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Writing documentation for your house

luke.hsiao.dev

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Re: Writing documentation for your house

#241

Post by js2 »

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…

She could write a movie from her story:

> On 31 August 1997, startled by the news of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, Amélie drops a plastic perfume-stopper, which dislodges a wall tile and accidentally reveals an old metal box which contains childhood memorabilia hidden by a boy who lived in her apartment decades earlier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am%C3%A9lie

> While filing, Craig discovers a small hidden door. He crawls through it into a tunnel and finds himself inside the mind of actor John Malkovich.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_John_Malkovich

> A woman (credited as "M") mentions to her musician husband (credited as "C") that as a child, she moved residences frequently and took to hiding little notes wherever she lived.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Ghost_Story

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#242

Post by bombcar »

jairuhme wrote: post #42

I see a few comments describing how their documentation that they handed over went without love. I'll add a different perspective. I bought a fixer upper (really just needed a face lift) from a couple who's parents lived there but passed away. The only thing left behind was a plastic bag of appliance manuals, some old receipts, and most importantly, a sheet of paper with dates, when things were updated, and how much…

I don’t bother writing documentation, I write on the pipes and walls and equipment.

My furnace has the install date in sharpie on it, along with maintenance dates.

The main sewer line has the last time it was cleared, who cleared it, and where the blockage was.

An industrial label printer makes these easy.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#243

Post by bombcar »

rootusrootus wrote: post #24
donatj wrote: post #20

I live in the house I grew up in. My dad designed the second floor, an addition. He knows the skeleton of this house in a way I never ever will. He lives 50 miles away now, but I still have him as an amazing resource about my house. I wanted to run cat5 to my office on the second floor a number of years ago. "Oh just drill a hole in the floor right here in this corner, there's a void that goes all the way from the se…

Best thing I ever did when our house was built was go through the entire house the day before the drywall went up, and take many pictures of everything I could see. So now, when I want to do something, I know exactly what the framing looks like, where the water lines run, drains, electric, everything. It's very handy.

If you don’t want to do it yourself, you can hire a home inspector to do a pre-drywall inspection, and pay extra for full camera documentation.

If they’re good, they’ll know what you want and they will also help the builder avoid callbacks. Many things are insanely easy to fix before the drywall is up.

I also recommend that you do the same walkthrough, of course.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#244

Post by greedo »

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…

When I had much more energy (read younger), I finished my basement. 800sqft or so, put in a guest bedroom, a little library for the missus, a full bath and most importantly a home theater. I was talking with my neighbor who is a realtor and he said that if anything the home theater was a negative during resale. The only things that added value were the other rooms. Luckily, I built the theater so it could be converted into a game room etc, and most importantly, I built it for myself.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#245

Post by rpearl »

ozim wrote: post #149
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 stu…

I put in a bunch of Caseta smart switches. They are indistinguishable from normal light switches without any smarts, but if I want to, I can also control them via local network. It's nice to go to bed and turn off the entire house with one button. Lights turn off automatically when we all leave.

The thermostat is an ecobee, which is a pretty polished IoT device but I'm frustrated i couldn't get something _more_ local. It speaks homekit so I can do a number of actions entirely locally, and if the internet is down it still works, but I do wish it were more self-contained. So again, if I sell or get angry at technology and chuck my HomeAssistant Pi out the window, the thermostat will just work as a thermostat.

Likewise, my blinds are motorized--but they have a working remote paired directly to them. It's incredibly convenient to raise the blinds in the morning for some sunshine automatically and close them after sunset, but they'd work perfectly well without a smart home.

If you purchased my house, you probably wouldn't even know to rip out the "smart home" components because they fail over to just being normal components.

It is not particularly hard to make this method of operation happen, although it admittedly requires a budget above "dirt cheap."

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#246

Post by mrweasel »

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…

There is also the option that she did read the binder and decided "No way am I going to deal with all the crap" and had all the "smarts" yanked out an replaced with something that requires much less maintenance. That would have been my reaction.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#247

Post by lrivers »

donatj wrote: post #20

I live in the house I grew up in. My dad designed the second floor, an addition. He knows the skeleton of this house in a way I never ever will. He lives 50 miles away now, but I still have him as an amazing resource about my house. I wanted to run cat5 to my office on the second floor a number of years ago. "Oh just drill a hole in the floor right here in this corner, there's a void that goes all the way from the se…

As a dad, one of my very favorite things is when one of my offspring asks me a question I have a solid answer for.

Probably, when you ask him this stuff, he glows inside.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#248

Post by wyldfire »

rpearl wrote: post #245
ozim wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 stu…

I put in a bunch of Caseta smart switches. They are indistinguishable from normal light switches without any smarts, but if I want to, I can also control them via local network. It's nice to go to bed and turn off the entire house with one button. Lights turn off automatically when we all leave. The thermostat is an ecobee, which is a pretty polished IoT device but I'm frustrated i couldn't get something _more_ local…

> They are indistinguishable from normal light switches without any smarts

Except that most normal light switches (that I've encountered) are a toggle and not a momentary.

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#249

Post by ff317 »

t0mas88 wrote: post #236

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 w…

I bought a new-construction place, and I was around during the process. After they were done with all the plumbing/wiring/etc, but before they filled in the insulation and sheetrock, I walked the whole house and took cellphone pictures of every bare wall to show where all the pipes and wires are run, and then labelled it all up by room. I plan to hand those off if I ever sell the place! I don't know why builders don't just deliver such a set of photos to everyone by default, it's been super handy!

Re: Writing documentation for your house

#250

Post by nelsonic »

t0mas88 wrote: post #236

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 w…

Could you share a photo (with any sensitive detail obfuscated) to give us an idea of what this looks like? We are hoping to produce something similar for our house.
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