Your basement sketch looks right on paper. Then your studs go up, the inspector walks in, and your toilet is two inches too close to the wall. Now you move the wall, or the drain, in concrete. The first stud is where a bad plan gets expensive.
Type the sizes off your sketch and each one is checked against the common code minimums: inches to spare, or inches short. My plan puts my toilet 15½ inches from the shower glass. That clears 15 by half an inch.
Nothing you type here leaves your device. No account, no server, no analytics. Your numbers are erased when you close the tab.
Nothing in my basement is framed yet. I walked it with a laser and read every wall out loud to Claude. The long wall came back 591, then 583, then 584⅝, so I averaged it. Then I stood where the bathroom goes and said it on camera: "I don't know what's standard here." Then: "three feet, what's a normal shower?" Most of us don't know, until an inspector tells us. The AI version, in the shop: Instagram, Facebook.
Inches, off your sketch. The drain and the stack are already in the concrete, so measure from them to the finished wall. Against concrete, foam, studs and drywall bring the face in 4 to 6 inches.
Filled with an example so you can see it work. The 15½ is my toilet to the glass.
Bring these to the building department before you buy a stud:
Most problems are who-you-know. Name one person in your town who has finished a basement.
Now make the call — ask: “did you pull a permit, and what did the inspector flag?”
Washington or Dakota County, Minnesota. Off-market, or straight from the owner — I'm the buyer, not a middleman passing it along. Woodbury, Cottage Grove, Hastings, Stillwater, Eagan, Inver Grove Heights, Lakeville.
If that's you, or you know somebody quietly thinking about selling, I'll lay out your options — all of them, including the ones I don't make a dime on. Nothing to sign, no walkthrough unless you ask.
That was free and nothing here sits behind an email. If it was useful, here's the whole exchange: send it to one or two people who'd use it too. That's it. I'm trusting you with it, you pass it on.
Want the next one before anyone else? I'm building an interest list — no selling, no sequence, your address goes nowhere. Exactly what that means, in plain words.
The list itself isn't open yet — I'm still setting it up, and I'd rather say that than put up a box that doesn't work. The ask above stands either way, and it's the one that matters. If you want to tell me what to build next, my DMs are open.
Free. This tool asks you for nothing — no gate, no email, no analytics. When the walls go up, DM me a picture.