First draft floor plan single-family house (approx. 200 sqm) - Please provide feedback

It certainly wasn’t meant to be that detailed, because such an approach would make the design worse instead of better.

It’s about the basic idea of placing a (space-saving) staircase.

Your suggestion to place this staircase over the other one wouldn’t work due to the different steepness, and continuing identically upward wouldn’t work either (because then one would enter it crawling at the start). Therefore, I quickly sketched how it would even be possible from a purely constructive point of view. It would still look like something designed by a ghost train designer, I fully agree on that.

I’m not making detailed suggestions in this thread because I don’t consider the design sensible [...] For me the too large storage room (and other rooms as well) is only drawn because it resulted from the stair positioning, somehow everything here just looks “sketched on”.

For this design all hope is lost. The planner is probably a constructor: technically it’s all feasible, but architecturally it borders on a crime. And apart from the excellently solved dormer, the details mostly look like the nitpicking of a technical draftsman who can’t even stack three bricks properly.

Of course the window must not overlap with the cabinet. We’ve already told the planners this and it will be corrected soon. [...] There will also be larger and more windows throughout the rest of the house and several double casement windows upstairs. [...] Access to the terrace is via the lower additional living, guest, play area which is mistakenly labeled as a recreational room. [...] The only reason for the large pantry/storage room for vacuum cleaners etc. is that this room is the most unattractive one in the entire house

What do your planners actually do for a living, when after so many design versions everything still looks as if all the floor plans are just placeholders for what will eventually be bungled between the outer walls?

The house is a single (and probably Europe’s most complete) collection of the most unattractive rooms!

In the living room, for example, we want to build one of those large exterior windows where the windowsill serves as a seat.

But please absolutely not with this contractor, who, stuck in his 1950s thinking, will turn it into a flower window. Then the house will no longer just look like the devil’s grandmother, but also heavily facelifted.

Our construction company - as some have correctly pointed out - builds very traditional houses. That’s why we have to plan every window ourselves [...] Does anyone have experience with narrow windows between a base cabinet and a wall cabinet in the kitchen? [...] We wanted to check whether there might be space for a sink, toilet, bidet, washing machine, and shower if necessary.

They don’t build “traditional” houses, they are just at least sixty years behind in developing even the slightest sense for architecture. I wouldn’t dare attempt ribbon windows with them, and I’m sure they will hear the word “bidet” for the first time as well. After the war, people were happy to move from a Nissen hut to a stone house. Today a builder should be able to offer a little more.

We would like to have a fixed staircase because the attic might sometimes serve as an office, retreat for teenagers, etc. We want to keep these options open and therefore don’t want to solve the access only with a folding staircase.

Give the teenagers their retreat as a sleeping loft above their rooms, also accessible from there. Everything else yields less than the effort the staircase to the attic requires.

Thanks for your feedback!

The only thanks that would please me is if our feedback actually helped a bit.

I’ll give you one more chance, then I’ll disengage from this gingerbread house thread.

Regarding the staircase: we are aware that the staircase should be planned first. Of course, with regard to the room layout on the ground floor as well as the upper and attic floors, if needed.
Then a design will work, if you know a bit about it.

_As_ it is here, all is lost, all advice wasted.

Goodbye and happy Easter [emoji214]

Regards, Yvonne

But there are also some points where our habits probably differ from those of many others (also in our family). We currently have a very nice west-facing terrace and hardly use it. Conversely, we lived for a long time on the first floor and had to go out of the house and across the yard to get to the garden. We used the garden a lot there. --> a direct access to the terrace and garden from the living room is not important to us. On the contrary, we really like the idea of having a kind of rustic second living room, possibly with a fireplace, from which we would then step onto the terrace and garden. And it is clear that many think and live differently and we can well understand that. For us, it is better that way.

I have the impression you are sugarcoating the whole thing a bit. About how you are satisfied with this and that as it is now. So why change anything in the new house, or dare something new.

Normally, it should become better, more beautiful, more pleasant if you already spend a lot of money on a house. To have the same as before or even only approximately the same, you don't have to put yourself through the work and financial effort.

You had to endure quite a bit for your designs already, which is also why I hold back. What would interest me, for example, is where do you hang the laundry? Does a cute little DIY store drying rack come into the living room?

