Converting your home into a smart home poses a lot of challenges and decisions along the way. First of all, your stuff at home will be connected and you have to choose which network protocol they will be using. So we have multiple options. Starting from bluetooth to wifi, from zigbee to z-wave. It is likely that you will end up with the combination of these items.

Let’s start with the zigbee and z-wave. These two protocols are mostly for the things for which you don’t want to rely on wi-fi, you don’t need to control things with it far away from home. For example light switches or pool pumps are ideally the things you want to control with z-wave or zigbee. In this case, you will have to buy a hub that supports these protocols to control such devices. The most popular option in the market was Samsung’s SmartThings . But upon hearing that Samsung was planning to discontinue SmartThings device/hub, I have settled with Hubitat hub. And it turned out to be quite convenient thanks to its community sharing their experiences with devices, workarounds and drivers.

When you are remodeling your home, it is a smart move to install smart switches/dimmers at the beginning. Because the quote they will give you for usual switches is very close to smart switches. Other than the 3-way switch upgrade, the transition was quite a smooth experience for me. The three-way switch system requires generating a truth table as the existing line cables were not following a common color schema, it was random.

Also I didn’t have neutral wire in my system. This required me to choose more expensive equipment from a company called Inovelli. Their forums and documentation were incredibly helpful for sorting things out.

Thermostat

The choice was clear while I was using the A/C from the previous owner. I installed nest thermostat as the old A/C didn’t have any bells and whistles. But I didn’t like the nest’s way of learning and freezing us in the middle of night. So our way of using this thermostat was just setting the temperature range and turning it on/off while we are away from home, leaving/approaching home. But once we replaced the A/C with two heat pumps, one for each floor, we had to part ways with Nest thermostat as our A/C systems were multi stage. The good thing about multi stage is that we often do not hear the A/C operating due to its lower stage when the desired temperature is not far away from the current temperature. In contrast our A/C was sounding like an aircraft engine.

But the problem was that the smart thermostats in the market were not supporting multi-stage A/C, so we got stuck with Bryant’s Evolution thermostat which had a terrible, 1-star mobile app. Every time you turn it on, you have to enter your credentials in landscape mode on your phone, and it does not remember your credentials, making it quite useless. Besides, this thermostat did not support any wireless temperature sensors.After a while, we figured out there was a wired sensor option which we opted in by paying extra money. I can't say it is the best sensor but it does the job. Later this year they upgraded their application; it is way better right now. It’s fine but it is still using proprietary protocol which can not be controlled with any smart home hub.

Smoke & Carbon monoxide Detector

We went with Nest detectors. Later I noticed there are interesting features such as when the fire alert starts you can also enable sprinklers. Thankfully we didn’t use this feature yet. It also has a night light feature which activates with movement. This can be turned off as well for the bedroom etc. Other than that it is the usual detector which is expectedly quite hard to stop once it starts the alert.

Smart Lock

All those years I was complaining how come the homes didn’t have smart locks while cars have those for many years. When they hit the market for the first time I didn’t hesitate. I got a Yale & Nest smart lock together with a doorbell and security cameras. So when you go with one brand you feel obliged to match it in following purchases because you are betting on one ecosystem in a walled garden manner. I wish I had more open ecosystems to avoid monthly storage fees etc. But they just didn’t exist then without going through time consuming, unreliable  hacks.

Irrigation Controller

For the irrigation system, having a smart solution is really important. Some of the nice features of smart controllers are a nice mobile app, adaptive schedules, rain skip etc. Besides, most water districts have rebate programs that cover a significant part of the smart controller cost if you go through their process.

I am using two controllers from the company Rachio. Our use cases outgrew the first Rachio with 8 zones, so we bought another one. Their mobile app is so quite sleek and capable of supporting both controllers without any issues.

Air Purifier

Witnessing California Wildfires from miles away and noticing  the unhealthy air, pushed us to drive around to find safer, cleaner places to stay in the first year. In the following year I have invested in some good air purifiers. For the living room, I went with a bigger, stronger and smarter one with wi-fi connection in addition to a couple usual smaller ones. It tells you air quality inside and outside, when to replace or clean the filters.

