mlroseplant

The last time I actually measured my feet on a Brannock device, I was a U.S. Women's size 9, and about a B 1/2 width (halfway between B and C). So most standard women's shoes fit me nicely, if slightly snugly. My work boots are technically women's (though there is no stylistic difference). For years, I thought I was 9 1/2, but that is always too big.

Here's what I don't understand about pumps--how is it that some women are able to just step into them and walk normally? Getting mine on is a bit of a production, and I certainly can't flex my toes and pop my heel right out of the shoe, even wearing hosiery. If I could, they would pop right out of the shoe while I am walking, which was the whole problem in the first place.

Here is a picture of me at church, wearing 11 cm heels, playing the alto horn (or tenor horn, if you are British). On Christmas Eve, no less, in blatant violation of the rule. The other flat-heeled guy playing the trumpet is my son. It wasn't my best outfit choice ever. What's up with those pants?

20 hours ago, SF said:

Happy...   His there.  Nice pics!!  I like wedgies too, cute look.  Have a few pair that I wear from time to time.  But I keep the heel heist to less than 3 inches, I'm too tall already.  

Take care.....   

You're back! Awesome!

Here is another pair of wedges that I really liked, from Schutz, but unfortunately they broke on their very first true outing. I forgot about that one, actually. Elsewhere, I said I've only had 2 shoe failures this year. Make that 3.

Pumps can be tricky. I thought I couldn't wear them for the longest time, because every time I tried, I'd just walk right out of them. Literally, my heel would pop right out of the shoe within a few steps. It was very frustrating. After a few years of heeling, I found that I needed to go down half a size in general. That helped a good deal. Thankfully my narrow foot can tolerate a typical pump with a pretty tight fit. Steve Madden is the brand that fits me the best for pumps. Unfortunately, modern Steve Maddens are not leather, but I do not find them objectionable nevertheless. Then again, I do not wear them all day, every day.

The other unfortunate thing about Steve Madden is that they do not make a true 120 mm model. My favorite model is called Daisie, which is a pretty good imitation of a Louboutin So Kate, only without the red sole, and with a mere 110 mm effective heel height. My second favorite model is call the Klory, which is quite a bit like the Pigalle (the old Pigalle, not the new ones). Again, the effective heel height is aroun 105-110 mm, depending on which example you get. Not quite up to our standards!

Alas, I gave the wrong impression about the church security cameras. There is no footage of me practicing in heels, although that would have cause the Board of Trustees far less alarm, I'm sure. My then 15 year old son got caught in there, practicing with the jazz band combo that he and his friend led. They had tacit permission to be in there, but evidently did not have the correct and official permission to be in there. Unfortunately, I was running an errand when they were escorted out, and couldn't be present to defend them.

Yes, we are waiting with 'bated breath (not literally) to find out how a walk around the block in 13+ cm boots goes. Last night, I wore stiletto pumps for the first time since last spring, and while mine were much tamer than yours, at an effective 10.5 cm, it was the fit and feel that got me way more than the height. I'm just not used to that style. Still, there were no injuries of any sort--not even a blister. I'll get used to them again in no time, I'm sure. I have no idea how far I walked, but I got to the event a little bit late, and had to park my car "in the Back 40," as they say around here. A couple hundred meters, for sure.

I used to have the perfect place to practice if I came early enough or late enough--my church, with its long hallways and long flights of stairs. However, due to the times, they've installed security cameras which activate if there's somebody mucking about in there when they shouldn't be. Ask me how I know.

1 hour ago, CrushedVamp said:

I think when it comes to the high heel height of what is acceptable to wear or not, I get the win for being the most dumb!

When I first met my wife, and found out she LOVED high heels, I wanted to get some for her as a gift. At the time, about 2012'ish, there were far more choices in stores, but the clerk working there was not a whole lot of help. So when a woman was there buying shoes I asked her what would be an appropriate pair for my wife to wear to church. She helped me pick out a pair and said something I will never forget, "just remember, for heels at church you never want to go over 3.5 inches (9 CM)".

