Floor plan design: Single-family house with basement; 560 sqm plot

Would there still be an alternative orientation on the property,

What more do you want than the solid south orientation that everyone here suggests to you?

Hello everyone,

in the meantime, we have sat down and drafted a new document for the architect. There we have summarized all the new insights and objections from here. To keep the post from getting too long, here are the heavily condensed changes:

[*]Gross floor area limited to 100-120 sqm + orientation preferably to the south
[*]Roof shape restricted to staggered shed roof, simple shed roof, or gable roof
[*]Space requirement for the upper floor reduced to master bedroom, two children's rooms, and one bathroom
[*]Space requirement for the ground floor reduced to guest room/office, shower toilet, kitchen, living-dining area (incl. fireplace) + optional pantry
[*]Space requirement for the basement reduced to technical room, laundry room, workshop, and storage room

During the creation of the document, we took the old draft and obtained individual quotes for the partial trades of the shell construction (+ windows) so that we can better calculate the costs (as a reference). For all other trades to be done by ourselves, we obtained material cost quotes and factored in a generous surcharge of 20%. With the above-mentioned gross floor area and adjusted budget, a basement is included here.

Now we have received initial feedback from the architect. Based on the new information, he created example designs – not with a focus on completeness, but rather to find out what we like. Therefore, only the ground floor is shown here to illustrate orientation, layout, etc. I labeled the designs as V1-V3.

So far, we like design V2 the most. We find the entrance to the house nicely solved. The living room could be made smaller here in favor of the garden. But without going into detail on the individual designs, as the post would become too long and unreadable: What is your opinion on the presented example designs?

500k€ excl. exterior facilities with a high proportion of own work.

With the above-mentioned gross floor area and adjusted budget, a basement is included here.

Would you like to calculate that for us before we do it? Because discussing unaffordable castles in the air is futile.

did you forget the attachments?

Would you like to calculate that for us before we do it? Because discussing priceless castles in the air is pointless.

I can gladly do that. If you assume that you hire a company for, for example, the entire shell construction and the following trades, I agree with you that the budget stated above is not appropriate. In my cost calculation, such items appear, among others, only for the house connection, excavation, compaction, windows, roof structure, stair covering, and roof covering. The rest is done as own work or together with acquaintances, so that for the respective trades only the material costs count and, of course, one's own time ;-) The difference between a company's offer and the material price is usually at least a factor of 2, sometimes even significantly more. Without going into all the details now: If you roughly estimate the whole thing, you come to a manageable budget, of course at the expense of the time required.

did you forget the attachments?

It seems as if the pictures were deleted. The upload didn’t work for me last night, so I uploaded and linked the floor plans. Hopefully it has worked now.

I like all the floor plan variants very much. In my opinion, number three is the most practical with the access to the kitchen. However, I would not be too optimistic when planning with friends and relatives. We had to switch from doing the work ourselves to outsourcing several trades at short notice in order to get the construction finished at all. The worst was with the roof and the screeds. Based on our experience, I would not plan so much again with friendly craftsmen. It also cost us two friendships because the work was simply botched so badly that it had to be completely redone. Although the trades that were contracted from the beginning also did a sloppy job.