From May 2023 to May 2026, spanning three years, the renovation of our new home is largely complete, even though the soft furnishings have yet to be purchased. Looking back on the various experiences during this period, I am filled with mixed emotions. These three years of renovation were not a continuous, high-intensity effort but rather an intermittent process, like the torment of a dull knife cutting through flesh. Balancing work and renovation proved impossible, as the two constantly clashed. Since I couldn't keep taking time off work for the renovation, most coordination had to be done on weekends. However, weekends were also when others involved in the renovation wanted to coordinate, leading to long waits for appointments and every project taking longer than expected.
Moreover, over the past three years, popular decoration elements and styles have been constantly changing. After browsing countless cases online, my ideas kept shifting: from the initial cream style to wabi-sabi, and then to mid-century modern. Every time I encountered a new element, I was drawn to it, wasting a lot of time and doing a great deal of futile work with the renovation company. Now, before even moving into my new home, I've grown accustomed to it—to the point of mutual weariness. As my enthusiasm faded, I often lacked the motivation to push the progress forward, causing even more delays.
However, the long renovation was finally completed. This article is dedicated to commemorating those "glorious days" during the renovation.
I will review the renovation process in chronological order of the new house's decoration, hoping to help those who are preparing or currently undergoing renovations. This article will focus on those aspects.Details rarely mentioned online(Referring to the fact that I didn't come across this during my renovation online), as for the frequently mentioned precautions in various renovation videos, this article will not repeat them.
I wrote an article earlier.Renovating a New Home from Scratch—Starting with the Floor Plan and Falling into Pitfallsshared the floor plan design for the new home. In reality, the floor plan in the article was a revised version after construction had already started (see the "Demolition and Renovation Phase" section later; all floor plans mentioned below refer to the revised version). However, since that article was written at the beginning of the renovation, looking back from the perspective of completion, there are many assumptions in the planning. This is not to say that these plans are impossible to achieve, but they often require higher craftsmanship and a substantial budget. With a limited budget, they are extremely difficult to implement. Currently, some issues with the new home stem precisely from not fully considering the budget for implementation during the planning stage.
Another part of the problem stems from misleading during the design phase. In the floor plan design stage, designers often say that lighting fixtures and furniture can be selected later, claiming they have little impact on the floor plan and water/electricity positioning. However, this is not the case. Many conflicts that arise during the renovation process are rooted in the failure to fully consider furniture dimensions and layout during the floor plan design.
Before the renovation, despite learning various tips online, I had never actually gone through the process—it was like looking at flowers through a fog, lacking real understanding. As a result, most of the design was left to the designer, who would say things like "this is better" or "everyone does it this way." As the renovation progressed, I finally gained a comprehensive understanding of the process, but by then, the project had inevitably spiraled into a disaster. This is somewhat of a paradox in renovation—you only discover the problems once you start, and by the time you find them, the renovation is already done.
Personally, I think feng shui is essentially an ancient set of interior design tips. For example, "no mirror facing the bed" is to avoid startling reflections at night and light disturbances, while "no beam pressing overhead" is to eliminate the visual sense of physical oppression. These considerations, based on ergonomics and living experience, are indeed worth paying attention to during decoration. As for the more complex directional taboos, I see them more as psychological comfort rooted in specific historical contexts—open to interpretation based on personal views.
However, I came across a claim online: buildings with an indoor area of less than 173 square meters don't need to worry about these complex feng shui taboos. Unfortunately, my home is only 172 square meters.
Frequent internet users know that choosing a style is easy, but achieving the desired effect is hard. Cream, wabi-sabi, mid-century, retro, American, Italian, and French styles each have their own charm. At the time, my wife and I were captivated by the overwhelming number of cream-style aesthetic photos online and decided to go with that direction for our renovation. However, most cream-style cases online are tailored for small apartments, where sofas are placed against the wall, floor lamps are used to accentuate the space, and cream-colored wall paint creates a warm, enveloping glow. But in our case, the living and dining area spans over 60 square meters, the sofa can’t be placed against the wall, and the creamy yellow wall paint can’t effectively create a sense of enclosure—after all, the sofa is surrounded by open space, making it hard to visually draw things together. When the cream-style design renderings came out, they were honestly hard to look at. The large areas of light colors made the space feel empty and monotonous, and the cream-style furniture looked out of place. Perhaps an excellent designer could pull off this style in a large space, but for me, switching to a mid-century style, which is less prone to going wrong, was a safer choice.
During the graphic design phase, the designer mentioned that the kitchen layout could be handled later by the cabinet store, so I didn’t pay much attention. However, after the water and electricity installation was completed, I realized that renovation is like "a chain reaction"—the core design must be finalized at the very beginning, as later modifications are nearly impossible. With the positions of the water supply and drainage outlets fixed, the overall layout of the kitchen could no longer be changed.
I don’t know who decided that sinks should be placed under the window by default. Designers always position the drain under the window. As a result, when designing the cabinets, the sink can only be fixed near the window. If you try to change it, the horizontally extended pipes will take up a lot of drawer space. Additionally, the location of the exhaust flue is fixed. Since the sink is under the window, the integrated stove is naturally placed to the right of the window. However, this arrangement leaves insufficient space for the "cutting" step in the "wash, cut, cook" workflow. To create a preparation area, the integrated stove has to be moved further to the right. Moreover, because the integrated stove uses a downward exhaust system, the drawer space between the flue and the appliance is reduced by a quarter due to the exhaust pipe.
