Reiaan's room on a grid

It is the start of the school year. Reiaan and his sister Shalini have moved to a new city with their mother, whose job keeps moving. Reiaan cannot see, so a new room is a big challenge.

Shalini has just finished Grade 9, and she uses what she learnt about coordinates. She makes a grid of pins and threads that shows the floor of his room:

• pins mark the key points of the room;
• the corners of objects are joined with thick wool, so Reiaan can feel where everything is with his fingers.

Her scale is 1 cm : 1 foot. Every centimetre on the grid stands for one foot in the room, so the 12 ft × 10 ft bedroom becomes a 12 cm × 10 cm rectangle.

Fig. 1.1 shows the bedroom (12 ft × 10 ft), the bathroom beside it (6 ft × 9 ft), the bed, a 4 ft × 2 ft wardrobe and the doors, with the way each door swings.

"Why can't the windows be marked?" A floor map shows positions on the floor: two measurements, along and across. Windows are up in the walls, at a height, and a flat floor map has no way to show height.