How to Estimate a Renovation Without Plans in Wunderbuild

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You can take off a renovation with no drawings at all by importing a scaled A3 grid page into Wunderbuild and measuring against it. It takes about five minutes to set up, and from there the takeoff behaves exactly like one done over a real plan — areas, linear metres and spacing settings all work, and the measurements link straight back to your estimate items.



This is a recap of our live training session from 29 October 2026, where Jacob worked through that technique along with two others builders ask about constantly: adding your own items and allowances to the Detailed Builders Template, and applying your own carpentry labour rates without breaking the template's price links.

Prefer to watch? The full 39-minute session is above, with chapters. Everything in it is written out below.

What this session covers

• Importing and scaling a blank A3 grid page for takeoffs when plans don't exist
• Measuring areas and linear metres against that grid
• Adding custom categories, items and allowances to the template
• Linking manual takeoffs — new and existing — to estimate items
• Setting up cost codes for job cost tracking
• Building your own price list and matching SKU codes to Campbells items
• Applying your own apprentice and carpenter rates across the whole template
• How price updates flow through estimates you've already built

Estimating a renovation when there are no plans

Renovations are where most estimating systems fall over. The client has a rough idea, there's no architect involved, and you're standing in the house with a tape measure. Traditional takeoff tools assume a PDF plan to measure against, so builders end up back in a spreadsheet — which means the job sits outside the system, with no costings, no order lists and no job cost tracking.

The workaround is to give Wunderbuild something to measure against. A blank A3 grid page, imported and scaled like any other plan, turns your site measurements into real takeoff quantities inside the estimate.

Uploading and scaling the grid page

Import the A3 grid page the same way you'd import a set of drawings, then scale it using the grid itself as the known dimension. Because the grid squares are a fixed, known size, the scale is exact rather than estimated off a scale bar.

Once it's scaled, the page behaves like a plan. You draw your measurements onto it based on what you measured on site, and Wunderbuild calculates the quantities.

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Measuring areas and linear metres

With the grid scaled, the square metre tool handles cladding, wall areas, floor areas and anything else measured by surface. The linear metre tool handles runs — skirting, framing members, edges.

The session works through cladding and wall areas as the example, then moves to timber framing joists, where the spacing setting does the counting for you. Set the spacing and measure the span, and the joist count comes out of the takeoff rather than off a calculator.

Linking manual takeoffs to estimate items

A takeoff that isn't linked to an item is just a number on a page. Linking it means the quantity drives the estimate line, and if you re-measure, the estimate updates.

This works in both directions, which is the part people miss. You can link a takeoff to an item you've just created, and you can link an existing takeoff to a new item added later. That second case matters on renovations, where scope grows after the first visit.

Adding your own categories, items and allowances

The Detailed Builders Template is built to be added to. Custom categories and items sit alongside the template's existing structure without disturbing the costings already in there.

Allowances work the same way. The session sets up a vehicle allowance as the worked example, which is the kind of cost that's real on every job and sits in nobody's standard template.

One rule worth taking seriously: create the item in your price list rather than typing it straight into the estimate. An item that only exists inside one estimate has to be rebuilt on the next job, and it carries no price history. An item in the price list is there forever and updates everywhere.

Cost codes and job cost tracking

Cost codes are what connect the estimate to what the job actually costs you. Set them up on your custom items as you go, and the reporting on the back end holds together. Skip them, and your custom items fall outside your job cost tracking, which quietly undermines the reporting on every job they appear in.

Applying your own carpentry labour rates

Labour is the number most builders want to control themselves, because apprentice and carpenter rates vary by business and by region. The session builds a custom carpentry price list, matches SKU codes to the equivalent Campbells items, and applies it to an estimate.

SKU matching is the mechanism that makes this work. Because your items carry the same SKU codes as ours, your rates drop into the template's existing structure rather than sitting beside it. Apply the price list and the labour costs update across the estimate in one pass.

The session also walks through how carpentry labour is actually calculated in the template, which is worth understanding before you change the rates — the number you set isn't always the number that lands on the line.

Editing descriptions without losing your price links

A common way to break the template is to rewrite an item description and sever the link back to the price list. The session shows how to customise wording while keeping the link intact, so your estimates read the way you want and still update when prices change.

It also covers how price changes flow through: what updates automatically, what doesn't, and what to check after a price list update.

What's coming to the template

The last stretch of the session covers development work in progress, including structural steel takeoff and improvements to timber framing takeoffs. Both came out of builder feedback, which is how most template changes start.

Common mistakes

• Measuring on site without the grid page ready. Import and scale it before the site visit so you can enter measurements the same day.
• Typing custom items straight into an estimate. They vanish from your system the moment the job closes. Price list first, every time.
• Skipping cost codes on custom items. The estimate looks fine; the job cost reporting doesn't.
• Rewriting descriptions the wrong way. Break the price link and that item stops updating, silently, for as long as you keep using it.