Wi-fi

I went with Google Wifi as there were not much better options. For a large house like mine (2100 sqft), I ended up with multiple of them. Expectation was that I would have good coverage. One of my biggest regrets during remodeling was not connecting the ethernet for each room. Now I have to deal with coaxial cables and converters to prevent damage to the walls. As I have a home lab setting, when I try to connect to NAS server to read/write data, the wifi connection is quite slow.

Smart TV

I am not one of those black friday people running into a shop to get the deals as I don’t like those chaotic crowds. During one black friday, I managed to catch a deal online; I ordered online and picked up a good TLC TV. Upgrading from an old Samsung TV, I hadn’t noticed that smart TVs made that much progress. TLC comes with Roku TV which has a nice mobile app featuring a remote. This remote has a button which sends audio to the phone which I can listen to using my bluetooth earbuds. I am using this when I don’t want to disturb others while watching something at home. I also use this feature to walk around the home while listening to the TV. I like this feature very much.

Connecting all together

Instead of using separate apps for each of these devices, I tend to use my Hubitat portal as much as possible for switches/dimmers and plugs. My deck lights, pool pump are all running on a schedule I have created on Hubitat Hub. Hubitat also supports Google Home app. By using this integration, I can control the lights away from home while the Hubitat by itself is limited to the local range of its hub.

I have connected garage A/C to a smart plug as well. I scheduled it to start before my gym hours during weekdays and stop after that.

I have also converted a super old garage opener into a smart device that is supported by Hubitat. It features a sensor to detect the door position. This also helps me to understand if the garage door  is open or not.

Imagine you are in the market for buying a car. You go to a car dealer, try to lowball the price of a $10k car. The dealer is not playing games so that's last price. And you insist and make an offer to the dealer: "if the prices go lower than $9k next friday, I promise to buy this car at $9k".

The offer is weird but sweet at the same time for a risk averse dealer. But there must be a catch as you are promising something. You ask the dealer to give you $100 for this deal as a premium. You act as an insurance broker for the dealer. You can continue playing this game and pocket $100 every week.

Well, obviously you shall not waste your time trying to convince a car dealer to play this game in real life. But there is a place you can play this game: options market.

Instead of promising to buy the car at $9k, you can promise to buy a stock, lets say Tesla stock at $800 (currently trading at $900). In exchange for this promise you will get $780 (today's real value) premium immediately. If the price does not go below $800 until next Friday, you will keep the premium.

Sounds too good to be true? Well, here are the details:

You are promising to buy 100 Tesla stocks (as stocks options multiplier is 100) so you'd better have $80k handy just in case. Hold on, you don't have $80k? No worries, lets change the game a little bit.

You promise to buy it at $800 (selling puts) and at the same time purchase a right to sell them (buying puts) if the price drops below $790. You still get your $780 premium but pay another person $655 netting $135. This time you will only need $1k capital. If everything goes according to the plan you get 13.5% return of investment in just one week. By repeating this game, you can get 54% ROI in a month.

Now let's say now you made enough money and really bought 100 Tesla stocks. Now you can start playing on other side to collect premiums. You can promise to sell your stocks at $990 (selling calls) and get paid a whopping $1,245 premium. You can continue teasing the potential buyers on the weekly basis like this and collect the premium. Since you have the stock in hand, we call this transaction a covered call.

Above I have described just a few option strategies as a soft welcome. There are many other strategies depending on your risk appetite or capital in hand.

Since we are targeting a stable income, here are couple of things to keep in mind while trading options:

1. Trend is your friend: Bullish market trend is best suited for options trading while bear market can bring nice opportunities. You have to choose your strategy accordingly. Don't go against the trend.
2. You can always end up with the stocks if you are assigned. So make sure that you only get assigned the quality stocks you would be happy to own.
3. Know your greeks: Options trading platforms will provide you some greek letter parameters. Among those, delta is the most important; it is the probability of winning or losing depending on your direction.
4. Selling puts/calls brings you premium in exchange for your commitment to buy or sell. Don't go naked even if a platform allows you to do so.
5. Buying puts/calls costs you premium in exchange for having a right to buy/sell the stocks. Use them to limit your risk or make more by longing/shorting risk for free.

