Do you get permission for such a long driveway?
Yes, that is not a problem. Because:
What I don't understand is, why can't you access the property from the west? Is there then an entrance in the south coming from a street there or does the driveway have to come entirely from the street in the west?
The property is about 2m higher than the streets north and west of it, so a road is being built to the south for this and the properties to the east, which runs from west to east (along the large building). Unfortunately, there is no other way due to the height difference. But it is all already planned and approved.
I thought the living room faced south, isn’t that so?
No, see orientation on the property (the map is oriented north).
The stairs are used multiple times daily, also with laundry baskets, etc. And you don’t just move in once, children grow and suddenly want 140 cm beds, children’s furniture is replaced by youth furniture, etc. A room height of 240 cm in a room over 9 m wide can also feel a bit oppressive. The standard today is rather 254 cm, which means a floor height of about 290 cm (the ceiling also has to be overcome) and for that you need a suitable staircase.
Why are your rooms so low? Aren’t you allowed to build higher? 2.40 m doesn’t look that bad in small rooms, but in your large living room including kitchen that will feel very oppressive.
I really can’t judge that. Higher rooms cost more money, even if "only a few thousand euros". We are very happy with the current 2.40 m room height in our current house, but the largest room here is only 4.7 x 6.5 m.
My parents’ house was an old farmhouse, where the ceilings were significantly lower.
It will be tight with the stairs. We have 19 steps and 3.2m x 2.2m to comfortably reach the upper floor. I’d like to see the planning of your stairs from the stair builder.
The stairs are currently a bottleneck. You can only get furniture upstairs in single parts, and relatively small ones at that. But a better staircase costs additional space — which there is already too little of.
Our stairs currently measure 2.30 x 1.50 (!!) m in identical shape. It was a bit tight during the move, but everything basically fit. Even now no one has a problem with it. So I would literally say it’s "not that tight"...
Shoes in the carport? Are slippers supposed to be there and then you shuffle with them under the roof into the house? And are the shoes nicely ice-cold in winter?
The way you say it sounds somehow strange, but yes, that’s actually how we do it currently. Our hallway is always nice and clean because of that.
Living room open … I wouldn’t create 3 areas that look like 3 furniture cubicles side by side in a furniture store with the fireplace as a bottleneck when entering this room.
How would you solve it otherwise? We actually don’t find it bad (otherwise we wouldn’t have planned it that way).
And home office in the living room with 3 children I simply cannot take seriously. One should create a proper workspace for that. That also makes it easier to separate work and leisure. And I know what I’m talking about, I have been working in home office for over 10 years.
As I said, if it unexpectedly doesn’t work out (currently it works well), there is still the guest/work room.
It starts with the hallway. For me, the hallway is actually the calling card of the house; here it is unfortunately a gloomy and cramped place. When several guests arrive, they first have to be led one by one through the kitchen before greeting each. Also, there is no space for shoes here. As a workaround, you want to store shoes in the carport in the future. Is that seriously the mnemonic for the rest of your life? What do you do when you celebrate birthdays? Have all guests put their shoes in the carport once? Do you have slippers for everyone there or do they then go back into the house in socks through the dirt without shoes? I imagine that very funny in snowy winter. The carport is probably not locked and accessible to everyone (people and animals) at any time of day and night?
What bothers me about the hallway, as I said, is only the cramped access, that is wasted living space.
The door at the kitchen is only there to have a short way to the utility room/pantry. The "main route" goes past the stairs to the living room.
The shoes in the carport are currently absolutely no problem and if we were to continue renting, we wouldn’t change that in the next 20 years either. We currently have no snow or dirt because the carport is, as mentioned, more or less closed and therefore also dry (as now). The front side is completely closed and the property is fully fenced so that at most animals will find their way there.
Moving on to the technical room. 6 sqm for heating, electricity, water, washing machine? Will be very tight and in the end, due to lack of space, the washing machine will end up in the kitchen.
We certainly want to avoid that. If the entrance is placed southward, the utility room could be connected directly to the kitchen, avoiding the long hallway. But then we would have to come up with something nice for the roofing to the carport — that is simply still missing. I’m open to ideas here.
In the upper floor, forced attempts were made to plan three children’s rooms at all costs. I wouldn’t want to grow up in "Child 1". Due to the direct proximity to the parents’ bed and the small room you experience every lovemaking of the parents up close. Additional frustration comes when the demands on the room increase with age. Try furnishing the room sensibly for a >=12-year-old (desk with PC, TV, wardrobe, 1.60 m bed).
