One decision, all the way through.
One decision from my house, followed through every module as far as it has gone. My renovation has not started. That is the point. Most of the method happens before a wall opens, and this is what it looks like while it is happening.
Why one decision, and why mine.
Nine modules tell you how the method works. One decision, followed all the way through, shows you. This is the shower in my own two-flat, a 1900s building in Chicago which I intend never to leave. It goes from the sentence I wrote in module 1 to the person I have to ask before anything is cut. It stops where my project stops today, at the drawings. I will update it when the quotes arrive and again when the wall is open. The blanks in sienna are numbers and names I fill in as they become real. Nothing here is a specification for your bathroom.
Read it once before module 1, so you know the shape. Read it again after module 6, when you know why it is in this order.
What I avoid, and why.
The first thing I wrote, in fifteen minutes, without looking at the bathroom.
A thing I am not doing. A room. The way the house makes it hard. That is the whole Day Map for this decision, and everything below comes from that one sentence.
What the bathroom costs to use.
Walking the room with the list, four ticks landed on the same sentence.
Having nowhere to sit in the shower. Bothers me, every day.
How long a shower takes. Bothers me, worst days.
Reaching the water controls before you are in the water. Bothers me, every day.
And the line under the room, in my words: The shower is the room I have most completely adapted around. I have stopped noticing that I plan the week around which days I can stand in it. That went in the box marked "something here I stopped noticing." It is why the sentence says "less often" and not "never." The shower is one of my five.
What is already decided.
The fences this decision has to fit inside, from my Project Fences page. The money stays on that page.
Time. No hard date. Soft date: ___. Living inside it: one room at a time, never two, and the only full bathroom cannot be out for more than ___ days.
How long the house has to work. This is the house I never leave. Every decision twice.
The building. 1900s two-flat. The plumbing wall is ___ and I do not want to move it. What is inside the walls: unknown until they are open. Joists run ___.
The body, from the people who looked. ___. What is coming: ___.
Taste. I will not live with anything which reads as equipment. The tile has to be something I would have chosen anyway. What has to survive: ___.
Who decides. Me, and ___. Where we already disagree: ___.
The body first, then the building.
Four parts. Activity: showering, not "the tub." Day: my worst one. Costs: a transfer (the tub wall), minutes (standing the length of a shower), a reach (the controls). Condition: from the fences.
Self-check: activity, day, cost, condition, all named. No product. Three people could suggest three different things to meet this sentence, and I could judge every one of them by it.
Could an object meet it?
Objects before contractors. Two candidates, run through the six questions.
A hand shower on a slide bar. Question one: removes the reach, every day. Question two: yes, this version. Question five: reversible, moves with me. Verdict: yes, for one cost. Buy it now regardless of the renovation.
So the card reads: object, partly. An object can remove two of the three costs today. The third, stepping over the tub wall, needs a build. That is the only part of this decision the renovation is for, and it took two modules to find out it was one cost, not three.
Order of operations.
My stage today: ___ of eight. What closes next: ___. Roughly when: ___.
From the disappearing list, marked for this decision: backing across the zone on every bathroom wall, floor to ceiling in the shower, doing it. An outlet at the toilet, doing it. Flush threshold at the bathroom door, doing it. Whether the floor allows a curbless pan at all, need to ask, name: ___.
The fixes page, reopened: in module 1 I had written "walk-in shower." It survived, in a way. The requirement is not a walk-in shower. The requirement is nothing to step over on the way in. A walk-in shower is one of two or three things which would meet it, and I do not yet know which is cheapest.
What to ask, and who to ask it of.
Seat height and which wall. Body. The OT: ___. Asked: not yet.
Where the backing goes and what the assembly is. Build. The contractor, when there is one: ___.
Whether the plumbing wall stays. Design, then licensed if it moves. ___.
The next three calls, in order. First, the person who can say whether a curbless shower pan works on this floor, because that answer decides whether a build can meet the requirement at all. Second, the OT, for the seat. Nobody else until those two have answered.
Reading a quote.
The worst day in the finished room.
What this shows, which the modules can only say.
One sentence became three costs. Two of the three could be fixed with objects, bought or borrowed this month, before a drawing existed. The third was the only reason to open a wall, and it came with a licensed question nobody had asked yet. Writing the requirement instead of the solution is what showed me that. Finding the closing window is what put the licensed question first. That is the method. The rest of the course shows you how to do it for your own five.