Home Maintenance Anatomy - Part 2
The structures and spaces that keep your home intact
About this newsletter - If you’re like us - you’re digital not handy and you’ve been spending a lot more time at home lately. So join us, to feel a little less alone maintaining your home in this digital, post 🤞pandemic era. From preventative tips to automation to managing finances, we'll cover how to make your place feel more like home.
Last post we talked about the basic systems of your home.
As a refresher - think of your home as a human body and your goal is to keep it healthy. In that sense, think of the first 3 S’s,Systems, Structures, and Spaces, as the anatomy of your home and last S, Services as the things you do (or others do) to maintain it.
Systems are the inner workings of your home that keep it operational (e.g. electrical, plumbing, internet, heating/cooling, etc...)
Structures holds your home up and protects you from the elements (e.g. foundation, frame, roofing, siding, windows, doors, insulation, etc…)
Spaces are the different parts of your home each with different roles (e.g. exterior, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living room, etc…)
Services are the things you do externally to keep your home “healthy”. (e.g. utilities, cleaning, financial, insurance, landscaping, etc…)
Onto part 2 - Structures and Spaces
The second major category of your home is the structures or structural components. Think the bones, skin, and muscles - without them you would just collapse.
To break down the major structural components.
Core & Exterior
Foundation - the base of your home. Some homes can have crawlspace below.
Frame - the true bones of your home.
Siding - the exterior of your home.
Roofing - what keeps the rain out.
Windows and Doors - ports into your home.
Interior
Insulation & Drywall - the interior siding that is also key for climate control
Flooring, Finishing, & Fixtures - the part that most people are interested in HGTV shows.
In addition there are detached structures like decks and fencing that don’t necessarily hold up the home but are still structures nonetheless.
Moving on to Spaces…
I grouped spaces into this post since they are interrelated and also need the least amount of explanation. Spaces are the different rooms and areas within the home and surrounding environment.
To categorize - these are the actual spaces in your home and can largely be categorized into two buckets - interior/exterior and then finished/unfinished.
Exterior
Patio/Deck
Backyard
Front yard
Interior
Unfinished (usually)
Attic
Garage
Finished
Kitchen
Living
Bedroom(s)
Bathroom(s)
Entry/Foyer
Family Room/Den
etc…
Citylab has an interesting series that examines iconic home designs that set different patterns to how residents thought about the various spaces in their home - for example LA’s “dingbat'“ apartments or Toronto’s “victory house” (see below)
Obviously a lot to pack in but the more you have a high level understanding and taxonomy of your home the more you can understand how to maintain it and ask for help. You can see how it maps in the maintenance plan template definition sheet.
The next and final part in this home anatomy series is the last S - Services which this newsletter is focused on - namely how to optimize and automate them.
Written from home - Dave & Arjun