As great as Sketch Up is, it has its limitations. For one, you can’t really move about the space as you would in real life, so you can’t truly tell how a room will ‘feel’. Then there are the details which go unnoticed until you are actually using the space: that your elbow hits the basin bench when you turn on the bathtub tap or that you can’t comfortably reach the toilet paper. I am sure the experts who design homes for a living, have these details worked out, but I need to see things in 3D to fully appreciate how they work. This is why I took the bathroom out of the Sketch Up drawing and into the ‘real’ world, well into my shed.

In the past, I have chalked up my house, but this time I needed to bring it into the third dimension. Fortunately, we have a shed full of bits and pieces, perfect for a rough mockup. Gladly, I can say it was an exercise well worth the effort. Once I had set up the room, I could finally visualise the space that had been so neglected. I decided I wanted two sets on taps in the shower and locked in a deep tub as the base. I could plan the best location for power points and happily concluded that there was plenty of height in the shower. I could comfortably set up my ‘laundry’ without inconvenience and decided upon the bathroom windows dimensions and height. With all these details locked in, I could finally draw the bathroom up in great detail with confidence.