About Homestery
Making complicated home renovation feel easy
Homestery is a one-person editorial project that turns the maze of home renovation decisions, costs, and timelines into something a homeowner can actually navigate. Free, no account required, no affiliate-stuffed cost guides written by SEO sweatshops.
Founder & editor
Alexander Georges
Founder, Homestery
Hi, I'm Alexander. I started Homestery after watching way too many friends pay 30% over budget on renovations because nobody ever told them the real numbers, the real timelines, or the real decisions in plain English.
Alexander Georges is the founder of Homestery. He has a degree in Information Science with a focus on UX Design from the University of Michigan, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude. His UX work has been recognized by the Wall Street Journal. Before Homestery, Alexander co-founded Craftle, an AI-powered furniture shopping platform that secured Techstars backing in 2023 and grew to over 100,000 users. He also worked as a Product Specialist at Ally Financial on their most profitable service. Alexander believes good software should augment human expertise and judgment, not replace it. Homestery is his attempt to take the maze of home renovation decisions, costs, and timelines and turn it into something a homeowner can actually navigate.
Find me elsewhere
What Homestery is for
Most home-improvement sites are either (a) thin SEO content stuffed with affiliate links, (b) walls of generic advice that never name a number, or (c) contractor lead-gen forms in a trench coat. None of them help when you are sitting at the kitchen table at 11pm trying to figure out whether you can actually afford a bathroom renovation.
Homestery is none of those. Every checklist has the real steps in the real order, the typical cost, the realistic timeline, and a clear call on whether you can DIY it or should hire someone. Every calculator runs on a transparent methodology you can read and disagree with. Every page tells you who wrote it (me) and when it was last reviewed.
Homeowners who use the site usually do so over weeks and months, picking up where they left off. That is why My Projects exists, why progress saves automatically with no account, and why every checklist works on a phone in a half-finished basement with bad light.
Editorial standards
How cost numbers are sourced
Cost ranges on Homestery are triangulated from at least three of: Remodeling Magazine's Cost vs. Value report, HomeAdvisor and Angi crowdsourced data, Houzz Trends, BuildZoom, and BLS construction wage data. Where sources disagree, the larger sample size wins, with a small upward adjustment for current labor cost trends. The full methodology is in the 2026 Home Improvement Cost Report.
How dates work
Every checklist and report on Homestery has a visible "Last updated" date. When something material changes (codes update, costs shift, a process gets a better-known approach), the date changes too. Pages with dates older than 18 months get reviewed before they are shown to users.
No affiliate stuffing, no gated content
Homestery has no affiliate links right now. If that ever changes, the disclosure will be at the top of any page that contains them, and recommendations will not change because of them. There is no email wall, no upsell to a paid tier, no contractor lead-gen handoff. The whole site is free.
Code and pro work
Anything Homestery describes that involves gas lines, load-bearing walls, structural concrete, or roofing over a story up will say to hire a licensed pro. The site is for homeowners who want to make informed decisions, not for bypassing professionals on work that genuinely needs them.
Get in touch
If something on Homestery is wrong, unclear, missing, or you have a renovation question we should turn into a checklist or calculator, please tell me. The fastest path is the contact form. The funniest path is X.