Planning a renovation

How to plan a renovation, room by room

Draw the place once. Every quantity, every price and every total comes from those measurements. This is the whole job in seven steps, from an empty screen to a list you can hand over a merchant's counter.

The seven steps

1. 1

   Draw the flat to scale

   Draw each room in the floor planner. You get floor area, wall area and perimeter without measuring anything twice.

   • ·Open the planner and draw one room at a time. Click corner to corner, or drag a rectangle.
   • ·Type a length while you draw to set it exactly. Corners snap to each other, so rooms join up.
   • ·Add doors and windows. They come off the wall area, which is the number you buy paint and boards against.
   • ·Free plans hold two closed rooms. A whole flat needs a paid plan.
2. 2

   Say what you are renovating

   Select a room, then pick the floor, the walls or the ceiling. Tick the trades that surface needs.

   • ·Each surface has its own list. Floors offer flooring, tiles, concrete and insulation. Walls offer paint, wallpaper, tiles, boards, stud wall, insulation and cladding.
   • ·Tick one and it prices itself straight away, from the area you just drew.
   • ·Select a single wall to override the room. Useful when one wall is tiled and the rest are painted.
3. 3

   Check the quantities

   Open any ticked item and adjust the product, the pack size or the price. The estimate follows.

   • ·Defaults are sensible, not yours. Change the price per pack to your merchant’s price.
   • ·Waste is part of the quantity, not a flat percentage bolted on at the end.
   • ·The Materials panel totals every room and every floor.
4. 4

   Save it into a project

   A project holds the rooms, the calculations, the budget and the schedule in one place.

   • ·Link the plan to a project, then sync the rooms across. The measurements come with them.
   • ·Each room gets its own screen: materials, tasks, notes, photos and a budget.
   • ·Free accounts hold one project and three saved calculations.
5. 5

   Add hours, tools and a target

   Materials are about a third of a renovation. Hours and tool hire are most of the rest.

   • ·Set an hourly rate, then estimate hours per room. Not days per room — that is where optimism gets in.
   • ·The tool checklist asks Have, Buy or Rent for every tool the trades in your project need. Only what you do not own counts.
   • ·Set a budget target and the estimate becomes a bar you can read at a glance.
6. 6

   Print the shopping list

   Every saved calculation becomes a list of what to order, grouped and ready to take to the merchant.

   • ·The shopping list copies as plain text or prints straight from the browser.
   • ·It is a list to order from, not a tick-list — there are no check boxes yet.
   • ·The project PDF aggregates quantities across every room, and needs a paid plan. It carries a watermark unless you are on Pro.
7. 7

   Track what it actually costs

   Log what you spend as you spend it. Estimate and actual sit side by side, room by room.

   • ·Log an expense against a room or the whole job. Park one to exclude it without deleting it.
   • ·The board and the calendar hold the tasks, the deliveries and the trades.
   • ·Share a read-only link with a partner or a builder. Sharing needs an account, on any plan.

Try step one now

Type a room you know. This is the arithmetic the planner does for every room you draw, and the reason the rest of the steps need no measuring.

What each step is for

Where the free tier stops

Drawing and pricing are free, and need no account. A whole flat will cross these limits, so they are worth knowing before you start rather than halfway through.

• ·Two closed rooms per plan — enough for a bathroom and a kitchen, not a flat.
• ·One project, three saved calculations — the project holds the budget and the schedule.
• ·No PDF export — the browser print view is open to everyone.
• ·No photos, no cloud sync — free work is saved in this browser only.

Common questions