Sam Whitaker
Sam Whitaker is the pen name under which every guide on HandyFigures is written — one consistent, accountable byline for all the project math on this site.
Why a pen name
HandyFigures publishes under pen and brand names rather than personal ones, and this page is the honest version of that arrangement rather than an invented biography. A single pen name gives the guides one accountable author: the first-person project stories all come from the same maker, with the same measuring habits and the same mistakes owned across every article, instead of being blurred into a faceless "team."
On a site like this, the byline was never meant to carry the authority anyway — the methodology is the credential. Every guide and calculator published under this name shows its arithmetic step by step, states the standard allowances it leans on (21 sq ft per door, 27 cubic feet to the yard, 10–20% flooring waste by pattern), points to primary sources like manufacturer coverage specs where a number comes from one, and says plainly where an estimate stops being reliable. Anything with this byline can be checked with a pencil, which is more than a résumé offers.
What the guides cover
The guides handle the quantity-and-cost math behind common DIY home and yard projects: how many gallons of paint a job really needs once doors, windows and coats are counted honestly; how many boxes of flooring to order once waste is figured by layout; and how many bags — or cubic yards — of mulch, soil or gravel a bed actually takes, including where bulk delivery starts beating bags. Quantities and costs only. How to build, wire, plumb or structure something is a different kind of question, and the guides say so rather than winging it.
How the tools treat your data
Every calculator on HandyFigures runs 100% in your browser. Room sizes, bed dimensions and prices are never uploaded, logged or sold — saved projects live in your own browser's storage, and nothing you type is seen by us.
Start with these
The three calculators are the core of the site: the paint calculator, the flooring calculator and the mulch & soil calculator. For the guides, a representative sample of the writing under this byline:
- How much paint for a 12x12 room
- Paint coverage per gallon — the real numbers
- Flooring waste percentages by layout
- How many bags of mulch in a cubic yard
More about how the site is built and funded is on the About page. If a guide gets a number wrong, get in touch — corrections are genuinely welcome.