Customer Reviews

Home Quick Planner: Reusable, Peel & Stick Furniture & Architectural Symbols

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a wonderful item. It has "clingy", reusable stickers so that you can reuse them over and over--like the old "Colorforms" we had as kids. They are also quite detailed, so that although they are only in black and white, they are fun to look at. You have so many options, and the scaled paper is roughly 16" X 22", and treated so that the "stickers" stay on well, but can be taken off just as easily. And both sides are that way. Not sure if you can actually do one side, and, without removing the stickers, flip it over and do the second side. Haven't tried it, I guess. We purchased this as part of our homeschool curriculum for our 16 year old.

My biggest gripe is that Amazon listed a "goes with" item--the "Room and Furniture Layout Kit" by Muncie Hendler. The trouble with that is that the "Home Quick Planner" is scaled at 1/4"=1', but the "Room and Furniture Layout Kit" is scaled at 1/2"=1'. My suggestion would be not to get the "Room and Furniture Layout Kit" anyway if you are getting the "Home Quick Planner", since it is just punch out cardstock shapes. It isn't that bad, but after having the very detailed stickers of the "Home Quick Planner", these are very boring.

A really neat item.

This little interior design kit is well worth the money. In contrast to many computer programs, it's simple and easy to use. There are multiple of symbols for every room and item in your house - appliances, kitchen and bath fixtures, windows, doors and other architectural elements and of course furniture. You'll even be able to mark switches, outlets and phone jacks on your floor plan. The best thing about this kit is that it reminds me of my grade school days and all the fun I had with just scissors, paste and paper.

This was almost perfect for what we were looking for -- which was to lay out the furniture placement for home we are building. We had our floor plans in the scale of 1/4" =1' (be sure you have your drawings in this scale - otherwise the product is basically useless for this purpose) and simply peeled them off and placed the images of the furniture on our floorplan. The floorplans were in the form of blueprints that we received from our architect. The stickers were able to stick well enough to stay put on the drawings -- although I think with repeated removal and replacement, the adhesion might be reduced to the point where you would need to hold the stickers with tape.

My wife found them very useful to get a feel for not only how we could/would arrange our furniture but also to get a real sense of the size of the rooms etc. She does not have the ability/aptitude to mentally convert the architectural drawings into a picture of what the rooms will look like when completed -- and this really helped her to vizualize and understand what the rooms would look like when furnished - and also to determine where we would need additional furniture.

Only significant issue was that there were not enough bed stickers - only one queen size bed sticker and I think, only one king size. Would have been great to have had 2 (or more) of each as we will have 2 queen size beds in the house.

Otherwise, was easy to use and very useful.

Home Quick Planner:

Recommended by my builder, September 3, 2006

Reviewer: Hands-on designer (Atlanta, GA) - - This planner is a professional-quality design tool at a very affordable price. The reusable peel-and-stick symbols adhered directly to my floor plans, which helped me layout my design and show the builder and decorator exactly what I wanted. For the kitchen and bath, I used the 1/4-inch scale grid sheet that was included. The symbols are extensive and nicely illustrated. The planner also has design notes with room layouts and important dimensions, and this helped me save wasted space. Highly recommended and lots of fun.

As an Interior Designer for 20 years, the problem I have with computerized design programs is that you can't take them with you. The Home Quick Planner is one of the few things that really is easier and more efficient without a computer. These planners allow me to easily come up with several different design options for my clients, and perhaps more importantly, gives my clients the flexibility to play around with different layouts and furniture placement on their own. In addition, their 1/4" scale makes them a perfect fit to be dropped right into standard architectural plans. I have found these to be an invaluable, time saving tool. They just work better, and my clients love them!

The product usage was very simple. The two problems I had were: with even using clean hands or tweezers to place furniture shapes, "stick residue" rubbed off on some of the shapes. This force me to use double tape to hold in place. The table and cabinet sizes are limited. I ended up creating the size needed by using two or more of different sizes that were available. Would I purchase this item again? Probably only if the price went down because of what you get.

My students at Mount Holyoke College's SummerMath program have had great success using the Home Quick Planner. These are high school students and they use the planner to design their own dream homes, as part of the Architecture and Mathematics Workshop. The planner's wonderful array of symbols expands their design options, as they see many new possibilities. Using the variety of symbols provided, the students are able to find the sizes and shapes they want, and when a particular symbol is not available, they typically improvise, sometimes combining two other symbols to meet their needs. The planner's attention to detail is impressive, for example, there are over 400 feet of walls, half-walls, and symbols for marking removal of walls for a remodeling project. The planner provides a wealth of learning experience.

I knew what I wanted in a design and could not find it, so this is a helpful tool to plan a home. Needed more windows for the design we wanted & wished the grid paper had more of a coating so the paper does not come off when rearranging things. I was able to photocopy the plan & tape together, then rearrange rooms/items to give various planning options.

I like the idea of this product. It's so easy to "mis-estimate" the size of a room and the things it can fit. This product keeps you honest, and definitely saved me time. I did find the "decals" sometimes difficult to peel back off the laminated grid that comes with it. After a few peels of the actual grid, I decided to put the grid under a glass frame and stick the decals to that. They were a bit easier to grab, and saved the grid. Our project was small, and it was still a help.

Because I initially saw this product in two kids' catalogs I highly respect, and because the overall rating for this product at Amazon was pretty high, I didn't bother to read any reviews. I'm not sure why people rate this product so highly, because after having it for 2 hours, I am thoroughly disappointed with it for exactly the same reasons that other low-rating reviews have mentioned. To add my vote, the first disappointment was that there were not nearly enough regular wall stickers. We had to use every type of wall on the sheet - half walls, walls to be torn down, glass walls - just to get a perimeter that roughly filled one-side of the graph paper and some reasonable interior walls. You would easily need at least 3 times as many regular walls as they provided to do a decent layout that utilized the space they provided. I guess it is worth noting that not many people are laying out a 5600 sq ft home, but my son just likes draw floor plans, so reality isn't a factor. The second major disappointment was that the stickers and layout mat are not like Colorforms; the graph paper is really just regular thick paper and the stickers have some sort of glue on one side, more like Post-its. As a result, when moving the stickers, often a bit of paper comes up on the glue of the sticker; between that and the gradual loss of the glue from movement (Post-its don't stick forever), I don't expect the stickers will be really useable after more than ten or so rearrangements. I gave it 2 stars rather than one because it is a nice concept (poorly executed) and because my 7-year-old son, who spends hours drawing house plans with pencil and paper, thinks it is great (although he has said many times he wishes it had more walls). I'm glad I bought it at Amazon; it was more expensive in the two catalogs and I would have felt even more ripped off.

UPDATE April 17, 2011 - Well, my prediction about the stickers losing their stickiness has proven true. It's been less than three weeks, and the wall stickers barely stick at all anymore. In the three weeks we've had it, all the stickers have been removed and a new house designed about every other day, probably 10 times total. My son's frustration with the thing is growing, as trying to place one sticker often results in the movement of 5 others. Guess we'll be trying to find something digital.