Wow, that was fast. I'll try the quote function:
I'm not a floor plan expert. But where are the reserves or explicit basement/storage rooms that you have planned? I just see a lot of rooms (how exactly do you think the hobby room for the kids will be used?) and a lot of space.
The office can be a spare room and guest room. Overall, you can save a lot of space if you want. You can create endless storage space in the attic; not very comfortable, but you don't run to the basement all the time either.
Ground floor without office, smaller ground floor, office upstairs, smaller kids' rooms. No loss of quality of life and a lot of money saved.
You can afford it, that's not the issue.
I obviously agree with you because we were/are still in the phase of finding out and also still torn between cost and luxury.
In the attic, storage for Christmas decorations etc. is planned via a pull-down ladder and would also be very generous. But what annoys us about the "terraced house tower" is all the stair "jumping" and we wanted to have as much as possible on two floors. And we currently really miss the office on the ground floor because you can quickly take care of paperwork or just put down packages, baby tubs, or whatever and keep it out of the "way." For home office, of course, it doesn't matter if it's on the ground or upper floor.
The 3rd children's room is similar, e.g., laundry: We dry a lot on racks and rarely use the dryer. Since the utility room probably often reaches its limits, it would be a fallback area here. The same goes for kids' hobbies: if there is a basement, space can quickly be created if a child wants to learn drums, for example. Without the extra room and no basement, that is difficult again.
Everything is difficult because we want to cover all eventualities and we probably COULD afford it. But does it have to be...?
Do you get to the attic via the bathroom or child 2?
You should go to the architect without a self-designed plan, even if this one is probably above average. I especially like the approach of planning with wall thicknesses of 40/20 generally and using only decimeter "precise" room measurements. With 34/32 I wouldn’t think about a retirement conversion but assume building near retirement. The early and unadvised approach to the general contractor was of course a mistake.
The attic is planned as storage accessible via a pull-down ladder, so no full staircase with access through the bathroom or child 2. The confusion is due to the missing section and the fact that the roof is a bit too steep in the 3D representation; I was just glad to get it done at all, sorry.
The problem with the usability of the attic, I think, is the eaves height of max. 5.75 m above the finished floor and max. 35-degree roof. And our aversion to stairs.
The retirement conversion is something we would prefer to ignore as well, but the possibility was the luck of two people in our family recently. Building near retirement age could be difficult for us due to the extremely limited number of plots.