After digesting the principles above lets go over the strategies you can use:

1. Bullish trend: Use short put spread. Just like we did above selling Tesla puts at $800 and buying Tesla puts at $790. Your maximum loss is limited to spread size $10 x 100 (multiplier) - $135 (net premium) = $865.

2. Very bullish trend: You will feel like buying all stocks; that much bullish. Well, thankfully you can buy the stocks for free! Use the premium you collect from #1 short put spread to buy calls lets say at $950. Calls closer to the trading price will be expensive so you may want to either use multiple short put spreads or pay from your pocket. You can also choose to limit your profit by selling calls at a higher price lets say $1000.

3. Market is flat: You can collect premium from both sides. Use Iron Condor strategy. We are adding short call above the trading price and long call above the short call to limit risk.

4. Bearish market: Use short call spread. Stock prices are trending down. If you think Tesla is unlikely to reach $990 you sell call at this price and buy call above that $1000 to limit your risk.

5. Very bearish market: Yes, we are shorting this time but safely. Use the premium from short call spread to buy puts at lets say $850. Again the premium may not be enough to pay for the put. So either use multiple short call spreads or pay from your pocket. You can also choose to limit your profit by selling puts at a lower price lets say $800.

You may wonder how much time you'd need to trade options to make a decent income. Here is what I did: Skipped the lunches during the weekdays (I was doing intermittent fasting anyway), did 40-50 minutes indoor cycling while trading on my phone. At the weekend, spent 20-30 minutes to identify risky positions by simulating my portfolio and planned the upcoming weeks in terms of expanding positions, limiting them etc.

Here is a simulation of my options trading portfolio during my first year in trading options. I have simulated the market moves from -100% to +100%; it has proven to be rock solid based on the ROC (Return of capital) values as I was sticking to the principles above.

Using this simulation and the principles above helped me more than double my portfolio within 6 months and quadruple by the end of the year.

Options trading is quite specialized experience so don't try to go with your traditional broker. I'd recommend you to use Tastyworks for the best mobile experience assuming you want to multi-task during other activities such as indoor-cycling, waiting for something etc. There is also Thinkorswim which is originally created and later sold to TD Ameritrade by the same people who created Tastyworks. In my opinion Tastyworks mobile experience is much more superior to anything else you will find.

I am also working on opening my simulation to public. It will support Tastyworks and Think-or-swim. But it still needs some work. So please show some love, subscribe and share this post with your friends.

I'd appreciate if you use my Tastyworks link to join the platform as the affiliate income from that will help me keep this blog up and running.

One of the books I read while I was in high school was Francis Bacon's Essays in which he describes the garden I would dream of.

Back to the reality, the house I purchased paying 7 figures had a backyard far from that dream. It was full of concrete with a swimming pull filled with dirt in the middle. Why would someone want concrete in their backyard? Maintenance, lifestyle etc.

We needed to do something about this.

Breaking the concrete

The first step was getting rid of the concrete. This is quite a labor intensive work. My initial exciting plan was drilling regular holes in the concrete and using a chemical that breaks the concrete overnight by expanding. Exciting in the sense that there is some science thus awesomeness involved. However, making that many holes with a drill (it has to be rotary hammer drill) and collecting those pieces is still a challenge that may not fit into my schedule. Also you need to bring a different dumpster (smaller and more expensive one) to get rid of the concrete.

While exercising these thoughts, as I was in the habit of mentioning next projects with any tradesman/contractor I work with, the tree trimming guy was interested in the project with quite lower price than the ones others gave me.

His way of doing this task involved using a mini bulldozer, quite some brute force and hauling away the debris. I was happy with the result. But still curious to see how that chemical expanding would do the job.