A third child’s room isn’t needed if you plan for 1-2 children.
There are supposed to be 2-3 children in the end.
The Child 1 room actually only serves as a reserve in case there really are three children (we plan with 2-3). I’m in favor of it, my wife is not. We’ll see.
TV in children’s rooms is basically a no-go for me. And a double bed for the child wouldn’t occur to me either, max 1.40 m, but that is also more of a luxury problem given the doubled mattress price. My childhood room was sometimes 9 sqm with a normal 90 cm bed, and I missed nothing. As a woman you would need a bit more for the wardrobe, presumably, which would be provided here.
I’m also not in favor of showering children with all kinds of luxury and pastimes.
Due to the three children’s rooms, the master bedroom became very cramped. The spouse forced to sleep at the end of the bed is not to be envied. With 2.80 m raw room width, at most a passage of about 54 cm (280 cm - 6 cm plaster - 220 cm bed) remains at the end. Probably even less. After the person broke their toe on the bedpost for the second time, you should be so kind as to switch sides once.
Our bed is 2.10 m long, and we currently have a passage width of 70 cm. 6 cm less won’t kill us. We don’t want a big bedroom, on the contrary. We only sleep there; it should be as small and dark as possible so you can sleep peacefully and air out quickly. I find this modern style of "as big and as bright as possible" nonsensical.
And with a small bedroom the mirrored cabinet is also closer to the bed.
My tip: as some have already written, best start over and consider whether you might spend a bit more money and enlarge the house a little. At 10x10 m such room requirements like a third children’s room or a guest room on the ground floor are difficult to sensibly implement without affecting other rooms.
We can and want to invest no much more money. Maybe max 10x11 m. But even then you don’t gain much.
Otherwise, I see many things as my predecessors do.
Pity: living and children’s rooms don’t get much sun, somehow everything is planned opposite to the sun’s path — although it could be well implemented here.
In the winter months (Sept to April), the carport also blocks the sun. The rest is done by the roof. Then the walls... it will be a gloomy house.
To summarize:
You have a north orientation and in the west you are also blocking the sun so that no one can look over your terrace from the south. Then you also place the entrance in the west so that the last chance of sun in the living room is minimized.
I think you urgently need to work on your neighborhood phobia. You can also create privacy with bushes or planted pergolas. Taking away the sun from your garden is a dumb solution.
Maybe you should mark the building area on your plot sketch so the forum can consider what is still possible.
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My recommendation: first optimize the plot arrangement according to the sun and the west orientation, move out ancillary buildings from the sun. Move the entrance to optimize the hallway, enlarge the utility room, and think about whether you really need 3 children’s rooms upstairs. Rethink ceiling heights and stairs and whether it really has to be 10x10.
That is a good argument. But I don’t know how it could be solved.
We want a
home because we want to be for ourselves. A typical new-build estate with 300 sqm “space” for everyone was out of the question for us. I don’t want to stir my neighbor’s coffee cup on the terrace, and I also don’t want to have to whisper in the garden. We also want to sunbathe in peace without watchers. Privacy is a huge plus for us.
Otherwise, I could stay in an apartment and wouldn’t have to build a house. My home is my castle, and there are moats with pointed sticks all around it.
On the property there are also many and tall trees on the west side, and the house to the south is a large old building with 2 high floors and apartments inside, with the upper window at a perceived 6 m height. Not much can be done with bushes and pergolas there. The carport or wooden garage is planned to be about 3 m high and the terrace roof is not transparent, but at least planned milky.
The building window for the house is unfortunately quite tight:
Frankly: you want too much on too little space. Just slightly modifying the floor plan won’t move the cow off the ice. Basically, it should be clarified whether you can create more space (maybe take a bit off the megalomaniac carport?) or if you can do without a room.
But the more I compare the draft with the location, the more it becomes clear that not the house but the ancillary building is planned generously.
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You should think about whether you want to give the house such a dominant ancillary building that from a bird’s eye view it looks like the charm of a gas station. Probably such a thing would not be approved as it doesn’t subordinate itself to the house.
The carport is actually our space saver. We currently also have such a huge, semi-closed one and actually do not want to miss it at all because it is just brilliant.
50 sqm with 3 m height are approved without a permit in Saxony; the connecting part and the extension on the left are to be seen separately and are not flanged in a single monolithic block.
Maybe one could do without the guest room and instead enlarge the utility room + living room. I have to think about that.