A wall is not a tile area — and the height the sheet prints wins

Wall sizes read off a package's elevations are still suggestions you accept with one tap. Three things about them got more honest.

The height the sheet prints is the one used

On one pool bath, the wainscot height got read as 6'-6" while the sheet itself prints 3'-6" to top of wall tile, twice. That misread either threw the number off or kept it from being offered at all.

Now, when the height Biddy read isn't anywhere on the sheet and the sheet prints exactly one tile height of its own, the sheet's height is used. On that pool bath, the room's walls measured off the floor plan at the printed 3'-6" come to about 82 sq ft. The bid priced 80.

If a sheet prints two different tile heights, Biddy doesn't pick one for you — you still get the check.

A floor only comes from a drawing that prints it

One job offered "Primary bath floor: the elevations add up to 70.3 sq ft — use that?" The drawing never said that. It prints the two dimensions on two different lines of an enlarged plan, and one of them isn't even the room's.

A floor size off the elevations is now offered only when the drawing prints the room's two dimensions together, like 12'-6" x 9'-0". A wall drawing — an elevation, an interior elevation, a section — never offers a floor or a shower pan, and that now applies to sheets read before this change too, the next time you re-read the documents.

A wall with no tile height is asked about as a wall

Architects' interior elevations often dimension the whole wall and leave the tile to the finish schedule. The schedule names the stone or the tile, but not how high it goes. So a great room's accent wall came back as 534.8 sq ft of tile, when that's the whole wall, floor to a 17-foot ceiling. An office and a bar "backsplash" came back at their full 12-foot walls, and a powder room and a laundry at their ceilings.

Those now read:

Great Room accent wall: the elevations show a 534.8 sq ft wall — how much of it is tiled?

Tap Edit and enter the tiled part, or accept it if the tile really does run all the way up. For a backsplash, if the sheet prints the counter height, the wall is offered from the counter up instead of from the floor. These stay marked for a second look, even when the schedule named the surface.

Already have a project with plans on it?

Press Re-analyze documents on the Plans card. The sheets you've already read are checked again with these rules, and your answers and typed measurements are kept.