Sod installation vs seed

With the concrete removed the scene was not any better and we were not gonna be stuck with that. Soil beneath was possibly not good enough for seeding. How about irrigation system? Non-existed. Got couple quotes from contractors. Started evaluating those.

Squirrels

While getting to know the neighbors and sharing the next projects noticed that one of my new neighbors took the fight against the squirrels to the next level; a BB Gun. Well, that's quite violent and not a good example for my 5-year old son. That said, his lawn was totally destroyed by squirrels and moles.

Another neighbor had utilized a better option: a metal net under the lawn. That's what we asked from our contractor as well. It did not make much of a difference in the price. Squirrels' failed attempts to dig my lawn was quite a scene after all.

Irrigation system

Irrigation was the real reason I had to use a contractor. Adjusting pressure, preventing leaks etc were quite above my expertise. So wanted to use a specialist. The end result was a working result while the zone distribution was quite random.

Irrigation Controller

I asked the contractor to teach me how to set up the irrigation controller since the device was quite old and there is no documentation available online. It did not take me long to upgrade the irrigation controller to a smarter one. And there is quite good incentives for that in the form of convenience, water savings and rebates which I plan to discuss in another post.

Result

The result was a beautiful lawn all family and friends could enjoy walking, running on and looking at.

We even threw a birthday party and got some petting animals on it. They looked quite happy as well :)

I always enjoyed visiting home-improvement stores like Home Depot and Lowe's. Since I started renovation, these stores proved to be the places I was going to drop some good lump sum. It was obvious that I would pay via credit card as opposed to cash or debit. But the question was which credit card? My credit card with the highest cash back  was 2%. Was that good enough?

Don't miss the cash back

After exercising this thought, I noticed "10%" writing while entering Lowe's. Didn't pay much attention, thought the usual marketing gimmicks. But after choosing the vanity sink etc, the sales rep. said we can get 10% discount with Lowe's credit card. Well, 10% is not peanuts like 2%.

It was time to pay at customer service I said I want your credit card to get that 10%. The associates were not that excited about that. They told me it is business credit card and I need to have a business card. Do I have a business? No or maybe. Maybe in the sense that like most people I sold some stuff on Amazon. And Amazon asks you to name your "store". Well there is something here. But definitely I am not resolving anything with these associates. I just got the assurance that I can bring the receipt back and replace the payment card once I manage to get the card.

Did a quick search online and it turns out it is possible. Called Amex and told them about my store on Amazon (and even the fact that I sell stuff to just get rid of). They said no problem they would just write my SSN instead of EIN in such cases. I got the card. Ran the previous and following items on that card.

In addition to getting 10% discount, I received couple hundred dollar worth of gift cards in the mail which was a nice surprise.

Lowe's sucks at their delivery timeline (including pick up at store)

Just like anyone I order some items online based on their delivery dates. A side note; high end/above average trims and equipment are often not available at these local stores.

In my experience, Lowe's delivery dates are just hypothetical. They missed the promised date again and again. Sometimes got an email telling about the delay but no new ETA. You need to call the customer service and waste your time to learn either your item is not coming anytime soon or it already arrived couple days ago in their store. But nobody bothered to call/text/email you.

Solution for time sensitive items; order from Amazon regardless of its price choosing prime and the soonest delivery. Sure, Amazon will keep their promise. Proceed with the project using the item from Amazon, return the Lowe's item when eventually it arrives. Since the items are identical, you can return it to the expensive place.

IKEA got a lot things right (especially the chicken meatballs!) but the delivery was a total nightmare.

I decided to go with IKEA kitchen cabinets. Their 3D design tool was amazing at visualizing and providing a shopping list. Cabinets are very high quality and at the same time economical.

Not to get any liability with measurement and final design I chose to go with their measurement and design partners. Anyway the cost of these are refunded when you purchase the materials.

I took the shopping list to IKEA and the associate there, who may the best one I have ever seen in a "home-improvement retail store?", located the design and walked through all details, edited little bit to make sure nothing is missing. The guy was very patient and courteous even though I arrived there close to closing hours and he was working overtime for me. He even recommended bringing the receipt couple months later to get unbelievable discounts to be applied to this past purchase. Just wow!

