A week before

• Your arrival date confirmed with whoever prepares the houseEven roughly. Cooling a closed house down, bringing a pool back and running water through a system all take longer than people expect.
• The house walked, and anything found reported to youWalked, not just prepared. The point of the week before is that something found then can still be dealt with.
• Any open item you will care about, resolved or explainedAn item you discover on the first morning is a conversation. The same item told to you a week out is an arrangement.
• Anything needing a trade booked nowAfter a long absence the first warm or cold week declares whatever is going to fail. Better to find it with a week in hand.

Two or three days before

• Cooling or heating brought to the arrival settingNot the away setting. A house held at 78 all summer is not a house you want to walk into.
• Humidity brought down, and the reading notedAnd compared to what it has been. A house that has been damp for a month does not dry in an afternoon.
• Water on, run through, and every fixture checkedTaps, toilets, showers, the ice maker. A supply line that failed quietly is found now rather than on your first night.
• Refrigeration on and at temperatureIncluding wine storage and any second refrigerator.
• Pool or spa brought to its arrival stateIf there is one. Heating takes days, not hours.
• Irrigation and exterior lighting set for occupancyDifferent schedule from the empty months.

The day before, or the morning of

• The house aired, and the smell of a closed house goneEveryone notices it, but it rarely makes the list.
• Every room walked one more timeIncluding the ones you will not use. Something can change in a room nobody has been in.
• Alarm returned to its occupied configurationAnd the call list correct for the people who are actually here now.
• Mail and parcels brought in and left where you will find them
• Anything a provider left behind, dealt withLadders, materials, a gate left open, a hose unrolled.

What you should have in your hand before you arrive

• One page on what changed while you were awayReadings, findings, work done, decisions still waiting on you.
• The list of what is still open, with a name against eachSo nothing about the house is a surprise on the first morning.
• The arrival settings, and who confirmed them and whenA setting someone typed in is not confirmation. A dated reading, with the name of whoever took it, is.
• Anything that will happen while you are hereA scheduled service, a delivery, a trade returning. Your first week is yours, not the calendar’s.

The first morning back

• Walk it yourself, once, slowlyNot to check anyone’s work, but to get your own feel for the house again. Most owners notice one thing, and it is usually small.
• Read the humidity yourselfIt takes ten seconds and it tells you how the winter actually went.
• Note anything you find, while you are standing in front of itThe three things you would otherwise remember in the taxi to the airport.
• Say what you want done before you leave againTwenty minutes that are easy to skip and worth spending.

What I found on the first morning, and what I want done about it