Floor plan 161m² - Have we missed something?

Hello everyone!

So far I have been a silent reader and would like to present our planning to you and wish for some suggestions or possible improvements in our current plan!:
Development plan/restrictions:
Building plot has no development plan, it must be built according to §34 Building Code. According to the municipality and the building environment, "almost everything is possible"

Size of the plot: 910m²
Slope: No
Floor area ratio: none as there is no development plan!
Floor space index: none as there is no development plan!
Building window, building line and boundary: none as there is no development plan!
Edge development: none as there is no development plan!
Number of parking spaces: none as there is no development plan!
Number of floors: none as there is no development plan!

Style: none as there is no development plan!
Orientation: none as there is no development plan!
Maximum heights/limits: none as there is no development plan!
Other specifications

Builders’ requirements
Style: Modern single-family house
Roof type: Gable roof (for appearance, photovoltaics and storage space)
Building type: Rectangular
, Floors: No basement, 2 full floors (plan shows a knee wall of 2.50 m in the upper floor)
Number of persons, age: 2 persons: He 30 (project manager), She 26 (primary school teacher)
•The house should have on the ground floor:
•- Kitchen with pantry
•- Living room
•- Fireplace for wood stove
•- Office for home office
•- Utility room
•- Toilet
•- Cloakroom
•
•On the upper floor:
•- 1 bathroom
•- 2 children's rooms
•- Dressing room + bedroom
•- Small storage room
Office: family use or home office?: Home office at least 3x a week at home (He), primary school teacher (She)
Overnight guests per year: about 6
Open or closed architecture: may be open
Conservative or modern construction: Modern construction
Open , kitchen island: Open kitchen with kitchen island as extension of the kitchen
Number of dining seats: 6
Fireplace: Yes, it's a must-have for us
Music/Stereo wall: -
Balcony, roof terrace: -
Garage, carport: Yes, we will do it ourselves
Utility garden, greenhouse: Yes, we like hobby gardening ;-) (him)
Further wishes/details/daily routine, also reasons why this or that should not be:
Originally we wanted a square city villa, but since the plot is approx. 45 x 19 m and slightly trapezoidal, this is too tight with the garage and terrace directly next to the house. Therefore, we decided on a rectangular floor plan.

House design
Who is the planner: House planner
-Planner of a construction company: prefab house manufacturer Kampa

What do you particularly like? We particularly like the open living/dining area facing south. The office on the ground floor was very important to us.

What do you not like? The kitchen with the pantry is relatively small, the children's rooms on the upper floor are a bit too big; in my view, 14 m² would be enough. Another storage room makes little sense or cannot be realized creatively.
Cost estimate according to architect/planner:
530,000€ nearly finished (for KFW QNG Premium loan):
including all work on the house except laying the floor coverings and smoothing/painting/plastering the walls (material is included)
- Viessmann invisible heating, ventilation, photovoltaics 7.2 kWp + storage 10 kWh
- Venetian blinds in the living/dining area
- Fireplace
- House has almost passive house values (according to Kampa) 10 kWh/m²a
- Bus system for lighting and heating control

Total cost estimate:
Plot including incidental costs: 130,000€
House + selections + house equipment + wood stove + water softener = 587,000€
Additional construction costs (without garage) = 59,000€
Outdoor facilities = 20,000€ (we will do it ourselves and it is not important for now)

Total: 796,000€

(I know, a lot of money. Also since I'm Swabian, my heart already bleeds...)
We definitely want to take the KFW loan because otherwise the financing is not feasible.

Personal price limit for the house, incl. equipment: No more than 500,000€ for the house
Preferred heating technology: Heat pump

If you had to give up, on which details/extensions
-you can give up:
Lighting control via bus system
-you cannot give up:
Office on the ground floor
Venetian blinds
Possibly reduce window sizes


What is the most important/basic question about the floor plan summarized in 130 characters?

What improvement suggestions do you have for our floor plan? We are unsure if the storage space in the house will be enough? It is planned that a small hobby workshop will be accommodated in the garage. Where could we possibly save something?

Thanks in advance!
PS: I apologize in advance for errors and ambiguities!

Regarding saving: If the house is really "almost passive house," get rid of the stove/fireplace and the chimney.

I just skimmed through it now…

You estimate just under 600k but only want to spend 500k? A study with 16 sqm, a pantry, a dressing room, a hallway with 16 (14) sqm on the ground floor, and a corridor with 10 sqm on the upper floor. Efficiency must definitely be optimized here. Can you reshape the strongly rectangular floor plan more into a square? This way, several sqm of the corridors can be added to the rooms, the office can be slightly reduced, and the room sizes and access on the upper floor optimized. With the current floor plan, there is hardly any possibility to place a wardrobe or similar at the entrance.
I also didn’t see a budget for a kitchen, did I possibly overlook that? (587,000 - 530,000€) 57,000€ for kitchen, fittings, flooring, and wall finishing could be tight.

I agree with the previous posts, there is still room to trim and consolidate almost everywhere. For example, a large utility room on the ground floor that also serves as the entrance from the side door and houses the washing machine/dryer. Perhaps something from the pantry can be integrated there as well, saving overall square meters on the ground floor and potentially making the kitchen larger. The storage closet on the upper floor can then be omitted, the rooms a bit narrower, and thus savings can be made on both levels. However, there are enough professionals here who can thoroughly think through and even draw such things, so there will certainly be a lot more helpful input.

What also struck me: the walk-in closet seems pretty pointless. Only about 2.5-3 meters of wardrobe space fit in there?! The rest is walking space where at most you can put a chair (for clothes that are neither fully clean nor fully dirty) and a small laundry basket. The visual separation also offers no practical advantages if early in the morning the partner is rummaging around right behind the headboard. I would reconsider whether this is really the best option for a actually quite large bedroom.

from my point of view, 14m² would also be sufficient

From my point of view as well. But…

Number of people, age: 2 persons

Isn’t that contradictory? Planning for 2 people and a children’s room?

2 children’s rooms

Or are there some planned?

No more than €500,000 for the house

House + sampling + house equipment + wood stove + water softener = €587,000

And where do you want to save? On the mentioned windows?

Regarding the floor plan: I find the open plan room not at all successful: 3.60m is quite narrow for a living room. With that length, the room becomes a corridor. The children’s rooms are also corridors. The bathroom at 2.80m will be very tight and only feasible with a small tub. The bedroom as a walk-through room is not advantageous. Also, there is no adequate access to the garden, only to the south terrace, and there space is limited and the boundary is close. I would plan the open plan room in an L-shape in the southeast, which would benefit it significantly. Also, the entrance in the north. Move the garage to the back, i.e. to the right on the plan. The rest will follow.

161 sqm of which just over 20 sqm is hallway space, which in my opinion is wasted.

I don't like it when kitchen / living / dining are all in a row. I would swap the office and kitchen and adjust dining and living accordingly.

I would skip the pantry, raw construction 1m, when plastered and painted about 97cm remain. What should go in there? I would leave it out and instead plan two or three tall storage cabinets in the kitchen. They hold so much, it's incredible.

Children's room too narrow for me, they have a raw construction depth of 2.90m, later about 2.87m. We have 3.35m depth in the children's rooms and could have gladly had a few more centimeters.

The storage room upstairs is pretty small, where is the laundry supposed to be washed? We have our utility room upstairs, that was the very best idea, I have realized now after about 1 year in the house. I would always do it that way again and again.