Measure Once, Plan Twice: Planning a Project on Paper

The most expensive material in any project is the piece you cut wrong. Planning on paper is free.

Measure the space, not the object

Measure the opening or the wall in three places — top, middle and bottom for a width; both ends for a height. Old houses are never square, and the smallest of the three measurements is the one that matters.

Note the obstacles: skirting, architrave, sockets, pipe boxing, radiator brackets, the door swing. Every one of these has caused a piece of furniture to arrive and not fit.

Draw it to scale

Graph paper, 1 square = 50 mm. Draw the elevation and the plan. Two views catch nearly every conflict that one view hides.

Then draw the thing you are building on the same sheet at the same scale, and check the clearances: can the door still open, can you get past it, is there room to actually use it.

Make a cutting list

Every part, with its finished dimensions, in a table: part name, quantity, length, width, thickness. Then add the joints — if a shelf sits between two uprights, its length is the internal width, not the external one. Subtracting material thicknesses on paper is the single most common source of error in a first build.

Check the sheet

If you are using plywood or MDF, sketch your parts onto a scale rectangle of a full 2440 x 1220 sheet and see whether they fit, allowing 4 mm for each saw cut. This tells you how many sheets to buy, and it frequently tells you that changing one dimension by 20 mm saves you an entire second sheet.

The mock-up

For anything you will live with daily, tape out the footprint on the floor with masking tape and live with it for two days. Walk around it. This costs nothing and it has changed the dimensions of almost every piece of furniture we have built.

Buy last

Only after the cutting list is finished and checked twice. Add 10% to timber quantities for defects and mistakes, and buy fixings generously — a second trip to the hardware shop mid-build costs an hour and most of your momentum.