The Makers Journal

Practical things worth knowing before you build your home.

Short notes from the work: what to ask, what to count, and what a drawing has to deal with. They are here to help you decide, even if you never become a customer.

A compact kitchen counter with a mixer, steel dabbas and a two-burner hob

Kitchens

A hob is not a kitchen

Indian cooking needs a wet corner, a mixer and a place the oil already lives. The hob is only one of those jobs.

2 min read

An open wardrobe with folded shirts, hanging clothes and steel boxes on a high shelf

Storage

Draw the wardrobe around what you own

Hanging, shelves and a loft are not a look. They are a count of shirts, suitcases and the things you reach for every morning.

2 min read

A narrow apartment passage with closed wardrobe shutters and a bathroom door ahead

Bengaluru homes

The passage has to work

In a two-bedroom flat, a shutter that blocks the walk to the bathroom is a drawing mistake, not something to live with.

2 min read

A laminate kitchen shutter being wiped with a cloth beside a steel dabba

Materials

Where laminate belongs

Oil, turmeric and a wet cloth. Some surfaces are chosen because they can take that, not because they photograph well.

2 min read

A tape measure held against a cream wall beside a concrete column

Design

Measure the wall. Then draw.

The room already has a column, a window and a pipe. A pretty drawing that ignores them is still wrong.

2 min read

Fingers checking the seam where an edge band meets a walnut shutter

Craft

The edge that lifts

The part you never photograph is often the one that fails first. Ask what happens at the edge, and who comes back if it lifts.

2 min read

Photographs are concepts, not completed Makers of Home projects. The notes are about the work, not a catalogue.