“We should probably look at an area of 2,832 squibblydoos, despite the 3 gobnob setback from the perimeter. And of course, that only works if we stay within 60% of the total jibberoonis.”

This is what every conversation about building our home has sounded like over the past few months, as we’ve slowly come face-to-face with this — frankly terrifying — adulting decision. I would nod along, obviously, but my eyes would glaze over.

Some people are great at visualising physical space. I am not one of those people. I don’t know what the hell a “4x4m” bedroom means. Is that a lot? Is it cramped? Can a double bed fit in a room that size? How big is a double bed??

And yet, in meeting after meeting, we were subjected to these same random numbers and units that meant nothing to me. Sometimes, I’d just ask them what the size of the room we were sitting in was, and then compare that to the numbers they were throwing our way. It was not a sustainable plan.

The most infuriating thing is that no one seems to have decided which damn measurement system they want to stick with. As though this stuff wasn’t difficult enough, “feet” and “inches” and “yards” and “gaz” just complicate the matter further. Stop trying to make imperial units happen, America. It’s not gonna happen!

Anyway, back to those meetings. It was disempowering to sit there and discuss our home, where I hope we’ll grow old, and not even be able to speak the same language as the folks who would build it. I was determined to figure this out.

The first thing I did was buy a small laser distance-measuring tool. It’s an inexpensive but very nifty little gadget that lets me point at anything to measure how far it is. In whatever units I choose. It helped me measure out the spaces in our current home and get a much better sense of how much more (or less) space we’d likely need. I even measured the entire length of our current house to compare it with the plot options we were being shown.

This helped. Finally, I was getting somewhere. But measuring our existing house and using it as the yardstick was only the first piece of the puzzle. I also needed to understand how the new house would need to be laid out. Alas, my little laser pointer would not be able to help with that.

I didn’t want to buy or learn some fancy, expensive new architectural software because I’m not looking for a career pivot in my forties. All I needed was to be able to draw a few rectangles (rooms), understand their relative sizes, and then place them side by side in a somewhat coherent layout so I could calculate the building’s total area. I didn’t need lifelike renders, 3D furniture models, or a 360-degree rotation feature. I wanted to draw out the different ideas we had for the structure without worrying about measurements, calculations, or conversions between metric and imperial units.

So, you guessed it. Claude and I got to work building a tool that would allow me to do just that.

The prompt I used was pretty straightforward, and the basic idea was simple: a grid in which every small square corresponded to a real-world measurement of 1m x 1m. I could draw rooms as rectangles or polygons, see their dimensions as I drew, and have the area calculated automatically once I closed the shape. Next, I needed to know at a glance the total area of the structure I’d drawn, and whether I was within the government-mandated 60%.

Finally, I needed a toggle to switch between metric and imperial units.

Claude one-shotted the core of it. The only things I went back for were small tweaks — the ability to add doors, rename each room, save drawings, that sort of thing.

Then came the fun part — actually drawing the house as we imagined it!

The first block I drew was the living and dining area. Our entire current home — all of it — was about the size of that one block. We didn’t even need to use half the area everyone had so confidently been pushing us to build. FFS, it was just my wife and me, and maybe a couple of dogs in our future. We did not need such a big building.

The idea we wanted to explore was whether a ‘U-shaped’ structure could work in the space we had. We love the idea of a central courtyard as the heart of our home, with the rest of the structure overlooking it. Where we could sit in privacy and still enjoy that open-to-the-elements feeling.

We started plotting out every room we wanted in that ‘U’ shape — the hall and living room, bedrooms, bathrooms, a studio workspace, even a small home gym. Everything fit, with generous space for each block, and the tool kept reminding me I was still only at 34.6% of the total plot.

Now we had momentum. The next call we had with the architects, I shared my screen, pulled up the tool I’d built, and showed them exactly what they’d been pitching us, and why it was too much. I could question their approach and change the drawing on the tool based on what they told me, in real-time.

Some were impressed, others seemed annoyed, but I was proud of myself. Because I could finally follow along, and confidently push back on things that don’t work for us. These meetings are no longer daunting; I might even go so far as to say they’re fun now.

Thanks to this little tool that Claude helped me build in a couple of hours, we now know how much “buildable area” we’d actually need. And we know how much green cover we could have. We know we can have our lovely courtyard. We can realistically visualise all of it.

And while this exercise helped me survive the confusing numbers from the architects, the numbers we discussed with our bank loan officer next made those look like a warm-up.

But I’m saving that horror story for next week.

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