Looking back, the optimal layout would be a U-shaped cabinet: the dishwasher and sink on the left, a food preparation area in the middle, and an integrated stove on the right, placed close to the exhaust duct.
All of this must be fully planned and designed during the graphic design stage, and one must never trust the evasive excuse of "design later" from renovation companies.
WashbasinThe main bathroom's vanity was initially designed as a 2-meter double sink, planned to use a sintered stone hot-bent integrated basin. However, it was later discovered that although the 2-meter length was ample, the inner sink position would be obstructed by the toilet, making it inconvenient to stand. As a result, the length was reduced to 1.8 meters. Then, when purchasing the bathroom cabinet, it was found that the small county had no experience with sintered stone hot-bent integrated basins, and customizing one from the city would far exceed the budget. Reluctantly, it had to be changed to a regular sintered stone basin.
Storage ShelfThe corner between the master bathroom vanity and the wall-mounted toilet was initially planned for an open shelf to store my wife's various skincare products. However, since the vanity was shortened by 20 cm, the required depth of the shelf exceeded 45 cm, making it difficult to find a suitable size on the market. Only now have I decided to try DIYing one with aluminum profiles, but the cost of DIY is far higher than that of a finished product.
Master bathroom doorIn the original floor plan, the main bathroom door was designed to open toward the left side where the sink area is located. When selecting the door, the store technician suggested changing it to open toward the right side, toward the shower area, to avoid interfering with the sink. This suggestion seemed quite reasonable at the time. However, after installation, it became clear that the door itself was the problem: because the design aimed to align the door with the seam between the tiles and the floor, ensuring the tiles beneath the door opening were not visible from the outside, the door was installed outward. As a result, if the door was opened with even a little too much force, the corner of the door frame would act as a fulcrum, causing the door panel to shake violently and damaging the hinges. If the door had been installed inward, it would directly hit the glass partition of the shower enclosure when opened. Looking back now, it would have been more reasonable to install a sliding track door on the outside of the main bathroom.
Once the floor plan is finalized, it's time for the shopping phase, where almost all major items need to be decided. As for shopping channels, there are naturally options between offline stores and online shops.
Before renovation, I was a staunch online shopper, believing that physical stores had higher prices, fewer styles, and poorer quality, far inferior to the cost-effective options online. While this view has some truth, when it came to actual renovation, I still chose offline physical stores for a large number of materials and furniture, including some non-brand small shops.
Currently, excluding the semi-finished decoration provided by the decoration company, I have purchased a total of 181 decoration-related items, of which 63 were bought offline, accounting for 34.81%, and 118 were bought online, accounting for 65.19%. In terms of cost, I have spent 373,409 yuan so far, with 266,271 yuan spent offline, accounting for 71.31%, and 107,137 yuan spent online, accounting for 28.69%. It can be seen that I tend to buy small items online, while for large items, I prefer offline stores. I believe thatThe core of shopping lies not only in focusing on the product itself but also on after-sales service.。
As a major manufacturing country, as long as you don't seek out unreasonably low-priced products, the quality of goods purchased both online and offline is generally reliable. However, it's important to note that whether shopping online or offline, it's best to choose brands that have local stores for after-sales service and employ their own installation technicians. Some online brands outsource installation and repair services to third-party platforms, where the quality of personnel varies. Some technicians provide excellent installation experiences, while others do not. Take my purchase of the Jingdong Jingzao showerhead as an example: the product itself was of good quality, but the installation service was extremely poor. The showerhead was installed wobbly, and after three visits from the technician, the issue remained unresolved, resulting in a terrible experience. In the end, it was the offline bathroom cabinet installer who fixed it for free and reinstalled it properly.
High-quality offline stores have a clear advantage in after-sales experience. For example, with the bathroom cabinet, due to my special requirements, the store owner and the factory technician made multiple visits to take measurements, and even helped install the kitchen sink faucet and over a dozen angle valves throughout the house. Another instance was a wooden door that, due to process issues, was left on-site for half a year, got moldy from rain exposure, and the store directly replaced it with a new one for free.
After finalizing the floor plan and confirming the renderings, the renovation workers began to enter the site. The first step was demolition and modification—removing some walls and rebuilding them according to the floor plan. I thought this stage would be a straightforward process, but a major issue arose.
During demolition and renovation, I discovered that above the door openings of every non-load-bearing wall, there were nearly 60cm of cast-in-place lintels. These lintels are part of the load-bearing structure and cannot be removed. Once the walls were shifted forward or backward, these heavy lintels would hang awkwardly in the room, almost completely invalidating my initial imaginative floor plan layout. This forced the project to halt, requiring a restart of the floor plan design. At that point, I felt utterly exhausted and had no energy left to plan the layout. The final floor plan had to be a compromise, with almost no major changes to the original room layout.
What is infuriating is that the renovation company completely failed to detect the presence of the lintels during the initial survey phase, and the property management's drawings also did not indicate these lintels.
The placement of plumbing and electrical work is closely tied to the positioning of furniture. The height and location of switches, sockets, and water inlets and outlets largely determine how furniture can be arranged later. Due to the rework of the floor plan earlier, the plumbing and electrical plans were hastily redone as well, and I didn’t give them careful thought. As a result, some furniture couldn’t be fully placed against the wall after it arrived, and some even blocked the switches. I hope everyone can learn from this.
