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The Great Book of Your House

Books are awesome. Home Repair is NOT awesome. Combine them, though, into a great home manual and your home repairs become a bit less of something that is too dreadful to think about. Here's what you need to know to organize your home maintenance.

Jeff Pelletier is the Managing Principal and Founder of Board & Vellum, an architecture, interior design, and landscape architecture firm in Seattle, Washington.
Jeff Pelletier
June 14, 2011

Books are awesome. As much as I love my Kindle and love getting away from paperbacks, I still love big beautiful books. There's something wonderful about actually touching the paper and being able to leaf through things.

Home repair is not awesome. As much as I love my house, there's something truly horrific about remembering when my bathroom marble counter needs to be re-sealed or knowing when to tune up my furnace (it was 6 months ago by the way, whoops). There's something miserable about keeping track of everything in my house.

That is why I always advocate for a home manual and something I think that needs to be in the final deliverable package given to every homeowner by the general contractor and the architect. It needs to be a flexible binder(s) that handles the growth of your home in terms of remodeling or new appliances while also neatly organizing all of your manuals. Keeping everything nice and organized in one spot WITH a schedule attached to it showing what needs to be fixed when is priceless.

You don't want to sift through this to find what you need, do you?

Diving into a remodel is the perfect time to organize all of this and put it together otherwise it is hard to get motivated. I'm in the process of doing this on my own house hence and realized that I needed to drink the juice I'm trying to convince others to drink.

Here's what a good home binder really needs:

  1. Manuals divided by category. The general contractor or the architect may divide this by CSI divisions (divisions that architects use to divide construction materials and methods) or by some other category. Personally, I'm not passionate about what kind of method is used, just as long as there is one that everyone agrees to. Divide and conquer.

  2. There needs to be a schedule. This means that every manual is reviewed and the important maintenance dates are pulled out and then itemized in one master schedule. A summary sheet in the front of the manual is a great place to put all of this information.

  3. This bad boy needs to be used. How? Use the Kindle analogy here and take the master schedule summary, sit down, and pop these dates into your calendar on your computer, smartphone, iPad, or whatever method you use. I use Outlook to manage my tasks with dates attached and it works great, but there are a zillion programs out there. Keep the paper copy (or heck, if you're bold enough you could go ahead and scan the whole binder in and not need a paper copy, but I personally like the physical presence of the book) to use as a master reference.

  4. Lastly, make a planAngie's List (requires an annual fee but so far I have been very impressed), or ServiceMagic.

Home maintenance will NEVER be fun (I will never believe people who say otherwise) but it can be a little less unpleasant. Make a good home binder your first step in organizing your home life and you'll be forever grateful.

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