Warming the Pot

This was a standard three-courtyard residence covering over a thousand square meters. The main house was a two-story building with seven rooms. The east and west wings each had five or six rooms, and with the rear-facing rooms and back rooms added in, there were dozens of rooms altogether. There was a front courtyard, a garden in the back, covered walkways with handrails, and a small pavilion for enjoying the view. Two old trees that had stood for decades grew in the courtyard, while the small rear garden featured ornamental rockwork. It was quite elegant.

Of course, that had been its former layout, and it definitely needed alterations. Forget Wang Yan's master-level architecture and design skills—even just redoing the internal plumbing and electrical systems would mean turning the whole residence upside down. After all, regardless of how large a courtyard house was these days, connecting indoor running water and sewage pipes was no easy task. Otherwise, there would not have been public toilets all over the streets, built precisely to solve the residents' bathroom problem.

For such a large residence, the original water pipes only reached the kitchen and the toilet, and even that was not very convenient. So the house had to be gutted to install the plumbing and electricity properly. Renovating and rebuilding it in the process had only been natural.

The rear-facing rooms were already gone, replaced by a garage that could fit three cars. Since there were no cars yet, the outer wall had not been completely knocked down. Only part of it had been demolished so motorcycles could be parked there, while the rest was left in reserve for now.

That was the biggest alteration. Most of the others involved reinforcing the structure, repairing the exterior, installing plumbing and electricity inside, adding several bathrooms, and