Drawing a Scale Plan for your Home Renovation
No matter what task you undertake, it all starts with the plan. If you plan to renovate, you should play around with the plan before you tackle the task. You wouldn’t buy clothing without trying it on. Even if you would, renovations can’t simply be taken back to get your money refunded if you don’t like them. You should lay out several plans on graph paper first before you settle on the one that’s best for your needs. Here are the steps you need to undertake to draw your own renovation plans.
1. Buy a pad of graph paper that has on which squares equal 10cm. You can also draw your own grid of equal squares on a blank sheet of paper.
2. Use a tape measure to measure the length of a wall. Then draw a line on the graph paper to represent this length. You do this by counting each square. For example, the wall is five meters, so it is five squares on the graph paper or five sections of 10 squares. Use what works best for you.
3. Measure the remaining walls, the length of each door, and then the window openings without frames. Draw lines on your paper to represent each of these.
4. When you draw windows and doors, draw windows with double lines and doors with a line and an arc that shows the way the door opens.
5. Measure both the widths and lengths of all built in fixtures and add these to the plan. For extra details you can mark with an “X” to represent details of power points or light switches if you want.
Kitchens
Kitchens are usually the most difficult room to renovate. This is especially true due to modular cabinetry coming in so many variable heights, widths and depths. Still, you don’t need complicated computer programs or much design knowledge to make a plan for it. You still just need graph paper. Here are the steps:
1. Draw a base scale plan of the kitchen.
2. Draw a design for kitchen cabinetry on another sheet of graph paper. Each square should equal the same scale as the main graph. If it’s a base cabinet that is 500mm wide by 500mm deep by 500mm high, you can only replicate the depth and width on paper. It’s still worth doing in spite of limitations.
3. Use scissors and cut out the individual pieces of floor cabinetry. Move them around on the piece of paper to get an idea of how your floor cabinets will work. Decide if a u-shape, l-shape or galley layout more effective for your space. You’ll need space for the oven and dishwasher to open, so allow for that without blocking internal pathways.
4. You need a little more planning for overhead cabinets. You can still cut out the overhead cabinets and color them to demarcate the floor and overhead and tall cabinets.
5. You can also play around with cabinet shapes and sizes to form islands, galley layouts, l-shape or u-shape layouts and figure out which works best in your kitchen.