My wife does have a few 10 CM's, and a very few 12 cm's, but when I buy her shoes I never go over 9 cm so she can wear them on dates as well as to church. But yes... my height standard for church was set by some literal random stranger in a store 14 years ago!

Yep; that is dumb!

(Edited after I found a picture of her in those first heels I ever bought for her. The lady in the post above helped me pick these shoes out. Just keep in mind this was in 2012).

2012 happens to be the year I started wearing heels, but I never wore heels to a church service until 2013. At that time, I did have a very conservative pair of very plain looking, block heeled oxfords. I believe they had 3 1/2" heels. So evidently one could find heels that low in 2012, but they were somewhat unusual, or at least unusual in my memory! The small platform definitely tracks. Everything had a platform then. I have to laugh a bit at the rule, because evidently I've violated it every Sunday for years.

I spent the entire day yesterday in high stiletto ankle boots. When adjusted for size and platform, the heel height was 10.4 cm. I am not quite telling the whole truth about that. I intended to spend the entire day in 10.4 cm stiletto boots, but fate had other plans for me. As documented elsewhere, I broke a heel about mid-afternoon and had to switch to 10 cm slim heeled boots after that. I would say that hobbling around on a broken heel for the better part of an hour was good practice for 12 cm, but I really don't think it was. It just made me grumpy, and made me look funny.

I had my second shoe failure of 2025 yesterday. However, this one was not catastrophic--in other words, it can be repaired. I was wearing my Aldo stiletto ankle boots to shop at Costco, and I noticed as soon as I stepped out of the car that something was very wrong. The heel on my right boot had indeed come loose, and was flexing wickedly in a way it wasn't meant to flex. I didn't have any alternatives with me in my wife's car, so I had to walk very strangely the whole time in order to keep from damaging the heel further. I prevailed in the end, I believe this shoe can be fully repaired, but it ruined an otherwise enjoyable outing.

I'm doing pretty well this year. On an average year, I have about half a dozen shoe failures, and the vast majority of those result in the shoes being reclassified as landfill material. This year, I've only had two, and like I said, I'm sure this latest one is an easy fix. This despite the fact that I've walked significantly further in 2025 than I did in 2024.

2 hours ago, higherheels said:

That's really nice! I can't say that about me. Maybe for them it's even more fascinating that you're a man wearing them, than if a woman wears them and it's still rather normal.

I was never aware that I grew up in the era of super high heels, but as I've read a bit of your historic experience already it seems so.

When I started wearing heels I liked platforms the most. Then when I started wearing them for everyday life I shifted towards non-platforms which I still prefer until today. 

But I still have a few with smaller platforms that I like to wear now and then. It's like a love of my youth that never really let me go 🙂

When I say The Era of Super High Heels, I don't necessarily mean the era of super steep heels. It's true, 15 cm heels were everywhere, but always with a 5 cm platform (at least). I see a lot of shoes from this era still for sale on the likes of Poshmark or ebay. I almost want to buy a pair, just to see how they are (or were). I assume your shoes from the mid 2000s had about a 10 cm difference between forefoot and heel? I must admit to owning several pairs of platform shoes in the 3 cm range, and even some up to 4 cm, but to me the heel must be more than 10 cm higher or the proportions just look "off" to me.

For sure, in the midwestern U.S., heels were everywhere in the 1980s, but my sense of what was super high when I was a teenager was definitely different than it is today. When I was at university, one of my good friends was a violinist with whom I spent quite a lot of time. She always wore these really high black suede pumps when it came concert time, and we were required to wear formal black. I don't remember exactly how this happened, but her shoes got left behind in my dorm room overnight (without her, I must add). Although she was a 38, maybe a 38 1/2, which prevented me from actually trying the shoes on, I did put a tape measure to them. A touch shy of 9 cm. That's it. And those were super high heels back then to most people, including me.

