Notes
OS Notes
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.
Guides
Interior materials are not arriving: the lead-time problem that followed the price rises (August 2026)
The July price revisions went ahead, and nearly every interior materials maker has now announced one. But what is actually holding up work on site is not the price — it is getting hold of the goods. One maker has suspended new orders for adhesive. Crude oil keeps swinging up and down, so there is no sign of prices coming back down either.
Software
Material ordering only happens after hours: looking up codes, ordering, checking lead times
Every time an order comes in, we look up product codes, place the order with the wholesaler, and check lead times. Three to eight jobs a week, twenty minutes each at the very least. None of it can be done while working on site, so it waits until we are back at the office — and it comes last in the order of desk work, finishing around nine. We are building an app for it, and what is holding us up is not the technology; it is putting into words what the actual problem is.
Project
A stain under the fridge: overlaying 5 mm poly plywood, half a day and about 12,000 yen
We moved the fridge and found a stain underneath it. Replacing the whole base board would have cost far more, so we laid a 5 mm melamine-faced plywood over the existing one. Half a day, a few thousand yen in materials.
Software
Why the layout looked half-finished on an iPad: nine breakpoint steps
The phone was fixed. What about the iPad? Opening it, everything — type, spacing — was "medium", with no point of emphasis anywhere. Here is how we removed nine breakpoint steps, made headings bigger and the supporting text smaller, and stopped Japanese from breaking mid-word.
Software
Move your company and Google will not update your address by itself
We set up Google Search Console. In the process we found that our 2024 move to Katsushika was reflected nowhere online — and that even our own site had an address that did not match the company register.
Software
Four things that were broken on a phone after launch, and how we fixed them
After launch we opened the site on our own iPhone. The bottom of every page was hidden, and once you had scrolled down there was no way back to the menu. Here is how we turned "somehow it looks wrong" into numbers, and what we fixed.
Guides
When will interior material prices settle? Four reasons, seen from the site (August 2026)
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.
Guides
Why are interior contractor websites full of illustrations? Four reasons the photos never appear
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.
Software
Why a company with no dedicated engineer chose Supabase: the cost, and what worries us
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.
Software
Which server should a company website run on? Three criteria behind choosing Xserver
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.
Software
Five things we launched without finishing (as of August 2026)
At launch there are parts of this site that are still not filled in. Here, without hiding any of it, is what is missing.
Software
How long should a company home page be? We cut 2,481 characters down to 1,587
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.
Software
What we handed to AI when building the site, and what we did not
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.
Software
What happens when a contracting firm has no contact form on its site
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.
Guides
Interior materials up 18-30% (July 2026): what it does to a restoration 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.
Guides
Why the going rate for restoration work is not reliable: three things to check in an estimate
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.
Software
Does a company website need a comment section? Three reasons we chose a send-only form
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.
Guides
Wallpaper paste and floor adhesive are not arriving: the 2026 order suspensions and shipping limits
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.
Software
Should a company website run on WordPress? If you update a few times a month, there is another way
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.
Software
A tradesman building his own business app: across 38 commits, renaming beat new features
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.
Software
Is what you put into AI used for training? How personal and business plans differ
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.
Software
Using Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini for different jobs at a contracting firm
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.
Software
When a contractor brings in AI, the first decision is what not to hand over
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.
News
Our website is live (and we are writing down what we went back and forth on while building it)
The website of OS K.K., 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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