I'm renovating a 1900s Chicago two-flat that I can't do any of the work on.
Chronic illness ended that part. So I hire it out, which means I spend my time reading bids instead of swinging hammers. I publish what all of it actually costs, including the parts I got wrong.
The whole renovation, in order, with the numbers attached.
Four people, two dogs, nine hundred square feet, and a basement we have to dig out before anyone can frame a wall. Every invoice published. Every estimate labelled an estimate.
The money
Every invoice, and the estimates I wrote before the bids arrived. Two quotes for the same fence, $5,506 and $1,250, and what the difference turned out to be.
The plans
Three layouts for the same building, drawn myself. What the basement becomes, why the kids get their own rooms, and the version we want but can't fund.
The constraint
Outlet heights, doorway widths, where things go when bending is hard. Free permanently, because the person who needs it most shouldn't have to pay for it.
Ever notice that renovation shows are planned around the best day you'll ever have in that room?
The Paulina Stop · The method
Everybody shows the room. Nobody shows the invoice.
The magazines can't, because the advertisers sell the tile. The reveal accounts skip the phase where the money ran out, because nobody films the thing they cut.
So I'm publishing mine. What I think each phase costs before a single bid arrives, then exactly how wrong that turns out to be. It's a scoreboard instead of a reveal.
And the parts about living in a body that doesn't cooperate stay free, in every phase, without exception. Paywalling those would collapse the whole point.
New entries when they're finished, not on a schedule.
Renovating a 1900s Chicago two-flat, with the real numbers.