Chapter one · this weekNot built yet at the week you picked
Friday, 4:40 PM. The album updates.
This is one real-feeling week from the sample build on the cover, all of it invented. The shape never changes, which is the point: photographs first, three lines of what happened, and the one thing that needs the buyers before next Friday.
Framing inspection passed. The inspector signed the card at 11:20. A photo of the signed card is in the album, because a signature photographs better than a promise.
Plumbing rough-in started. The tub for the hall bath is set. It is the standard tub from the contract; the deep-soaker upgrade window closed at Week 10 and the album said so at the time.
Rain, no work, no drama. The schedule slips one day, and the close date does not move. Keyday shows the slip instead of hiding it, because buyers forgive weather and remember surprises.
The one decision: kitchen backsplash tile, by Friday
Pick as the Alvarezes. The standard tile is already in the contract price; the other two are priced as exact change amounts, not "from." Sending writes the choice onto the build record. Changing your mind after sending takes the sent stamp off, honestly.
Not sent yet. The tile crew is booked either way; the choice only changes what they carry in.Sample decision inside a fictional demo. Nothing leaves this page.
Chapter two · the whole journey
Thirty-eight Fridays, in order.
Use the Week dial at the bottom of the screen, or just keep scrolling. Each stage of a build asks different things of a buyer, and the portal is mostly the art of asking them one at a time, early enough to matter.
Weeks 1 to 8 · Dirt and concretedecisions: structural options, closed early
The least photogenic weeks are the ones buyers worry about most, because nothing looks like a house. The album leans in: the hole, the forms, the pour, the inspection cards. What the buyer decides: the last structural options, because after the slab, moving a wall stops being a drawing and starts being a demolition.
Weeks 9 to 17 · Framingdecisions: tile, tubs, door swings
The week the house becomes legible from the street. Buyers drive by anyway; the album is for the four days they cannot. What the buyer decides: the wet-room choices that plumbing has to know about, each with the Friday it locks.
Weeks 18 to 28 · Dried in, then finishesdecisions: paint, counters, hardware
Roof on, windows in, and the build turns inward. Photographs move inside with it: drywall, cabinets, the first coat of the color they picked from a two-inch square. What the buyer decides: finishes, in the order the crews will need them, never all on one Saturday.
Weeks 29 to 38 · Keys, then the first yeardecisions: walkthrough list, warranty
The last photographs are the boring, beloved ones: a lawn, a porch light, a blue-tape walkthrough where every mark becomes a tracked fix. What the buyer decides: what counts as done, in writing, before the keys change hands.
Chapter three · changes without the ambushNot built yet at the week you picked
Change orders, priced before they are emotional.
Mid-build changes are where builder and buyer relationships go to die, usually over a price heard differently by two people in a model home. In Keyday a change is a line with a number and a signature, or it does not happen. Try building one:
Draft change order · Lot 14
Unsigned draft. The crew sees nothing until both buyers sign.Each line also carries its schedule effect in plain words: none of these three moves the close date, and the order says so.
What the builder's team sees
- One queue per home: decisions due, signed, and overdue, across every lot in the community.
- The Friday walk is the data entry. The superintendent photographs a short checklist; the album, the schedule and the buyer update are the same act, not three.
- Every number a buyer ever saw, kept with the date they saw it. "Nobody told us" stops being a genre of phone call.
What is not in Keyday
- No mortgage or lender tools. The money conversation stays with the lender; the build conversation stays here.
- No designing a house from a blank page. Keyday serves builders with plans and option catalogs, not custom architecture.
- No live cameras. A Friday photograph with a caption ages better than a feed nobody watches, and crews work better unstreamed.
Chapter four · after the keysNot built yet at the week you picked
The album becomes the house's paperwork.
At closing, the same login stops being a build album and becomes the house's file: manuals, paint codes, the warranty clock, and a way to ask for a fix that keeps the answer attached to the question.
Already in the file at keys
- Every selection with its exact product name, so a chipped tile in year three is a reorder, not an archaeology dig.
- Inspection cards and the final walkthrough list, signed copies.
- Appliance manuals and the paint color of every room, including the ceiling white nobody ever writes down.
A warranty request, honestly
The buyer photographs the sticking door, picks the room, and writes two sentences. The request lands with the build record attached, so the warranty tech arrives knowing the door, the hinge, and who hung it. Requests are answered in the portal, where "we never got that" cannot survive.
The limit, stated: Keyday tracks the request; it does not decide coverage. That stays the builder's call, made in writing, in the same thread.
"Our buyers stopped texting superintendents' personal phones, which alone was worth it. What I did not expect: they forward the Friday photos to their parents. Our portal is doing family marketing we could never have bought."
Invented for this fictional site: Dana Whitaker, VP of Sales at a 140-home-a-year builder outside Columbus, Ohio
"We watched the slab get poured from a hospital waiting room while our daughter was being born. The house and the kid have the same first album, basically."
Invented too: Marcus Alvarez, Lot 14, the sample family on this page
Chapter five · the price, worked
Priced like a fixture, because it ships with the house.
per home, once, covering contract to keys plus the first warranty year. No per-seat math, no per-message meter. A home that falls out of contract before the slab pours is not billed.
Work it for your year
Set against the alternative honestly: one coordinator fielding "any update?" calls for sixty active builds spends more than that in a quarter, and the answers still live in her sent folder. Keyday's number is small because the Friday walk already happens; we are charging for where the photographs land.
Starting
- One community first. Bring the option catalog and the schedule template; the first album is live for the next contract signed.
- Superintendents keep their phones. The Friday walk is six photographs and a checklist inside the app they already open.
- Buyers need no training. It is an album with a decision in it. Grandparents get a view-only link, which turns out to matter.
Plain terms
- Month to month per community after the first ten homes.
- Photographs and records export whole, any time, in boring formats.
- The buyer's copy of the album stays theirs even if the builder cancels. It is their house's baby book; we are not monsters.