Today, this girl, now a woman of course, is really my only friend from uni that I stay in touch with. I have admitted examining her shoes way back when, and we got a good laugh out of it. Here's the kicker: She says she has no idea how she ever wore those shoes at all, much less every time she had occasion to dress up in the color black (which was pretty often for us music majors). I said to her, "Hon, you realize that 9 cm is like a mid heel to me, right?" Her max height is now about 3 cm.

2 hours ago, Shyheels said:

That’s so true - I find it funny to read where people speak of 3” (or 7,5cm) heels as being “high” and 10cm as virtually unmanageable. I’m no expert but I have no trouble with 10cm stilettos and find them quite fun to wear and 8cm heels are fine for long walks, almost unnoticeable as heels. 

 

So very true: 8 cm heels count as heels, but they are quite manageable. I am trying to remember when it became thus for me, because I can recall my first public appearance in true elevated heel footwear that required a bit of walking, and it was to an event on our town square. It was about a half mile there and another half mile back to my house. I was wearing effectively 7 cm clogs. I remember the half mile home being impossibly long due to tired calf muscles. And I was pushing my then 3 year old son (now almost 17) in his stroller, so I even had something to hang on to. Now 7 cm barely even counts as a heel!

14 minutes ago, Puffer said:

I hope that all was rectified without further cost or inconvenience to you.   It's hard to imagine that much would go wrong in a normal boat electrical installation.   Are you using an inverter to provide 230v AC from 12v batteries, or solar power, or both?   And do you have a facility to connect to the AC mains when moored in a suitable place?

I must admit to being kind of jaded, having an industrial background, but I was kind of thinking the same thing. On the other hand, I absolutely hate dealing with automotive electrical gremlins.

On 12/5/2025 at 3:12 AM, higherheels said:

I'm looking forward to wear out my new boots this weekend. All the snow is gone again, so this might be a good chance. I wore them indoors everyday now and also did stretching exercises. In difficulty they now feel similar as the Hot Chicks did before, so I made some progress 🙂

Our snow is gone, also. Well, not gone, but the pavement is pretty much dry now. However, we're supposed to get more tonight.

On 12/5/2025 at 3:33 AM, Shyheels said:

I shifted my boat up the canal and thought I might be able to get a bit of real world practice in on a better conditioned towpath but a quick survey made me think better. I did go for a long stroll in my chunky heeled (8cm) boots which was nice.

My 12cm practice is still all done indoors. 

Don't despair, my friend. If you're now able to get out in 8 cm to actually walk, that will get you a long way toward your goal.

And yet, I still get approached regularly by teenaged girls, who usually say something to the effect of, "I really love your shoes. I wish I could wear them." This doesn't happen regularly, but it's happened enough times to mention. This is a big change from 10 years ago, when the worst group by far to heckle me in public was teenaged girls.

@higherheels I guess you grew up in the era of the superhigh heel. Like Michael Jackson, I've come to appreciate the platform pump a lot more as I've gotten older. During my youth, in the mid 1980s, platforms weren't a thing. Stiletto pumps (often open-toed) were definitely a thing, but they all had this peculiar 1980s shape to the heel--they might look quite dated today. Also, they weren't really all that high. I used to think that 10 cm was some impossibly high heel that nobody would actually wear in public. Today, 10 cm is laughably tame. Well, to us anyway.

I stopped off after work yesterday to pick up my son, who was auditioning for a regional honor band. There were hundreds of high school kids at this audition, along with hundreds of parents. It was one of those deals where they expected the kids to dress nicely. Maybe not formal concert black, but they needed to wear something a little nicer than normal. When I finally found the place, and was trying to figure out where to find my son, the first thing I noticed was a mom in 4 inch chunky-heeled boots. Then I saw another mom in 3 inch heeled boots.

