About Buildy Buddy
How It Started
Buildy Buddy was born out of real frustration — and a lot of trips to the hardware store.
When I became a first-time homeowner, I was excited to dive into renovations. What I wasn't prepared for was just how much math goes into even the simplest projects. Figuring out how many sheets of drywall I needed for a room, calculating the right stair riser height to meet code, estimating how many boards of trim to buy without wasting half of them — every task seemed to require a calculator, a notepad, and more patience than I had left after a full day of demo work.
I found myself scribbling formulas on scrap lumber, second-guessing measurements at the checkout counter, and inevitably making return trips because I'd miscounted or forgotten something. I was spending almost as much time doing arithmetic as I was actually building. There had to be a better way.
Why I Built This
After muddling through my first renovation project — with plenty of costly mistakes along the way — I sat down and made a list of every calculation I had struggled with. How many boxes of flooring do I actually need? How do I figure out a stair layout that's up to code? How many studs does a framed wall require once you account for corners, headers, and cripples? The list grew quickly.
The tools on this site are the tools I wish I'd had from day one. I started with the basics: square footage calculators, material estimators, and unit converters. From there, I talked to other homeowners, contractors, and weekend DIY enthusiasts and researched what tools would be genuinely useful beyond my own experience. Things like the Crown Moulding Angle Calculator (because compound miters are nobody's idea of fun) and the Sheet Goods Cut Optimizer (because plywood isn't cheap and every wasted cut adds up) came directly from those conversations and late-night rabbit holes.
Each tool was designed to answer a real question that comes up on real jobsites and in real garages — not hypothetical textbook problems, but the exact calculations you need when you're standing in the lumber aisle or kneeling on a subfloor trying to plan your next cut.
One Tool I'm Especially Proud Of
If you haven't checked it out yet, the LVP Row Calculator is the one I'm most proud of.
When I installed luxury vinyl plank flooring in my own home, I quickly discovered that manufacturers require a minimum stagger distance between the end joints of adjacent rows. Figuring out a compliant, natural-looking layout by hand was genuinely tedious. Most people either eyeball it and hope for the best, or they end up with a visible repeating "staircase" pattern that looks manufactured rather than natural.
The LVP Row Calculator generates a randomized, manufacturer-spec-compliant layout for every row, across multiple rooms, with proper stagger continuity between connected spaces. It even accounts for starter piece offcuts being reused in subsequent rows to minimize waste. It's the kind of tool that saves hours of floor-side head-scratching and gives you a layout plan you can trust before you snap a single plank into place.
What Buildy Buddy Is (and Isn't)
This site is a collection of free, practical calculation tools designed to help contractors, builders, and DIY homeowners get their numbers right before they start cutting, ordering, or building. Every tool runs entirely in your browser — there are no accounts to create, no data leaves your device, and nothing gets in the way of you and the answer you need.
That said, these tools are planning aids, not substitutes for professional judgment. The accuracy of any result depends entirely on the accuracy of the measurements and inputs you provide. Always double-check your numbers, verify against local building codes, and consult a licensed professional when the scope or safety implications of your project demand it. You can read more in our Terms of Service.
Final Thoughts
Building this site has been a genuinely fun project. It combines two things I care about: making home improvement more accessible and solving real problems with clean, useful tools. If even one of these calculators saves you a trip to the store, prevents a costly cutting mistake, or just makes your next project feel a little less overwhelming, then it was worth every line of code.