Then the delivery day came. The delivery truck came couple hours late without any notice. The interior of home was still in construction and it was really hard to spend time inside on a hot summer day. They brought only 10% of the items. Hours of phone conversations and then I could get another delivery scheduled.

This time no show up. Hours of waiting no call/email/text informing me about what's going on. Also no response from the logistics company.

And the third trial, they were late as usual. Missing as usual. Reported the transportation company to the Better Business Bureau. Could not delay the installation further so went ahead and bought the missing items again. This time loaded everything in my Durango. Turns out the largest pieces were part of the missing items: the side boards of refrigerator. Magically I could fit them in my Durango; that was such a scene though.

One reason I will wait long for the Durango EV to go all EV.

Based on recommendations from my work, I did not use the installers affiliated with IKEA. I used another company. They did an amazing job with the installation. We now have very good looking kitchen with a very affordable price.  

Then getting the response BBB got from the logistics company, I asked IKEA to make it right. Well, they did with a gift card for duplicated items. Still could not find a way to spend it. Ignoring the delivery drama, I saved tons of money  going with the IKEA kitchen.

This may be the component that has the greatest impact on how your home interior will look like.

Let's have a look at the options available today:

Hardwood: This one is what you think all flooring is about. 100% wood that can be sanded and refinished again and again. While that may sound like quite convenient, learning about the sand/refinish costs may change your idea. If you have kids, pets or a spouse that will mind the scratches in the flooring, this is not an option; it will be scratched very easily.

Engineered hardwood: this one has some limited sandable and refinishable surface. Harder than hardwood floor. Still not good for families with kids or spouses that can't handle scratched floors.

LVP (Luxury Vinyl Plank): This came to the rescue when we decided that we need both scratch resistant and good looking floors. Although they have wide range of options  for LVPs in Home Depot and Lowe's their thickness got me thinking.

I searched more on this more, and found out people were complaining about LVP floors' clicking while walking on them and also bulging when exposed to sun. But it turns out this was the case with some common LVPs sold in hardware stores. So going with a sub-par flooring was a no-go.

I read a lot good reviews about COREtec  brand LVPs and one pattern pick our attention at a local flooring company: COREtec Plus HD Olympus Contempo Oak. The great thing about this brand is that it is thick, wide and long. No clicking and bulging ever. The HD word possibly stands for high-density, truly indicating the very realistic look of wood pattern.

After learning about its water-proofness, I was skeptic about that at first. So did not change our tile floor plan for the bathrooms. But once we started looking for bathroom tiles and thinking about the transition from LVP on dry area to tile (wet area), I decided to reconsider this water-proofness of LVP. I gave a call to flooring company to find about the additional cost of including the wet areas. The response was comforting; no additional cost! How about precision cutting around toilet and round structures. Couple pictures proved that in fact they are more malleable than the tile.

Now it was time to check the past conversation to find out how much bathroom contractor was charging for the floors. It was $2.5k for one guest bathroom. Considering I have 3 bathrooms savings were a little fortune! And what I got was continuous, good looking, water-proof and scratch resistant floors. Highly recommended! No need to pay more to have an interrupted look and feel on wet and dry areas.

While the LVP helps you achieve a continuous look in the interior, don't push it for the stairs. The inexperienced sales rep. from a flooring company may mislead you until you meet the folks doing the real job. After a significant delay in my renovation schedule, the option was going with the closest color tone of finishing for the stairs and adding carpet to blend it better and feel more comfortable walking on it.

The answer is everywhere.

Yelp, referrals, hardware stores, showrooms, at work...

Yelp
Reviews and pictures tell a lot about a tradesman on Yelp. One natural problem most highly rated are either higher priced or not available for a long time or not responsive. I found the shower door installers, and duct cleaners there. They all did amazing job.

So far so obvious. Let's see where the risk reward ratio gets tricky.

You definitely need licensed contractors for mission critical tasks such as electric, plumbing, water proofing. But for other tasks such as painting, taping, tiling not so much.