In the 15-20 minutes I was there, I saw many high school girls in heels, mostly sandals (in spite of the season), and all of them were this modern style of super chunky, big heels, most of them with platforms. The way I figure it, girls these days buy heels for a high school formal dance, and then recycle these for occasions such as yesterday. What one does not see much of at all these days is just a normal, conservative black pump, something every girl my age who had any occasion to dress up would have owned from age 15 on. Nowadays, it's either boots or sandals.

We are in a strange time. "They" say that heels are dead with Gen Z. I can tell you that this is not strictly true. I'm hoping that this is like the 90s, and that shoes will eventually get less huge.

I may be in a holding pattern with my training for a while. I had planned to take a couple of days off from walking just because I needed some rest, but then the snow hit. On the last day of November, I had some extra time, so I thought I would walk a mile in something a little bit high, like 10 cm, just to keep myself from going downhill too much. The snow was over, and I wasn't in a hurry, so I thought, "Why not? It will be fun!" I thought I might even leave a few footprints here and there that would raise eyebrows.

I pulled on my knee high boots, put on my coat and scarf, and headed outside. I got about 20 meters down the street and looked at the continuous sheet of packed snow and ice ahead of me, thought of my smooth, slick bottomed boots, thought of my less-than-youthful age, and then actually said out loud, "This is a BAD idea." I turned around and went back inside. I took the next day off, too. On the third day, I did walk, but I chose lugged rubber soled boots with 8 cm block heels.

One never knows what the weather will bring, but at least for the next couple of weeks, I'm not going to be pushing any crazy steep heeled boundaries. Even the garage floor is kind of slick.

1 hour ago, Puffer said:

I have no real idea of the corresponding 'union' position in the UK, but doubtless it will impede work and increase costs and time on a major construction project.   Fortunately, a great deal of new-build and renovation work is done by non-union businesses and individual tradesmen, who are usually fairly adaptable and often multi-skilled.    I can fairly claim to be too, in my 'amateur' way - and am currently doing some work (alas, unpaid!) on my middle stepson's rebuilt and extended house, alongside 'professional' builders, plasterers, plumbers and sparkies - none of whom seem to upset the others or object to my input - which has necessarily included some reworking of what they have done, e.g. moving a wrongly-placed socket outlet and altering skirting boards to accommodate fitted wardrobes.   So much for my retirement ...!

Them days are over, friend. You can't afford to be too much of a lazy ass these days, or you'll probably be the subject of a one-man layoff pretty quick!

A lot of it depends upon what you wish to do in heels. As is the experience with most here, I started low and went gradually higher. I spent a lot of time wearing 3 - 3 1/2" before I got to where I was truly ready for anything higher. Not that I didn't go higher sooner, but it's always a shock to catch a glimpse of yourself in a storefront window, and think, "Who is that idiot, and why is he walking so funny?" "Oh, that's me." We would rather avoid those moments, so practice in lower heels is advisable.

It also depends upon how durable you want to be. Do you want to wear 5 inch heels to Disney World, on multiple days? I'm sure there is somebody out there who can do it, but it would be a select few in the world, kind of like there's only a few Olympic caliber athletes in the world. Do you care what you look like when you walk? I can "walk" just fine in 5 inch heels, but I wouldn't want anybody to see me.

I am living proof that it is possible to be able to wear heels that are quite steep for long periods of time, and over long distances, but I didn't get there very quickly at all. It took years. Some people can do it in much less time that me, but that's been my own personal experience.

I have a number of honorable mentions, but they are too numerous to be interesting to anybody but me. Many of my shoes failed after 30 or 40 miles. I've had that happen a lot. All of the shoes that I have gotten rid of for one reason or other over the years must have added up to quite a bit of mileage, because when I add up the distance I've walked in the examples catalogued above, that number is less than half of the total distance I've walked in the last 13 years. That mileage had to come from somewhere. It must have been all those shoes I broke, and all those shoes that I no longer care to wear.

