Are you thinking of moving house?

If so, perhaps space is one of your motivations. A need for more or less space...or you may be buying your own space for the first time?

Whatever your motivation, it's worth getting familiar with the dimensions of your current home. Knowing the size of your existing home and the key rooms in it will give you a good reference point when looking at house and room dimensions in properties advertised online.

For example, if the main bedroom or bathroom in your current home is too small, once you have the dimensions ( the length and the width) of it then you can use this as a bench mark to assess the size of those rooms in properties that are for sale online.

Equally, if you feel your current home is just too small overall, wouldn't it be helpful to know what size it is so that you can select only bigger properties in your online search?

Here's a very rough guide to typical property sizes in Ireland.

1 bed apt. 35 - 50sqm
2 bed apt 65 - 100sqm
2 bed terraced 55 - 70sqm
3 bed semi 85 - 100sqm


Do you know what size your current home is?
If not, a quick way to find out is to look for houses for sale on your street and note what size they are. You can add a room or take off a room depending on how your own home compares.


Square metres versus square feet.
Are you comfortable dealing in square metres? ( this is the measurement most frequently used by estate agents ).
If not, here's how you translate square metres into feet:
1 square metre = 10.764 square feet
eg
70 square metres = 753.47 square feet

Here's how you translate square feet into square metres
1 square foot = .0929 square metres
eg
700 square feet = 65.03 square metre

Measuring your space like a pro
If you really want to get technical and get out the measuring tape ( I'd suggest the 30 metre circular spooling measuring tape at the bottom of the photo, for sale at €17 in Woodies ) then here's how estate agents measure.
Houses are typically measured on the basis of Gross Internal Area, (GIA). Here's the definition of Gross Internal Area
"Gross Internal Area is the area of a building measured to the internal face of the.perimeter walls at each floor level.

This means that all of the internal space of the house ( including the internal walls) is counted when measuring GIA . So without getting too technical, here is the simplest way to get the GIA of your current space. It's easiest if you get someone to help you hold one end of the tape.

1. take a measuring tape and run it from inside a front bedroom window right through the whole upstairs ( in a straight line) to a window at the back of the house. Make a note of this measurement. This is the length of the house

2. now take the measuring tape and run it from one side of the top of the house in a straight line to the other side of the house.
Make a note of this measurement. This is the width of the house.

3. Multiply the length by the width ( This gives you the upstairs measurement)

4. Now multiply the upstairs measurement by 2. (This now gives you a total measurement for the upstairs and downstairs of the house)

5. If you have a single story extension out the back or the side, measure the length and the width of this and add it to the measurement above.

6. Now you know what your house measures.

Even if you don't feel like measuring your entire home, it's a good idea to buy a nice big measuring tape. It will prove useful both for familiarising yourself with the dimensions of key rooms in your current home and for measuring your new home for big ticket items like flooring, paving, carpeting etc as well as couches, beds and desks. .

That's all for this week. Thank you for being here.