Home improvement projects

Note: This is an old post in a blog with a lot of posts. The world has changed, technologies have changed, and I've changed. It's likely this is out of date and not representative. Let me know if you think this is something that needs updating.

Since I got married and since we decided to stay in the current apartment for another year, I've been involved in a bunch of home improvement projects to neaten things up, clean some stuff out, re-organize, and build some furniture to make better use of space. I've finished a set of shelves to replace one of the desks I had. I'm in the process of building a small set of shelves to go above the counter to use some vertical space in the kitchen for storage. I'm thinking about building another set of shelves.

My brother-in-law uses Google Sketchup to do his drafting. I had a look at it a couple of days ago and what he's done with it and it's pretty wild. My problem, however, is that I'm running on Linux and I have a preference towards Free Software and Open Source. Partially because I'd like to share my plans with other people in non-proprietary formats and partially because I stand a better chance of fixing things when they go wrong.

Does anyone know of 3-d modeling/drafting/basic CAD software similar to Sketchup that works in Linux?

As a side note, it turns out I have the same estimation problems with home improvement projects that I have with programming projects. Irritating.

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