Perhaps the area of Under My Roof that I am most excited about is the Changes section. This section is available on homes, locations (rooms), items, and collections. You can use this section to keep track of any renovations or modifications you make to your home or belongings. Beyond its more practical uses, such as a place to put all of the details of a major renovation project so it is easy to find and keep track of, it also provides a history of the changes you’ve made to something that’s meaningful to you. To get a little mushy, tells a part of the story of things in your life.
Below are two examples of how I’ve used the Changes section in Under My Roof to record renovations and modifications in our family’s inventory.
Painting My Office
Though you can use the Changes section to keep track of significant home renovations, such as adding a new addition or remodeling the kitchen, in our family we tend to be much less ambitious. This was the case when I recently repainted my office to make it a little brighter.
The top part of the changes entry.
Years ago, I would have told you keeping track of information for repainting a room was silly, but it can actually be pretty useful. The most obvious bit of information to record is the brand of paint and paint color used in case you need to do any touchup work down the road. From past experience, I’ve found you want to keep a record of the information on the paint label (I just took a photo of it rather than type it all in), as the color names come and go over the years.
Keeping track of all of the supplies that were used.
I also added all of the supplies I purchased to the Parts & Supplies section of the change entry. This makes it easy to determine the total cost of the project, since Under My Roof has an option for each supply entry for whether or not it should be added to the total. I can also refer back to this list if I ever decide tor paint my office again to find out exactly how much paint I need to buy and roughly what it might cost. I thought this project would end up costing about half as much as it actually did. Next time I get the bright idea to change the wall color, I’ll know better.
Storing receipts for modifications and renovations can be useful in case you need them down the road.
Since this is the room where I write all of our apps, I saved all of the receipts with the change entry. They’ll be needed next year when it’s time to do the taxes for the business. As with all home improvement projects, I didn’t manage to get everything I needed on the first trip to the home improvement store (or the second), so having support for multiple receipts is nice.
Before and After
And of course, I took before and after photos that I added to the change entry as well.
Modifications
The Strat I bought when I graduated from high school is a long, long way from what it was when I first got it 30 years ago.
Another area where I use the changes feature a lot is for item modifications, particularly when it comes to guitars. The Fender Strat I bought the Summer after I graduated high school has undergone many, many changes over the past 30 years – too many to remember. I wish I had a record of all of them as it is a part of the history of this guitar that I’ve had my entire adult life.
Just a few of the modifications that I’ve made.
I’ve been trying to dig up what I can on the modifications I had made to the guitar and adding them to Under My Roof. Each of these entries is similar to the entry for repainting my office, with photos, receipts, and components where appropriate. I also added notes and file attachments to some of the change entries. Unfortunately, I don’t have much information on most of the modifications, so the screenshot above only represents a part of the history of the changes this guitar has undergone.