Records from the jobs we have done, things that turn out to be useful in restoration work, and how we think about the way we work — including what happens away from site.
When a restoration and interior works company starts using AI, the first thing to decide is not which AI to use. It is what to hand over and what not to. We draw the line by asking who loses if it gets something wrong.
How the main AI tools feel in the day-to-day work of a contractor. We do not rank them: comparisons date quickly, and the draft of this article was written with AI, so we are in no position to rank them fairly.
Whether the text you put into an AI is used for training is handled differently on personal plans and business plans. We checked what each company states officially, then set out the rules we settled on inside our own company and how to read the pricing.
The person building our business app, anken.ai, is the same person out on restoration jobs. Looking back through the actual commit history, there were more commits that renamed something, or removed a screen, than commits that added a feature.
The most common way to build a website is WordPress. We went with something else, Astro. Here is what each is good and bad at, and the numbers we actually measured.
Wallpaper paste, floor adhesive, sealant. The ancillary materials that never take the lead role have been hit through 2026 by temporary order suspensions and shipment limits. What is behind it, and what it means on site.
We did not put an open comment section under our posts. Instead there is a box that only sends. Here is why, including the weaknesses of that decision.
You will not find a table here saying "wallpaper, ¥XX per sqm". Here is why we left it out, and three things worth checking whenever you take an estimate.
In July 2026 the two largest interior material suppliers revised their prices one after the other. Here are the rates, the products covered, and how it actually feeds through to a restoration estimate.
We rebuilt the company website. Why did we decide to start again? There were three reasons, and none of them were about what suited us — they were all about what made things hard for our customers.
We built this site in conversation with an AI. What we handed over, what we did not. And the part that mattered most was deleting the plausible-sounding falsehoods the AI wrote.
We had a finished home page, and then cut it down to two thirds. What there was too much of was not information — it was the same point repeated. Here are the numbers we measured.
At launch there are parts of this site that are still not filled in. Here, without hiding any of it, is what is missing.
This site runs on Xserver. With free options available, why pay a monthly fee for shared hosting? Here is what we compared, and the three criteria that decided it.
The business app we build in house, anken.ai, keeps its data in Supabase. It was the choice that let a contractor have its own app without putting a server administrator on the payroll. Here is what worked, and what we find frightening about it.
Put the websites of restoration and interior firms side by side and you see the same soft illustrations of people, in much the same form. Here is why we think that happens, and what we did on our own site.
The weak yen, expensive oil, the Middle East. Plenty of reasons get listed, but from site the order of importance looks different. Our own reading of the 2026 price rises.
The website of OS Co., Ltd., a restoration (genjo-kaifuku) contractor in Katsushika, Tokyo, is now live. We will carry on writing about what we went back and forth on while building it, and about what we deliberately left out.
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You do not need drawings or photos. Tell us the condition of the unit and when you need it done, and we can take it from there. Estimates and site visits are free.
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OS Co., Ltd.
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