In the furious battle to provide the “complete” project experience, many outlets and home centers are putting packages together to help you get home projects and honey-do’s done. If you stop by the Lowe’s site, the front page has a link to the Home Profile Creation page. I have mixed feelings about this.
On one hand, it’s pretty cool to be able to plan projects and have list items, pricing, and the total material sums for the the project, as well as pictures of how it might look when completed. On the other hand, my projects never seem to wind up going exactly to plan anyway. And a certain amount of (ok, to be fair, almost all) home projects I’ve undertaken require tweaking followed by some fairly serious swearing.
Add to that I’m not crazy about my house plans, future projects, and buying history being stored and collated on the Lowe’s cloud, and I’m hesitant to run out and inventory my appliances on an online database — it’s like begging for targeted email campaigns.
While I’m not quite ready to be fitted for a shiny pyramid hat just yet, I am a little gun-shy about giving a retailer that much access to my abode and project planning. It may be a great service — I’m guessing for folks overhauling their place or doing major work, it would be a godsend. For me, though, a shop pencil, scratch pad, and a lot of arm waving will do nicely. Then again, that may be why my projects grow legs on me too.
Home Project Planner App [Lowes.com]