The electrical and plumbing stage is the last window in renovation where changes can be made at a relatively low cost. Once the floor is leveled and the walls are painted with latex, any modification to the layout involving changes to electrical or plumbing positions—even just moving a single conduit—will require both breaking through walls and repainting. Repainting is especially troublesome. While it's often said online that you should keep a can of the original paint for touch-ups to avoid color differences, the reality is that even with the original paint, due to differences in temperature and humidity during application, color variations can still be noticeable from certain angles, even when using the same bucket of paint.
In my home, only the guest bathroom has a sunken floor; the master bathroom and the third bathroom do not have any sunken space. After consulting with the property management, I found that the drainage pipes are not equipped with water traps, making it difficult to solve the problem of sewer gas odors. The most effective anti-odor deep-seal floor drain typically requires an installation height of over 11cm. Combined with the requirement for a drainage slope, it cannot be installed unless the entire floor is raised by at least 13cm. However, this would further compromise the already limited ceiling height.
To address this, I chose a "jellyfish floor drain," which maintains a water seal depth of over 5 cm even with a low installation height. However, it is quite expensive, costing over 300 yuan each. I only installed two in the main bathroom, but whether the actual effect lives up to the claims can only be verified after moving in. For the other floor drains, I simply opted for ordinary gravity-seal floor drains, which also offer some odor-proofing effect.
The jellyfish floor drain requires pre-embedding during pipe layout. However, I failed to protect it properly, resulting in the plasterer directly sweeping mud into the floor drain during the leveling construction phase. This mud residue solidified in the trap, even blocking the drainage outlet. In contrast, the gravity-seal floor drain does not require pre-embedding. During the leveling phase, the reserved drainage pipe protrudes above the ground, so such issues rarely occur.
During the water and electricity positioning phase of the floor plan, it is recommended to first determine the height, dimensions, and style of the bathroom cabinet before proceeding with the positioning. This ensures precise placement of the faucet's water outlet and the drain outlet for the washbasin. When positioning the water and electricity for my new home, I was unaware of how significant this impact would be. As a result, the water outlet and drain outlet were positioned based on the default 85cm height of the bathroom cabinet. However, my actual requirement was a 90cm-high bathroom cabinet, leading to the drain outlet overlapping with the support base of the cabinet. Due to the fixed water and electricity positions, the bathroom cabinet could only be installed at a height of 86cm, failing to achieve the ideal height.
Angle valves are often overlooked in home renovations, yet they have a significant impact on water safety. It is crucial to strictly verify their quality during renovation. If angle valves come as freebies with faucets or other fixtures, they are likely made of zinc alloy, which becomes brittle and prone to cracking after a few years of use. It is recommended to purchase copper or stainless steel angle valves at your own expense.
The water outlet points of the shower should have fixed spacing, and when tiling, the degree of recess must be rechecked to ensure it meets the installation requirements of the shower. Pipe-laying workers may not pay attention to details, leading to issues such as being too deep or too shallow, not level, or uneven depth. In my master bathroom, the shower could not be installed because the outlet pipe was slightly crooked, and in the end, we had to break the tiles and readjust the position.
Because I plan to use the Aqara presence sensor FP2, which requires a power plug, I need to carefully consider the positions of the sensor and the socket during the electrical and plumbing phase. Although I thought ahead, I still didn’t plan thoroughly enough: the sensor needs to be installed at a height above 1.8 meters. At the time, I thought I could leave the socket at a lower position and run the data cable along the wall corner upwards without it being too obtrusive, while placing a socket at 1.8 meters would affect the aesthetics. As it turned out, having a long data cable hanging down is truly unsightly.
To make it easier to eat hotpot, I planned a hidden floor socket under the dining table. At the time, the designer determined the socket's position based on experience, and I thought, "How could a socket cause any problems?" However, after the dining table was installed, the table legs ended up perfectly straddling the floor socket. If I wanted to move the table to use the socket, this piece of furniture, weighing hundreds of pounds, would clearly not be good for "neck health." In the end, I had no choice but to permanently attach a power strip to the table leg.
I didn’t install a track power strip. Many people choose track power strips because regular outlets are unattractive, but track strips themselves have a base that stands out prominently on the wall (there are also hidden track strips, but they come with high costs for both purchase and maintenance). Additionally, when a plug is inserted into a track strip, it protrudes nearly 5 cm from the wall, actually taking up counter space. More importantly, I know myself as a "lazy procrastinator" who would never follow the tedious process of "taking the plug from the cabinet, inserting it into the base, plugging in the device, and then unplugging and storing it after use." In the end, all plugs would just stay plugged into the base, making it no different from a regular outlet. That’s why I chose to install three regular outlets on the countertop. If you’re aiming for an ultra-clean wall look, I recommend a sideboard with built-in outlets underneath, which works better than a track power strip.
From the very beginning, I planned to place the router on the sideboard, so I had the network port installed directly on the countertop. However, in practice, I found that the router's signal was still fine even when placed inside the sideboard, but the countertop now has an unsightly exposed cable. Looking back, no matter where the router is placed, the network port should have been planned underneath the countertop. I can only say that I wasn't thinking straight at the time.
After the plumbing and electrical work is arranged, the mason begins leveling the floor with cement, and applies putty, latex paint, or artistic paint to the walls and ceiling.
If there is one thing that I regret most about this renovation, it is not having done wall straightening and leveling. Ordinary leveling (surface leveling) relies on the worker's eyesight and feel. Although the wall looks flat to the naked eye, it is actually still uneven. This mistake in decision-making has made all the details near the walls in my entire house unbearable to look at.