And then there are shoes that I have rediscovered, like my Miu Miu navy blue wooden sandals. According to my records, I bought these about five years ago, they sat on my shelf for two years, I took them out for one short walk, and then they sat on my shelf for two more years. This year, I took them out, and I guess I have decided I like them now, because I've put over 20 miles on them in the last two months. I know that one of the reasons I like them better now is because I had them reheeled. The stock heel tips were so obnoxiously loud that I'm sure I could be heard from several hundred meters away. I'm sure that inside buildings with hard floors, people had to stop their conversations until after I had passed. Now, with new rubber tips, they are far from silent, but they are pleasant sounding. I am toying with the idea of removing the back straps and making them into mules. I know I would like the way that would look a lot better, but what with this massive amount of snow we've received over the last two days, that has become a next year problem.

Our family has always done all of our own painting. In fact, I should have repainted at least the south side of my house this year, but I didn't instead. Every time I think I would like to hire it done, the price motivates me!

Hey, at least somebody is still wearing heels besides us!

Thank you, and I'll let you know that I'm probably taking the last two days of the month off. I barely made it under the wire before this snowstorm hit, which is supposed to last until 6 a.m. tomorrow. Maybe I will take some footprint pictures if the correct situation presents itself. Good luck with your editor. Hopefully, we'll both be back at the 12 cm thing soon.

On 11/27/2025 at 4:13 PM, Puffer said:

Exactly (as I stated in the 'other' thread).    UK timber is invariably sold in length increments of 300mm, which is close to the imperial foot that used to be the increment.   2.4m (7.87 feet) is a very common length and still often referred to as an '8 foot' - but don't complain if it isn't quite that long when making something!

 

UK Practice does vary.   It seems that '4 x 2' is very commonly used (and I favour that),  but some chippies and most timber merchants would refer to or list it as '2 x 4'.   The latter is logical in that a whole range of timber used for rafters, joists, studwork etc is a nominal 2" thick but varies in width from a nominal 2" to 8" or more, so typically listed as '2 x 4, 2 x 5, 2 x 6' etc (or nowadays by the metric equivalents: 47 x 96 etc).   But any builder or carpenter will know what is meant by a '2 x 4' (or a '4 x 2'!) even if he never worked in imperial measurements.

'Plasterboard' is the usual term for the generic product (as we have at least three major UK manufacturers) but some older folk call it 'Gyproc', which is the trade name used (though not now very prominently) by the oldest supplier - British Gypsum.   You will sometimes hear the installers called 'dry wallers', but that is not really correct as plasterboard was originally introduced as a means of boarding ceilings - walls came later!    It is more usual to call the installer a 'plasterer' (if he also skims the boards) but plasterboard is often installed by general builders or carpenters; it is not really a skilled task.   Boards often have tapered edges (filled with plaster filler over paper or mesh tape - another relatively unskilled task) rather than square (flush) edges which need tape and a full skim-over, which is where the proper plastering skills come in.

I have only worked with actual plasterers twice in my career, and one of those was a restoration project, where they wanted period correct everything. All while having modern communications and HVAC systems, HA!

If you can believe this, on larger jobs drywalling and mudding and taping are two completely separate operations, and never the twain shall meet. The drywallers are part of the carpenters union, and the tapers are in with the painters union! Both of them can be a pain in my butt.

On 11/28/2025 at 3:05 AM, higherheels said:

Is there actually a definition of stripper heels, or do you have a personal one?

For me, the only type that comes to my mind are the ones with huge platforms and rather low heels (if you subtract the platform).

 

The last time I was in such an establishment was 1991, and the definition of "stripper heels" was quite different back then. Leave it to me to be more interested in the shoes than the other bits. What dancers wore at that time was what we would consider quite normal, almost boring shoes. Pretty much pumps with four inch heels. Platforms were not a thing at the time, at least not around here. Sometime between 1991 and now heel heights that seem normal increased dramatically, and platforms for exotic dancers got ridiculously thick. To me, "stripper heels" have never really been all that steep, because after all, one has to be able to at least pretend to dance in them, and for the better part of the entire night at that!

