Draft single-family house (EFH), 2 full stories, gabled roof, no basement, double garage

Whether it is really essential that only the checkered shirt makes the man a lumberjack, I recommend a bold placement of a question mark. For me, the statements of a flat but groundwater-problematic property were sufficient here, not to put the cellar question at the top of the first step. In general, from my point of view, there are two basic types of child accommodation; here the children are mentioned as two and zero years old. Consequently, I would consider them users of the dynamic room group KGB (Child / Guest / Office). I see adolescents from the age group of confirmation / second communion / youth dedication on the runway to leaving the nest, and accordingly in a granny flat (with only an unpartitioned passage left). This also affects the "children's bathroom," which, in my opinion, only fundamentally makes sense when coupled with one's own cleaning responsibility.

I already mentioned that my wife probably drew 100 DIN A4 pages, changing them over and over again. Once a template of the floor plan copied a few times and then always puzzled together again. If you want to pursue it this far yourself (as we did), it takes a lot of energy and also precision, or you just go to the architect and let their imagination come into play. We had a very weak general contractor but at least he repeatedly implemented our ideas in his software so that we could continue.

That is unfortunately very popular—probably because it seems so plausibly logical—but unfortunately just the surest way into frustration with botched results.

When I look at houses or floor plans by independent architects among acquaintances, I often wonder what they were actually thinking. It is extremely difficult to find one that suits us. To avoid going through hundreds of loops and wasting huge amounts of money and time, I took this approach. By the way, we also had an extensive preliminary discussion with an independent architect, but the initial ideas there were also sobering. [...]
But here I have already drifted far too much into detail... Please see it as a somewhat more detailed "preliminary draft"

Even an independent architect can belong to the CAD generation. They do not sketch, they do not erase, they do not conceptualize. They just start like Pictionary (dog cat mouse car dealership...) and do not even want to draw the design once per maturation stage, but only once in principle, then clean it up from points of non-appeal, and during the planning process only scale it in print format. Therefore, already with all details that in a preliminary draft in the old master’s way do not belong there at all. A preliminary draft, however, has a function in the maturation process of planning and must be seriously worked out as such. Instead, charging ahead with a sketch (started in third gear) and mislabeling it as a preliminary draft just because one thinks, as a digital native, to have spoon-fed wisdom and no longer need a real preliminary draft, is big nonsense at the expense of the builders. A not-yet-logged-in sketch is useless and cannot replace a preliminary draft. This is also why a layperson should never bring a "detailed preliminary draft" (because that is a contradiction in terms and shows a lack of understanding of design maturation) to the architect meeting. If one does and ends up with an architect of the CAD generation, one gets exactly the rubbish where one wonders why one even went to the (inexperienced) professional: a symmetry finish is then immediately the upper limit of the expectation horizon. One can perfect this mistake by going to a "performance phase 1 to 4" artist who never bears responsibility for a design (and its budget-compliant realization) on-site. Then the rubbish will also be nicely expensive. I do not go through hundreds of loops, but my service "finding an architect" unfortunately—since the effort is case-specific—cannot be listed on the menu with a cost-estimate-like price example. That is the downside of the coin that I operate nationwide. Then "one out of twelve will fit" of course does not work.

But when I look at houses or floor plans from independent architects in my circle of acquaintances, I often wondered what they were actually thinking.

Their communicated wishes have been implemented..

So it is extremely difficult to find one that suits us.

In this respect, one can also choose such an architect. Whether you hassle the architect with contradictory wishes so that an incomprehensible design results is up to you. But ultimately, everyone has their own wishes. What is important is that the design works. And you probably paid less attention to that, because your perception was somewhat different.