In custom whole-house cabinetry, gaps between cabinets and walls are inevitable. The uneven gaps between irregular walls and straight cabinets look crooked and unsightly, often only concealable by painting over them. However, since the wall and cabinet are made of different materials, after a cycle of temperature changes, the paint at the joint is bound to crack.
As a result, various finishing methods have emerged in the market, such as minimalist edge strips, recessed edges, protruding edges, or leaving a craft gap. These approaches do not prevent cracks from forming at the joints; instead, they use visual guidance to hide the inevitable cracks in blind spots. However, if the wall is straight, and the perfectly flat wall aligns seamlessly with the equally flat cabinet, we can simply forgo painting the joint area and embrace that straight, subtle natural gap without resorting to any fancy concealment techniques.
By the way, when I was having custom cabinets installed throughout my home, the store suggested installing the cabinets after the primer but before the topcoat, claiming it would prevent scratches on the paint that might require touch-ups. However, upon reflection, the process of leveling with plaster strips and then applying the topcoat before installing the cabinets might be better. Although there is a risk of needing touch-ups, first, the interval between installation and painting is extremely short, so touch-ups would hardly cause any color difference. Second, if the paint is applied afterward, the painter is likely to smear paint into the natural gaps, leading to extremely unsightly cracks later on. By painting first and then installing the cabinets, you can preserve the clean, natural gaps.
If the walls are uneven, custom cabinetry can still manage to compensate with various techniques, but when it comes to baseboards, you're forced to accept the situation. After installation, compared to a perfectly straight baseboard, the wall at the junction will have countless noticeable black gaps and voids. The renovation company usually suggests "filling the gaps with putty powder," but even after filling, a closer look still reveals obvious unevenness.
However, these heartbreaking little details may no longer matter after actually moving in, and indeed, they won’t have much impact on daily life. Of course, if I could turn back time to the renovation and choose again, I still wouldn’t opt for leveling with plaster strips—I’d just cover all the walls with wood veneer [dog head emoji].
When it comes to wood veneer, most people worry about formaldehyde. In reality, finding products with an environmental rating lower than E1 on the market today is actually quite difficult, so there’s no need to be overly concerned about environmental issues. The real concern with wood veneer is its cost. With prices exceeding 200 yuan per square meter, the total cost can easily surpass 100,000 yuan.
But if you can accept the price, wood veneer is, to some extent, a superior alternative to latex paint and artistic paint. It can solve a series of pain points in hard decoration:
The only issue is that the splicing between wood veneers creates a large number of rigid seam lines on the wall, which depends on personal aesthetic preferences.
It was precisely because I couldn't accept the seams created by wood veneer splicing that I initially chose latex paint. However, as the renovation progressed and I encountered various issues with latex paint—such as leveling, edge finishing, and touch-ups—I began to waver repeatedly, tempted to go back to wood veneer. Yet, given the large wall area in my home, the overall budget for wood veneer was shockingly high, so I had to give up the idea.
Renovation is always a back-and-forth between "pursuing perfection" and "being forced to compromise."
The term "whole-house customization" is highly misleading, giving the illusion of "tailor-made to my requirements." In reality, it is merely a fill-in-the-blank exercise under the logic of assembly lines. So-called customization is not about you imagining and me executing; rather, it involves making extremely limited choices within the brand's predefined modules, processes, and size frameworks.
All choices in custom home cabinetry revolve around the standard 2440×1220mm panel. Manufacturers cut a single panel in half to create two standard cabinets, each 2.4 meters high and 60 centimeters deep, saving materials and streamlining production. If you deviate from this standard panel—say, making a cabinet 61 centimeters deep—you’ll pay double the price. Want it deeper? Pay more. Want it taller than 240 centimeters? Pay more. Of course, if you only need a shallow cabinet 30 centimeters deep, the price won’t be any lower. In custom cabinetry, any soaring, unconventional idea comes crashing down—the gravity of the quote is just too heavy.
If you want to soar, of course, you can rely on "high-end customization" to defy gravity with money. But for most people on a budget, the whole-house customization market is too murky to navigate. It's advisable to clarify the advantages of whole-house customization and your own needs to see if you truly require it.
The advantage of whole-house customization lies in:
I’m not particularly fond of whole-house customization, but my wife has a certain "customization" filter for it, so we ended up arranging three and a half custom installations in our new home.Living roomThere is a 5-meter-long full-wall cabinet responsible for storing all household odds and ends, serving the function of an 800-item storage unit.Master bedroomThere is a 4-meter-long full-wall cabinet for clothing storage. To avoid the cabinet exceeding 2.4 meters in height and incurring extra charges, I specifically installed a suspended ceiling to lower the room height.Service balconyThere is a laundry cabinet, mainly to cover various pipes.Outside the entrance doorThere is a 2.4-meter-high shoe cabinet, which counts as half since it's not indoors. These custom-made pieces for the whole house are all basic packages, with no paid add-ons selected, so they only cost 22,000 yuan.
Originally, I didn’t plan to install floor-to-ceiling custom cabinets in the master bedroom, since a separate walk-in closet had already been planned. However, my wife was worried about dust and moisture issues, and she followed the crowd, believing that everyone uses full-house custom wardrobes. On top of that, the sheer volume of clothes for both of us was indeed staggering. In the end, we decided to "go our separate ways": we added a full-wall custom wardrobe in the master bedroom, while keeping the walk-in closet with an open wardrobe design.
