2024 was a 12 months full of experiments, started with renovating my house.

My house was built more than 20 years ago. Every rain season come, water would seep in leaving me 3-4 hours of cleaning. Sometimes until midnight. We decided to renovate the ground floor only 2 months befre out biggest holiday of the year, Tet. This somehow kept me busy and away from negative thoughts and emotions after I stop my job due to a lay-off.

It was completely new experiment to get to know all the things I see but never wonder how it works before. Eveyrday I had to Google and read about construction principles, materials, techniques, and structural design. Everyone is familiar with things we can see like the wall, floor, lights, or interior. We easily know how to choose the correct matterial for them. But for things under the ground and behind the wall like Water and Electrical System, is totally new for me.

There was nothing I can change about the house structure. At first, I looked at Pinterest board, read and watched home makeover video on Youtube, filled my mind with ideas and inspiration about the materials and interiors. Then I relized renovate is expensive and much more troubles. I started to feel the stress. As a person like organizing stuffs, I decided to throw all the problems and set the budget for it in a Google Sheet.

Once the works started, the chaos began: compare and keep track of buying materials, explain ideas, follow the construction, check the quality, fix the broken things. I see more clearly the important of using a good resources.

Chosing contractor is same as hiring a Designer, the good one will help you to learn more things and completed the project more efficiently with minimals issues. With their experience, they can define the problems, foresee the risks and give you a good advice and solutions.

When walls came down, dust filled the air, suddenly, hidden problems showed up: outdated pipes, wires, old walls. Some materials need to be changed in order to fix those problems. The budget was expanding. Stable financial before starting the project helped a lot.

It’s the same as working on a design project, I felt that my work experience can be useful at anywhere. When doing the tile layout and arrangement, same basic design principles applied.

Image from https://www.jlconline.com/how-to/interiors/layout-for-tile-floors_o

“The better-looking balanced layout on the right uses edge tiles more than half a tile wide, but that layout may require more tiles than the unbalanced tile layout on the left.” Quality first, you could choose the right option. But cost first then you consider the left option with less budget, especially large area. More cuts mean more wastes. However, small cut can increase material loss than big cut if you got poor workmanship.

Consider all factors when making the decision was the lession I learned when managing design projects. Nothing different here, just the different industry.

After a months of mess, things started looking up. New floors went in, walls got painted, it’s like making final refinement before releasing the product.

Renovation took 2 months longer than expected as suddenly the street in front of my house also start their renovation project to raise the street level and install new water system. We got some delays in delivering the construction material as the street was blocked.

Sure, there were unexpected costs and stressful moments, but in the end, it’s all worth it.

And there it is, new house to begin a new year!