought a house, the prior owners requested I return the front door to them within N days, the contract had a section keeping $500 in escrow to be returned to me upon receipt of the door (by the shipping company, I believe). My realtor was like, "this basically means the house costs $500 more", but I went ahead and returned the door. If you're faced with that situation in the future, you could try including a c…

It’s fine but I’m just laughing at “the front door doesn’t convey”.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#240

Post by bombcar »

bluGill wrote: post #50
argc wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah sounds like the people who bought it suck. Why would you destroy a pizza oven? It would add a ton of value to the house for the right buyer. If you had sold it to me I would have absolutely kept the oven :) Also inspires me to follow a similar path for my house. I think the key is to price the house so only someone who values the work you've done would bother buying it, if you have the time to wait around. And I…

One of those things that adds a ton of value for the right person, but for the wrong person is equally negative value (it takes up 64 square feet of yard space!). While most people won't really care. And so while it can add a lot of value to the right person, overall it is zero value. Even to the right person it won't be as much value as you would expect - unless they are putting a more than normal down on the house…

Pools are worse - they are usually worth negative money when it comes time to sell, because you cannot just let it sit, unlike the pizza oven (at least in theory).
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