For the sake of aesthetics and environmental friendliness, I chose a trendy open-style wardrobe made of 304 stainless steel and solid wood shelves from an online store recommended in many posts. Instead of buying a complete set, I opted for a self-designed layout, purchased components separately, and skipped the installation service, barely managing to keep the total cost under 7,000 yuan (which saved me a few hundred yuan compared to a set, sadly). To be honest, it was more expensive than I expected, almost enough to put me off.
Although the price offers no advantage compared to custom cabinets with doors, the drawbacks are more numerous than expected.
ShakeI purchased two models, one 2.4m high and the other 1.8m high. They remain completely stable when shaken left and right, but I can easily make them wobble back and forth by hand, which feels like there's a risk of them toppling over. Of course, the store also notes on the product details page that they need to be secured to the wall using expansion screws or zip ties (naturally, this isn't shown in the product photos, and I haven't seen anyone using them in recommended posts). However, due to the baseboards, the wardrobe can't be placed flush against the wall, making it impossible to secure with the included expansion screws. Even if I use zip ties, they can only prevent the risk of toppling, but the wobbling will still persist. So, I had to purchase additional corner brackets to fix it.
Clean After installing the shelf at the bottom layer of the wardrobe, it is about 6cm off the ground, making it impossible for the robot vacuum to clean underneath. Alternatively, the bottom board could be installed on the second-to-last layer of the side frame, but that would waste 20cm of storage space. To avoid increasing my future housework, I scoured the internet and finally found a solution: purchasing additional adjustment parts that raise the height to over 9cm, allowing the robot vacuum to pass through smoothly. This way, I preserved the storage space while eliminating the dead corner for cleaning at the bottom.
I have to complain here: I spent days searching on social media and shopping platforms with various keywords but couldn’t find a method to raise the height. Only after discovering the solution in an obscure, little-noticed post did social media and shopping platforms start flooding with recommendations for different styles of adjustment parts. It’s like offering an umbrella when it’s sunny and taking it away when it rains.
Installation As mentioned earlier, I chose to install it myself to save the installation fee (150 yuan), but it nearly killed me. This wardrobe is almost impossible to install alone: the side frames need someone to hold them while installing the shelves. The shelves are also very heavy; I had to use my head to support the shelf while freeing one hand to screw it in. My wife and I worked together and spent a whole day finishing the installation. This experience taught me that the sound of wood hitting the head is quite crisp.
Hanging clothes The wardrobe must have space for hanging clothes. However, the hanging rod of the open wardrobe I bought rests on the side frames and cannot be fixed. When hanging clothes, even a slight force causes the rod to slide back and forth, resulting in a terrible feel.
Looking at online promotions, open wardrobes are touted for many advantages: movable, adjustable shelves for flexible partitioning, cost-saving, and formaldehyde-free. At least with my wardrobe, I haven’t encountered many of these benefits.
Buying trendy open wardrobes online requires caution; don’t easily trust online promotions. In short, all words boil down to one sentence: Help! Who understands? Family! Avoid the pitfall!
I bought the interior doors from a well-known offline brand store, and the overall experience was good. As mentioned earlier, one door developed mold. Although it wasn’t entirely the store’s fault, they replaced it for free, and their service attitude was impeccable. However, there are still some points to note.
The connection between sliding doors and wooden flooring If you plan to have wooden flooring throughout the house and install sliding doors on it, it’s recommended to place the order in two batches: buy the regular doors first, and then the sliding doors after the wooden flooring is installed. When I bought the doors, I wanted to take advantage of the national subsidy and bought them all at once. As a result, the sliding doors had to wait until the wooden flooring was installed, and they sat at the construction site for months. In particular, the ghost door I ordered was a wooden door. One time, it rained and the window wasn’t closed, causing it to get wet and moldy.
Beware of verbal promises The store has limited styles and may make false promises to close a deal. I ordered a ghost door, but after placing the order, it showed as a barn door. The store insisted that this brand’s ghost door is called a barn door and that the final product would be fine. Unsurprisingly, the final product was just a regular barn door. Although I accepted a refund of 1000 yuan and didn’t pursue it further, thinking about it, even after refunding 1000 yuan, they still made a profit—how high must the profit margin be?
Choosing kitchen doors My kitchen is not open-plan. When choosing kitchen doors, the store strongly recommended triple-sliding doors. Regular double-sliding doors only offer a 50% opening, while triple-sliding doors provide 66%. If there’s a wall or cabinet next to it, the entire door can be pushed in to create a pseudo-open kitchen effect. It was tempting, but after calming down, I calculated: my kitchen opening is 2.6m, so with triple-sliding doors, each door would be over 86cm wide. If I wanted to plan a cabinet on the side to store the triple-sliding doors, the cabinet depth would need to be a staggering 90cm. So I decisively abandoned triple-sliding doors and opted for left-right sliding doors instead. A clever idea: I customized asymmetrical left-right sliding doors. After calculations, I built a 75cm-long wall on the right side. The left sliding door is 1.1m wide, and the right sliding door is 0.75m wide. When opened, each door aligns perfectly with the adjacent wall, minimizing the door’s presence as much as possible.
The impact of baseboards Both sliding doors and barn doors need to consider the impact of baseboards. My baseboards are standard solid wood ones, 15mm thick, which interfere with doors that are flush against the wall after installation. I had to remove the baseboards and temporarily switch to 7-shaped trim strips for a smooth installation.
In the article "My Views on 'See the Light, Not the Fixture': A Discussion on Home Lighting Design," I elaborated on my understanding of lighting layout after extensive online research. Simply put, don’t stress over whether to have a main light or not; the key is multiple light sources, zoning, and on-demand lighting.
