Jon, don't worry, we can still buy hoses in size like 1/4" or 5/16" here too! And everything we need to build houses is still sold (and hopefully will be for a long time!) in regular US measures. Plumbing is in inches only and so are the other materials. You need plywood, it still sold in 4x8', 3/8" 1/2", 5/8" or 3/4" thickness. We still build houses with 8' 2x6" studs and I don't think this will change soon. The only problem is that we haven't been teaching kids anything about the Imperial/US systems for over 30 years. And many of those who don't build or repair stuff have no clue about it just like many Europeans! I had fun when I saw two friends of mine (both accountants) trying to measure everything in centimeters while remodeling their bathrooms. And they were born in the 1970s so they are about the same age as I am!
It reminded me a friend from France when he arrived here (he learned otherwise since as he needs to use the US system constantly at his job and he worked quite a bit at renovating homes he bought! ). But he and his wife are still not too familiar with how to set the oven temperature here and after a few years of undercooked meals, they decided to buy a newer range with an electronic thermostat that can be set to show the temps in Celcius because they were still confused with their range with a thermostat graduated in Fahrenheit only! Unfortunately, since they switched, they keep getting error codes instead of temperatures on their new range's electronic thermostat!
