Floor plan changes for end-terrace house from the developer

Maybe you’re already preparing for a "Are you serious?" "Someone must have miscalculated that." That often still brought a 10-25% reduction with us. Our Heini is also very special.

I understand. And just because you can't or don't want to change every little thing doesn't mean the house isn't livable. On the contrary: you will enjoy it. Maybe it pinches here and there, but you will have your joy in your little house. Because every optimization on one side means something on the other side. Nevertheless, you could have responded to the last posts as well.

Still, you could have gladly responded to the last posts as well.

Yes, you're right. I had planned to give feedback after the first kitchen appointment, but then I messed it up. Sorry about that!
We initially found your idea of swapping the dining area and living room quite appealing! Basically, as a pro: light at the table, and as a con: you always have to go through the living room from the kitchen to the dining table. (which somehow makes the usually cozy sofa corner less cozy). Also, the sightline from the entrance to the terrace is lost (although there would then be one from the kitchen to the terrace). But when the developer gave the fundamental okay for an additional window in the long facade, the "cons" outweighed for us again, since with a window in the middle area, the dining table would no longer be (a bit exaggerated) "in the dark." So now we are rather moving away from that idea again. You can tell that we are a bit attached to how strict or not strict the originally developer-stated restrictions actually are, which strongly affects the possibilities. We are quite sure that we want the window, but we want to wait first until we have a price on it before we continue wildly spinning ideas, which is also why I let the thread rest a bit. (But yes, I should at least have given brief feedback.)

Regarding the idea from with the room divider, we had already roughly considered that as an option. Then you only have the window behind you while watching TV, which isn't optimal, but we have to see how much that bothers us or not. Overall, we have already played through several options here and in our minds (with and without floor plan changes) about what could be where. In the end, we have two multimedia outlets to assign for the open space. I am currently leaning toward placing one on the wall to the left where the TV was originally drawn and one on the right roughly where the room divider is drawn here. Possibly we would treat ourselves to another one on the stair wall. The number of sockets, what/where/how, we'll have to look at again (sigh). But we'll see. As I said, we are currently waiting a bit for prices on some things we have already requested before we go on a big spending spree ;)

Since the belief "you only build once" is anyway a relic from Adenauer's childhood, there is no need to overdo the optimization of the (first and second) house either. On the Pareto scale, a 95% optimum approach already marks the white heat, which should not be overlooked. Ilsebill Fischer is known not to be a good role model ;-)

By the way, I recently tried to update here, but accidentally ended up in the wrong thread, oops. The short version was: extra window on the ground floor is commissioned (yay) and we have agreed on something along the lines for the hallway/kitchen, but with a door opening into the kitchen (both options have their pros and cons).



The living room is at the stage of "we will manage," where we keep the ideas here in mind, but probably won’t make any major floor plan adjustments.

there’s no need to overdo it with the optimization of the (first and second) house as well.

Yes, we sometimes struggle with the inner perfectionist who wants to optimize every corner and then also simply with the realization that it will work one way or another ;)

Otherwise, I wonder whether I should keep tracking what’s happening here or start a new thread, because actually the title doesn’t fit (sigh, wasn’t very foresightful), but spreading information everywhere is always annoying.

Anyway, there seems to be a partial building permit for the basement and the construction site is slowly (or rather pretty quickly) getting started! With the full building permit, the city is taking its time and promised dates keep getting missed, but that is more the developer’s issue in our case. And as long as they don’t communicate that it will be difficult to meet the contract deadlines, we remain quite relaxed. (One of our neighbors is a bit less relaxed because they relied more on the “could also be finished significantly earlier than what the contract states,” which was communicated at first, but becomes less likely the longer the building permit takes.) According to the contract, they are supposed to be finished by April 24. We’ll see.

As a door on the kitchen side, I would definitely choose a sliding door. It can open behind the cabinets in the hallway.

If the door is open as drawn, it is in the way. And you can’t just push it closed when you come in.
I have a door combination like the one you have drawn, with a WC door and a utility room. Only because I don’t enter the utility room as often as the WC, it works. But it is a planning mistake. I wouldn’t do it like that again.