My home’s lighting was designed based on this principle, but in practice, there are still discrepancies between theory and reality.
Since my home has no steps or platforms, lower-level lighting had limited room for creativity. I only planned to place a desk lamp on the TV cabinet and install motion-sensor lights under the bedroom nightstand as accents.
Considering I have a two-year-old child, the essence of no-main-light design—creating contrasts of brightness and darkness to highlight focal points—can strain a child’s eyes and increase the risk of myopia. Therefore, in public activity areas, the children’s room, and the playroom—places where the child might frequently spend time—I installed main lights with high color rendering indices. However, after the child goes to sleep, I can turn off the main lights and let the space return to a no-main-light ambiance.
My master bedroom is a pure no-main-light design. The ceiling is completely blank. Only a light installed on the wall opposite the bed provides basic illumination. I plan to add wall lamps, floor lamps, and desk lamps later for accent lighting.
I personally dislike spotlights. Therefore, I only used spotlights in three hallways and the dressing room. The three hallways have spotlights because they are frequently walked through but not lingered in; according to online advice, the narrow beam of spotlights provides illumination while leaving dark areas for a more sophisticated feel. In the dressing room, spotlights are used to cast angled beams onto the open wardrobe. To protect my child’s eyesight, I chose anti-glare models, but looking up near the spotlights still causes uncomfortable glare.
All my lighting fixtures were purchased online. During the purchase, I noticed a limitation in the shopping app’s recommendation algorithm: after searching for and clicking on one style of lighting, subsequent recommendations were almost exclusively similar styles, making it hard to find different styles within the same aesthetic. This wasted a lot of my time, and the shopping experience has significant room for improvement.
Regarding installation: The wooden flooring store recommended installing the lights before the wooden flooring, as light installation involves heavy use of ladders, which could easily scratch the floor. I believed them. Later, I realized that the store only made this suggestion because they don’t provide protective film for the floor after installation, so they were worried about ladders damaging it. In reality, since lights and furniture have a corresponding relationship (e.g., pendant lights above the dining table and dresser need to be centered), the sequence of "install wooden flooring—bring in furniture—install lights" allows for more intuitive adjustment of light positions. Of course, dust from drilling during light installation is unavoidable, so if you install lights after furniture is in place, be prepared for a thorough cleaning.
My parents’ home had wooden flooring in the bedrooms, where I lived for nearly 20 years. I especially loved walking barefoot in summer and in socks in winter in the bedroom. But stepping onto the tiled hallway with its cold feel made me determined: in my own house, I would have wooden flooring throughout to enjoy the freedom of bare feet.
Beyond personal preference, wooden flooring has a much higher tolerance for errors than tiles. Look at social media—most of those failed cream-style or Bauhaus cases are due to the visual disconnect between tiles and furniture. With wooden flooring, it may not be stunning, but it will at least be enduringly pleasant.
Since it’s full-house wooden flooring, I had to consider continuous installation. Continuous installation means connecting the living room, dining room, bedrooms, hallways, etc., into one seamless space without threshold stones or transition strips, enhancing the overall sense of unity. However, wooden flooring inevitably expands and contracts. My public activity area exceeds 60 square meters, making this issue particularly significant.
Solid wood flooring has the highest expansion and contraction rate, while laminate flooring has a higher glue content. After comprehensive consideration, I chose multi-layer engineered wood flooring.
Although it’s full-house wooden flooring, I still used tiles in the utility balcony, kitchen, and bathroom. The bathroom requires waterproofing, so wooden flooring is out of the question. As for the utility balcony and kitchen, I initially planned to use wooden flooring there too, but considering water usage in the balcony, heavy oil smoke from stir-frying in the kitchen, and potential costs of pipe repairs, the risks were too great for me to bear alone. So I stuck with traditional tiles. Renovation isn’t just about ideals and distant goals; it’s also about compromises in the present. After all, a home is for living in. When the consequences are uncertain or potentially significant, playing it safe and following convention is a good choice.
Since my home has both tiles and wooden flooring, the transition issue became crucial. Before discussing transitions, it’s important to understand two installation methods for wooden flooring: first, click-lock installation, where the flooring is connected using its built-in locking mechanism and laid directly on a moisture barrier—this is the most common method (you can also install it on a subfloor with joists, but this is rarely used in apartments due to height restrictions); second, full glue-down installation, where the floor is covered with adhesive and the wooden flooring is glued directly to the cement base, which is more expensive.
With full glue-down installation, the adhesive fixes the flooring in place, so it hardly shifts due to moisture or dryness. Therefore, no transition is needed between tiles and wooden flooring; they can be butted directly together without expansion gaps for a better visual effect.
However, due to a communication error with the renovation company, my home didn’t have a full self-leveling floor, so I couldn’t use glue-down installation and had to opt for click-lock installation. Click-lock installation requires accounting for expansion and contraction, so a nearly 10mm expansion gap must be left between the wooden flooring and the tiles. This gap can’t be left exposed, so it has to be covered with transition strips. Even with ultra-narrow strips or embedded strips, the visual effect is still not ideal. Ultimately, I chose a workaround: filling the gap with silicone sealant in the same color. It’s relatively invisible unless you bend down and look closely. However, I’m worried it might peel off after a few years.
After installing wooden flooring, it’s essential to apply protective film. After my wooden flooring was installed, both the renovation company and the flooring store claimed that no major construction work remained and that the floor wouldn’t get scratched, so they refused to apply protective film. However, during subsequent touch-up painting, the workers severely scratched the floor in the painted areas, requiring time and effort for floor restoration later. Given the high risk of scratches when large furniture is brought in later, I had to buy and apply the protective film myself as a belated remedy.