On 11/28/2025 at 4:48 AM, higherheels said:

Regarding the height calculation/conversion discussion: Another factor probably is that different manufacturers will use different scales. Then you'll never be able to have an exact calculation formula for all, but it doesn't have to be 100 % accurate anyway.

 

I can give a very good example of where "the formula" doesn't work quite right. I have over the years owned a few different pairs of a Michael Kors shoe called Oksana. If you buy them in USW 8 1/2, you get 5 1/8" heels (with 1" platform). If you go up to size 9, the heels suddenly become 5 1/2". That's a full centimeter difference in half a size bigger. Because they are Kors less expensive line, they obviously didn't make a different heel for every single size. I'm guessing 8 1/2 was the cutoff for one length of heel, and 9 was the beginning of the next.

________________________

In other news, most of the reason that I have not been practicing toward the goal of 12 cm heels recently is because I have been working toward the goal of walking 60 high heeled miles in a single calendar month. I have come really close a couple of times, but I've never actually exceeded 60 until now. Here is a picture of me (wearing boots, no less) right after I finished walking the last high heeled mile. Although with the new system of proportional measurement, I'd technically have to call these mid-heels, as they are 1/8" (3 mm) short of being actually "high."

21 hours ago, Shyheels said:

I would agree with your assessments - 7.5cm for mid heel and 10cm as a minimum for high heels, with 12cm - or in the case of @higherheels Hot Chicks or the new boots she bought, both unusually nice exceptions - being the upper limit of classy (not stripper) heels.

I just use the heel height chart on the Italian Heels website to reckon my actual heel height as opposed to the nominative height.

That's basically 2, 3, and 4 inch in my imperial mind.

Part of the reason why I came up with the 94% calculation is because the Italian Heels chart did not quite make sense to me. In particular, why in size 40 do I have to have a full 11 cm to equal a 10 cm in size 38, but I only need 12.7 cm to equal 12? The proportions are all a little bit off. Therefore, I came up with my own. It may be that an 11 cm heel is what you get when you order a 10 cm heel in size 40 from them, but the math doesn't quite math.

11 hours ago, VirginHeels said:

This thread makes me want to go and get those 135mm Castamere boots and give walking higher a shot. Especially if it makes walking in 85 and 105mm heels more comfortable, or the feeling of walking in slippers.

Oh yes, it absolutely does! To be fair, it has taken me over a decade to get to that point, but I didn't exactly take the short route when it came to training.

52 minutes ago, higherheels said:

You guys must have or have had interesting jobs, I can't even really follow from the descriptions 🫢

 

How come that you would long to, but still wouldn't wear them?

 

Good categorization, I also go with that!

 

Is there actually a definition of stripper heels, or do you have a personal one?

For me, the only type that comes to my mind are the ones with huge platforms and rather low heels (if you subtract the platform).

 

Of course, join us if you want! I can also recommend trying something higher if you like the style. And yes, it really helps with lower heels too. I can feel the difference especially in something like a 11-12 cm heel, they became more comfortable for longer walks.

Now that all the christmas markets and events are starting, I might as well try some higher ones for that and see how it goes. Not my new 13+ cm boots though, that would be too much. But I wear them everyday at home and it's getting better. I'm close to wearing them out for the first time.

 

If I were in the main office far away from any construction job site, I might consider wearing heels to work, but the far more likely scenario is that I'd be in the field office, the temporary office that is right there on the job site. Those folks often wear tennis shoes or casual loafers to work, and then have work boots and all the PPE there for the occasions where they might have to step foot on the actual job site. If I could guarantee that wearing heels in such a situation wouldn't negatively affect my job somehow, I'd do it, but I certainly can't guarantee that. Even the female superintendents and other supervisors would have a hard time wearing heels to the job without negative consequences.