I get the impression that you’re sugarcoating the whole thing a bit. As if you’re satisfied with this and that, as it is now. [...] You’ve already taken quite a lot of criticism for your designs, which is also why I’m holding back.

The criticism is less about the quite legitimate "different" taste of this building family compared to others in this forum. Rather, it is about the fact that it is not really "their" design, or that the problem lies exactly in the fact that the underlying basic model is a completely unsuitable basis to make the SupaCriz family’s house out of:

Here we are dealing with the "08/15 Ten by Ten" model of the builder. Proven since 1948, then upgraded from 24 to 30 cm in 1964 and from 30 to 36.5 cm external wall thickness in 1980, now built hundreds of times in various roof pitches and both ridge directions. On a slope in the opposite direction, already with a single garage in the basement. With oil tank, with wine cellar, in white or milky coffee gray. And in the current version, finally, "hobby cellar" is not listed in the rear half of the basement area.

In an architecture lecture hall, even the blondest student in the back row would recognize that at first glance. However, a single client family wants, like brave Gauls, to believe that this can somehow still become "their" house.

But that cannot succeed. Never, to be exact. This simply comes down to an unsuitable methodology:

A "conversion" is always the method of choice when the suboptimal house is already standing. But here, it is not the house that needs adaptation on the plot, but a stubborn builder who is missing the point.

Houses that do not fit are renovated. Drawer plans that don’t fit, however, should not be rebuilt. They should be discarded.

But this penny does not seem to drop with the SupaCriz family—they shift walls and windows as if the house already existed. How faithfully the Hippocratic oath is followed here could indeed be exemplary if it were about the life of a person. But here it is only about the life of a drawer-plan—and in this particular case, it is undoubtedly stillborn on the drawing table.

Hello everyone,
we have reconsidered some points. Here is a new draft.
The windows are still excluded. At the moment, our tendency is towards large window areas in the southwest corner of the living room (no corner glazing but 50cm masonry in the corner). Additionally, we are considering a terrace door with 4 steps leading down from the living room on the ground floor on the west side into the garden, the height above the terrain should be about 1m there.
On the upper floor, the bathroom and master bedroom will each have a double casement window, possibly also the eastern children's room (here possibly as a replacement for the window on the northeast side).
In the basement, we want to almost completely avoid light wells and instead choose windows with a high sill height in the ancillary rooms that are above ground level.

We still have one question regarding the positioning of the house on the site. It would probably be possible to raise the ground by about 1m at the top so that the entrance is at street level. The alternative would be to have the entrance and finished floor level about 70cm - 1m below street level following the natural terrain. Both variants exist in the immediate neighborhood. Are there any fundamental advantages or disadvantages to consider here (other than the garden becoming correspondingly steeper if the house is built "higher up")?

Thanks for your opinions!

We still have one question regarding the positioning of the house on the site. One could probably build up about 1m at the top so that the entrance is at street level. The alternative would be to have the entrance and the finished floor level (OK FF) about 70cm - 1m below street level, following the natural terrain slope. Both variants are present in the immediate neighborhood. Are there any fundamental advantages or disadvantages to consider here (apart from the garden becoming correspondingly steeper if the house is built "higher up")?

That would be nice on the one hand, considering

In the basement, we want to almost completely avoid light wells and instead choose windows with a high sill height in the ancillary rooms, which protrude above the terrain.

because of the positive effect on that very sill height relative to the terrain, but apart from the fact that for

a terrace door with a 4-step descent from the living room on the ground floor on the west side to the garden, the height above the terrain would have to be about 1m there.

it would then be equally unfavorable, it also affects the overall situation, doesn’t it?

Eaves and ridge heights are often measured at the upper edge of the finished floor of the ground floor (indirectly fixed to the street by the floor being allowed to be at most “x” above it), or also directly at the street.

Apart from “underpinning” the basement (which, if I remember correctly, matches the garden level at the back) or the cellar or slope stabilization under the garage, such a raising of the house could also become critical “at the top”.

The lower floor plans have already been slightly improved (except for the mess of the two stair shapes), but the roof still ends at – ugh.

That’s why I stick to my opinion: reengineering instead of quackery on a stillborn floor plan.