Applying protective film doesn’t completelyTo completely avoid scratches, if a worker roughly drags a ladder or other tools, they can still tear the protective film and scratch the wooden floor. However, the purpose of applying the film is to clearly assign responsibility: once a scratch appears, it can be traced back definitively, effectively preventing the awkward situation where "the worker claims the scratch was pre-existing on the floor, while the store blames the worker," leaving you to bear the loss silently.
Additionally, it is recommended to purchase a long ladder for the workers to use after laying tiles or wooden floors. The ladders workers bring themselves are often made of rough wood, which can easily scratch tiles or damage the floor even with protective film applied.
For soft furnishings like sofas, tables, chairs, and chests of drawers, I prefer choosing smaller brands. This is because such furniture involves no technical difficulty; the key lies in the quality of materials used. Given the brand premium of larger brands, the materials used in products at the same price point are inevitably inferior to those from smaller brands.
I chose a certain self-media brand for the main sofa in the living room, three casual sofas, and the bed in the master bedroom. I first came across their videos on Bilibili and learned that their showroom was in Chengdu. Coincidentally, I had plans to travel to Chengdu at the time, so I visited the showroom in person. After seeing the actual products, I was fairly satisfied with the quality, and the price was naturally cheaper compared to some well-known brands, so I decided to make the purchase. The buying process was smooth, and the items I received were indeed excellent.
The bed and mattress deserve a special mention. Before choosing a bed frame, I had already settled on a handmade mattress from a niche online store. The main mattress plus the topper is nearly 50 cm thick. Since the most comfortable bed height for the human body is typically between 40 cm and 60 cm, and the height of a standard bed frame is far more than 10 cm, the combined total height would obviously be too high. If you search for handmade mattresses on social platforms, aside from ads, most posts complain about having to jump up and down to get in and out of bed. Fortunately, the self-media brand came up with a solution: buy a floor-standing upholstered bed, lower the support base, and ultimately control the overall height at 55 cm. This preserves the comfort of the handmade mattress while ensuring convenience for daily use.
All the furniture in my home—dining table, sideboard, entryway cabinet, chest of drawers, computer desk, and nightstand—are made of solid wood. I bought them directly from a local factory woodworking shop. I could browse designs online and have them copied, see the wood in person to confirm its quality, and the prices were extremely reasonable. In particular, the dining table, with a 2.75m long, 90cm wide, and 5cm thick four-piece North American black walnut top paired with 201 stainless steel solid legs, cost only 11,000 yuan. It was, without a doubt, the most perfect shopping experience I’ve ever had.
My purchase of curtains happened during one of my intermittent bouts of losing motivation, so I just found a physical store and hastily placed an order, inevitably becoming a "sucker."
The height of the curtain from the floorThe common practice for curtains is to leave a 2cm gap from the floor to prevent them from picking up dust. However, this 2cm gap can cause light leakage indoors. Almost all the windows in my home are bay windows, with the windows directly resting on the bay window sill. The store still followed the standard practice and left a 2cm gap, resulting in very glaring light coming from under the curtains in the bedroom.
Light leakage issueAs is well known, when curtains are drawn on both sides, light leaks through the middle. Online advice usually suggests using overlapping tracks to prevent light leakage by having the curtains partially overlap. However, this store's approach is to install clips at the top of the track, securing the curtains into the clips after they are drawn in an attempt to solve the light leakage issue. But it's obvious that the clips themselves have gaps in the middle, which cannot solve the light leakage problem at all.
I've been urging the store to make improvements since January 2026, but there's still no feedback. However, I'm still holding onto half of the payment. If it can't be properly resolved, I'll just consider it a 50% discount purchase—and come to think of it, with a 50% discount, what more could I ask for? I can just overlook these minor issues myself.
Choosing Living Room CurtainsCurrently, it's trendy to only install sheer curtains in the living room without fabric curtains. However, where I live, sheer curtains alone cannot block the summer heat, especially with floor-to-ceiling glass windows in the living room, which makes the heat issue even worse. Therefore, fabric curtains are a practical necessity. For aesthetic reasons, I opted for a "fabric curtains inside, sheer curtains outside" combination: usually, the fabric curtains are gathered and hidden behind the sheer curtains for a better visual effect. I also reserved wiring for lights early on, but I've been debating whether to install LED strips between the fabric and sheer curtains to simulate sunlight streaming in even when both layers are drawn. Since I haven't found any relevant examples online and am unsure about the actual effect, I'm still in a wait-and-see mode.
Opening and closing methodThe sheer curtains in my living room are not designed to open symmetrically from left to right. Since the operable window panel is on the right after sealing, I use the window panel's position as the boundary for opening and closing, avoiding the unsightly exposure of excess glass when pulling open half of the curtain. As for the blackout curtains, I opted for a single-sided opening design. When customizing the cabinets in the public area of the house, I deliberately left a gap next the window that matches the width of the curtain box, allowing the blackout curtains to be stored inside and remain hidden when not in use.
Since I haven't officially moved into my new home yet, and although the smart home setup is complete, the automation settings have only just begun, I'll simply introduce my ideas for now.
I have some unconventional understandings of smart homes, hoping to resonate with or provoke thought among readers.