11 minutes ago, Puffer said:

Interesting, and forgive me if I rework your calculations (with no criticism intended).   I'm assuming that you are taking Eu38 as the benchmark for heel measuring?   I think you meant 'divide by 94%' to convert a size Eu40 heel into its Eu38 equivalent, i.e. 100/0.94 = 10.64 or 4.2" (10.7?).

I have a table quoting the length of Eu38 as 237mm and Eu40 as 250mm, so the ratio 237/240 is 0.948 - in round fgures 95% (rather than your 94%).   On that basis, a 100mm heel in 40 would be 105mm in 38 to be in proportion.   I accept of course that tables do vary and so do manufacturing tolerances, so differences of two or three millimetres is of no real consequence (except to a statistician - and we all know that there are 'lies, damn lies, and statistics'!).   I can certainly agree that a 'high' heel is 4" or more, so the difference between that and its metric equivalent (102mm), or when considering the proportions on either side of a 'standard Eu38', is pretty trivial.   

For the record, I would consider a true 5" (127mm) heel as being the start of the 'very high' range - or 'stripper territory' when combined with a big platform as Shyheels opines - so 120mm is a tad on the low side.   As higherheels says, a 130 or 140mm stiletto (with little or no plarform) can look very elegant and remain wearable, albeit not by everyone.   And a 120mm heel with, say, a 30mm platform can look both ungainly and ugly.

I did it in inches. USW size 9 is 9 7/8", which is the actual measurement of my size 9 foot. This is also typically given as an equivalent for EU size 40. Size 7 (or 38) is somewhere around 9 5/16". Looking at it again, the charts disagree with each other slightly, and depending upon how you round certain numbers, I came up with something like 94.3%, which I rounded down to 94. It seems some charts list size 9 as being 10" long. Your mileage may vary. Also why would I divide by 94% to convert something bigger to something smaller? I have the size 9 (40) in my hand. I can measure it. I do not have the size 7 (38) in my hand. Therefore, I need to multiply by 0.94 (or 0.95) to find out the information I need.

I had some spare time yesterday, and wondered if I could come up with a formula that makes it easy to convert my size 40 into size 38 proportions. What I came up with is 94%. In other words, take my actual heel height, measured in person on size 40, multiply it by 94%, get the proportional heel height for size 38. It seems to work reasonably well, but it now requires that I rethink my entire categorization of heel heights. For example, I've always thought of 10 cm as being the minimum to be considered a "high" heel. Looks like I'm now going to have to up that to 10.7 cm, or almost 4 1/4". Interestingly, I have an oddly large number of shoes with that incline. It all make sense, now. It's probably an upscaling of a 4 inch heel from size 7 (38).

I suppose it fits my new standard anyway--a 10 cm heel in size 40, which I now have to discount to 9.4 cm, feels remarkably mid-heelish these days. Here is my mental categorization, translated to size 38: Less than 5 cm is a flat, 7.5 cm is the lowest mid-heel, 10 cm is the lowest high heel. I'll go with 12 cm and above as being Very High, since I can't walk in them properly!

I am trying to decide whether I'm going to convert to full-on metric the next time I do a shoe inventory. I'm kind of inclined (no pun intended) to do that, but since I do this for my personal entertainment anyway, why should I? Inside my weary head, I still think in inches, though I'm a whiz at translating to cm quickly, thanks in large part to my immigrant wife.

It's interesting that you refer to the plywood, et al., as being 8 x 4. At least in my locale, we would never refer to it that way. It's 4 x 8 here. Plasterboard we typically call sheet rock, though I think that's a brand name. Drywall is the generic U.S. term. I'm sure if I traveled 500 miles in any direction this would change slightly, but here in central Iowa, the person who installs said material is a drywaller, but we turn the brand name into a verb to describe the process of installation. Example of a conversation you might actually hear on a construction site:

"Are you gonna rock that wall right now?

"Uhhh, I was planning on it, yeah."

"You know the fire alarm guys haven't finished that yet?"

"Well, what if we just rock one side for now?"

"They can prolly make that work. I'll let 'em know."