Referrals
I was lucky with one of my referrals, a carpenter for opening the walls. The guy was working during business hours in a construction company. My tasks were all additional work for him after business hours and at the weekends. Later seeing the quality of his work, I asked if he had some friends doing other tasks. Sure he had, he got quotes and timelines from them with quick turn around. In the end they all work together many years and know the quality of each other's work. I prefered paying cash to most to get even lower prices. Sure, I did not accept all quotes blindly, did number crunching to meet the ends.

At a shop
Despite all these options at some point of renovation, I was in a dire need for a tile guy for couple tasks; original bathroom contractor got hospitalized during his europe trip while the one of two bathrooms he was responsible for was not completed. Another for renovation the fireplace. And the guest bathroom shower needed tiling and a shower base. For the last one I was ready to give up on due to the budget and timeline.

While trying to choose tiles for the fireplace at a tile shop with large selection of installed tiles, I saw a tile guy doing his job, tiling. That was quite a rare opportunity for multiple reasons. First of all, you can walk and see his work all over the showroom. I asked him if he can help me for my fireplace project. He asked me to talk to his boss. I did not care about his boss at all. I asserted again by saying "do you want some cash for this additional work?". Well, the awakening happened. We cut a very good deal there. The guy told me later he has been working there many years and installed all those tiles himself, removed when tile is out of stock and refreshed with newer models.

Ordered a very special and large tile from Florida. And the guy showed up as promised. Did a perfect and clean job. It is quite a blessing working with people who truely like what they are doing. Good job gets rewarded for sure. I gave two more tasks: completing the other bathroom and guest shower I was ready to give up on. Results were amazing with an unbeatable price. Now the same guy is remodelling my realtor's bathroom based on my referral.

Sometimes they find you

At a Sunday, after we moved in to our remodelled home, while standing in the neglected front yard, a tree trimmer young guy approached and asked if we needed trimming our palm tree. Never thought palm trees needed care at that height until I lift my head. (Hell yes, lets get rid of that ugly dry branches) but how much? $40 if I remember correctly. We also asked if he can remove the ugly bush, we cut a very good deal again. After a while the need to remove the concrete at our backyard showed up (when my 3-year old fell down and hurt himself at the backyard again).

Do not want to digress but why would people even put concrete on their backyard which needs to be place to enjoy greens and relax. And the huge cost of removing it. Anyway, that has to be fixed.

It does not even make sense to ask a tree trimmer about removing concrete. But we did. Suprisingly, he was interested. He needed some time to calculate logistics etc. Ended up with by far the best quote compared to other concrete removal quotes; saving me couple thousand dollars.

At work

Everyone starts getting to know that you are doing remodelling due to disapperances during lunch times and conversations. It is a great to ask people who already did remodelling for referrals.

Bigger companies like mine have also internal boards full of recommendations, earlier quotes, tips for working with them. Chose my painter and kitchen installer from there.

As you can notice, extending the quest beyond online search yields very good results since neither does every good tradesman have a listing online nor do they care to deal with that.

My way of finding tradesman is exactly how my grandfather would approach the problem, yes, old-school but super cost efficient especially if you have resources to pay by cash. In my case, I was again lucky to have a friend to lend me some and have made some financial decisions yielding good results.

Without knowing the things a general contractor deals with and more importantly the premium you will be paying for using their service, it is a daunting task to decide.

I went through that route. Invited couple general contractors to show them the property and talk about the project. Mine was a whole interior remodelling project. Regardless of their price, general contractors are in high demand, it wasn't easy to schedule a sooner appointment with them.

Some of them were representing a general construction company. They start with a presentation about how they work starting with interior designers etc. All inclusive service, those with a lot capital shall definitely go this way.

Some other looked to have promoted themselves from sub-contractor to general contractor, that is, they are specialized in one field and have folks to cut a deal in other areas. These ones sounded more reasonable since they were recommending not to do certain things to save me money. Wow, finally someone cares about my budget.