At the current stage, the most common and frequent use of smart homes is operating switches—turning lights on and off, controlling heating and exhaust fans, and opening or closing curtains. Other features like color temperature adjustment and scene modes are, at least for me, not very useful. I imagine that in an average household, there isn't much need to frequently adjust color temperature or switch scene modes. Although I have a few smart lights at home, the color temperature throughout the house is fixed at 3000K, and aside from occasionally watching movies, I don't use other scene modes. Therefore, my home's smart home setup is very restrained, more like a "light smart" system.
I believe the entire smart home system is essentially a kind of "large furniture," and ordinary people probably wouldn't want to frequently replace large furniture, right? Considering the future, although I have the energy to tinker with smart homes now, I plan to live in this house for over 10 years, and I can't guarantee that I'll still be interested in tinkering with smart homes 5 or 10 years from now. Therefore, I think the most important thing about smart homes isStable、Easy to maintain,Simple and easy to understand.
Under this guiding principle, all the switches, sensors, cameras, and video doorbells in my home are from the Aqara brand. All automations are set up within the Aqara App and run locally through the gateway, so there’s no need to worry about network fluctuations. At the same time, all devices are bridged to the Apple Home app via the Matter protocol, using an Apple TV as the gateway.
Why take the extra step to switch to the Apple Home app? Objectively speaking, the Apple Home app's feature richness is far inferior to domestic options like Aqara or Mi Home, and there are even rumors that Apple plans to abandon HomeKit. However, the Apple Home app excels precisely because of its simplicity. Ladies and gentlemen, I appreciate minimalism—the bloat, ads, and notification badges of Aqara and Mi Home are evident to all, while the Apple Home app is refreshingly clean and intuitive. Since automations are handled on Aqara, family members unfamiliar with smart home operations can use the Apple Home app without any issues, without worrying about accidentally triggering complex settings. By the way, iCloud+ also comes with 10 days of cloud video storage, which, compared to Aqara's expensive "HomeGuard" service, is practically free.
Of course, most electrical appliances on the market do not integrate with the Aqara and Apple ecosystems. For example, all the air conditioners in my home are from Midea and can only be controlled using Midea’s proprietary Meiju app. The main lights in the living room, children’s room, and entertainment room are smart lights chosen for brightness adjustment, and like the bathroom’s heating and exhaust fan, they only support Mi Home. To unify the platform, I deployed Home Assistant on my Mac mini M1—however, adhering to the principles of stability, maintainability, and simplicity, HA only serves as a virtual gateway to sync Midea and Mi Home devices to Aqara, without performing any other complex functions.
Overall, my whole-house smart home setup is: Aqara handles various automations in the backend to enable automatic switch operations, while the Apple Home app serves as the frontend for temporary manual switch operations.
For me, the motivation to use smart home technology is simply "laziness." Through automation, I want lights to turn on when someone enters and off when they leave, and so on, to free myself from wall switches as much as possible. Ideally, I wouldn’t even need to open an app to operate things in most cases. That’s why I haven’t bought any smart panels for my home. If I have to get up, walk to the wall, stare at a UI interface, and tap precisely, that completely defeats the purpose of a smart home.
Regarding the HomePod mini, my personal experience has been quite poor. Setting aside the well-known latency issues, it often inexplicably fails to play music or loses control of devices. Moreover, the HomePod mini I bought earlier broke down in less than four years. However, I still plan to equip my new home with four HomePod minis—one in the master bedroom, living room, children's room, and entertainment room. This is primarily driven by a strong need for the "broadcast" feature.
With the broadcast function, voice messages can be easily transmitted among people in different rooms, allowing everyone to hear clearly without shouting. It truly is a great remedy for protecting your voice.
Of course, domestic smart speakers also have similar functions and are cheaper, but based on what I've used so far, they feel more like billboards for pushing various memberships.
Smart Light and Smart SwitchIn fact, there is a conflict between the two. If the switch is turned off normally, the smart light will go offline due to a physical power cut. It is necessary to set the smart switch to wireless mode and then configure an automation so that "when the switch is pressed, the smart light turns off."
Electric bedI previously purchased an electric double bed, which is designed to improve sleep by adjusting the height of the head, middle, and foot sections. For readers considering buying one, I suggest paying attention to the following points:
This review of over ten thousand words records my obsessive pursuit of every detail and the helplessness of compromising with reality.
For most of us, renovation is like the indescribable "Cthulhu"—ignorance is a form of protection. Just leave it to the renovation company! No need to look, no need to think, and you can calmly step into the finished home. But the more you try to dig into the knowledge of renovation, the more you seek to uncover the truth behind every screw and every floorboard, wanting to master the space, the easier it is to fall into the madness between perfectionism and impossibility.
Although we can find an endless stream of renovation tutorials online that seem impossible to finish in a lifetime, their content is often repetitive. Many are just traffic-driven posts that repackage outdated information, or they present standard practices that renovation companies would normally disclose as if they were secret tips. Of course, I believe there are plenty of genuine and heartfelt renovation experiences shared online, but under the influence of big data recommendation algorithms, can we truly see them?
No matter how many pursuits or frustrations there were, my renovation has finally come to an end.
Although we haven't officially moved into our new home and there are still plenty of soft furnishings and small items to add, my wife and I often take our child there to sit for a while. Whenever our child sits on the main sofa watching cartoons, and my wife and I each curl up on the lounge sofas scrolling through our phones, a sense of reality washes over me: this space has already transformed from a construction site into our home—not in the future, but right now. This is our home now.
Therefore, I am writing this article at this very moment, hoping to share encouragement with all of you on this journey of decoration, which is full of uncertainties.
Attached is my simple renovation process as follows:
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