I was really hopeful that I could proceed with either general contractor with a reasonable premium. I was hoping like 10-20% premium on top of real cost of remodelling.

Well, I got the quotes. Construction company's quote made me think there must be a problem with the quote since that shall be the amount to demolish the house and build it back.

Promoted sub-contractor's quote was reasonable compared to another. Actually, it was reasonable until I got quotes from sub-contractors and crunch the numbers. The premium was more than 100%.

I asked them to break down the costs. They did. As shown below they were asking $40k for flooring while I have $18k quote from best rated flooring companies in town. And for the kitchen cabinets price it turned out that I'd be able furnish not one but five kitchens!

And it became quite clear that I was going on my own. The key to saving while remodelling is to "break down" the costs. For instance, I asked the bathroom contractor to break down the costs. Plumbing and floor tile turned out to be quite costly. I hired my own plumber and switched from tile floor to LVP floors in bathrooms just like the rest of home. This alone helped me save minimum $6k.

After a while each contractor understood that if they quote a high price for sub-task in a project they were going to lose that sub task. That turned out to be a quite useful approach.

While the savings were huge, that was far from easy.

Scheduling

Giving enough room for no show-ups or showing up too early problems will save some nerves.

Communication

With sub-contractors

I preferred texting over calling for confirming the conditions, price discussions and payment schedules. This was quite helpful since text messages are searchable. I had to go back again to check what we agreed on.

Putting forward all conditions and details is important. For instance I underestimated the cleaning and dumpster part for couple tasks assuming that the contractor would clean after themselves. Dumpster is not cheap; paid $400-$500 at least 6 times. And encountered contractors leaving the mess after them.

References are quite important when choosing the contractor. But do not hesitate to abondon them if things are not going as it's supposed to be.

Between contractors

Even if the contractors share the same mother language, they are not great at coordinating with each other. In one instance, floor installer called me complaining about door installer. I had to drive to the site. Well, the solution was easy; moving the floor installer to second floor and continue with first floor when door installer is done. A non-problem solved. Being aware of the human factor is important.

Shortly after this incident, I learned that the floor installer lost his mom. Poor guy was going through a lot stress. Being kind and not burnint the bridges behind you are important things. After a decent break the same guy was a life saver when it came to refinishing our stairs.

I went through all the trouble of looking for a home,  engaging in bidding wars and losing multiple times, and then finally my bid won when the housing market topped. However, the  house I purchased was far from being habitable within my family's norms.

Paying quite more than what I initially planned for the purchase, the renovation budget was quite tight. Working as a full-time engineer, initially I considered working with a general contractor. But after crunching the numbers, which I will share throughout this blog, that option didn't make sense. So I took on the challenge of whole house renovation myself. Friends and neighbors were quite impressed with the results and short timeline.

After going all these things become important part of my life, I noticed I have become that guy sharing these details with folks in the parties. Most of these folks were not possibly in the house market anyway.  

However, looking back and thinking about all stuff I had to read and live through, I believe I can bring together easy to read renovation blog that might be useful for those who really need and appreciate the information.  

In certain choices I will be opinionated since I have decided that and reaped the benefits rather than listing down pros and cons of each and every option. Sure there are lessons learned in each experience which I am eager to share as well. There are a lot of web sites doing this comprehensive comparison out there if you have many hours to read those.

Along the way I have come across very beautiful interior designs. In most cases trouble was finding the exact material. In that sense I will try to include links to buy the materials for the particular designs I have achieved (you can regard this as a disclaimer; those affiliate links may help me pay the operation costs of this site).

Please subscribe to learn about my home related projects and ideas.

Here is a sneak peak at the stuff I will be writing about:

• Flooring
• Bathroom remodeling
• Asbestos abatement
• HVAC replacement
• Roof replacement
• Painting
• Plumbing
• Smart home additions
• Backyard landscaping & lawn care
• Solar roof & panels
• ICE -> EV transition
• Generators
• Data backup & recovery

In this blog, I will also try to cover mortgage process, budgeting and investment ideas.

For those renovating in the California bay area, I can also share referrals for good contractors.