After the initial cost estimate, we reluctantly gave up on the return on the west side (so for the dressing room). Even though that was actually the reason why we wanted something like that. Well. Currently, we only have the return to the southeast, in the dining area/air space.
I’m simply attaching the architect’s plans. North is in the top left corner; so really where the house has the corner at the top left, that’s north (as indicated in the plans in the first post).
We have reduced the planned basement. The reason is partly costs, which increase explosively if we cellar the entire house. This is due to the existing garage, which doesn’t have a basement, and if we dig there, it would have to be extensively supported. There was discussion that maybe the garage should be torn down and rebuilt because that would be cheaper. We pulled the ripcord there and reduced the basement.
However, we are still not quite satisfied with the plans:
1. The facades are actually too well-behaved and boring for us. There is still a lot of potential...
2. The dressing room currently has no window at all; at least a roof window must be installed here.
3. Overall, the draftsman enlarged the dining area at the expense of the entrance area, so while in my plan the center of the house was also in the middle of the staircase, the staircase and all corresponding walls have shifted to the left (west). This is not stupid overall; we don’t need a ballroom as an entrance area, but this also makes the dressing room smaller and the wardrobe currently drawn there no longer has a 60 cm depth and is actually nonsense... we are again leaning more towards making the return there after all. This way it won’t work. We need a 60 cm wardrobe in which longer items can also be hung. The knee wall is only 1.07 m, so no wardrobe of the necessary height fits there.
4. The kitchen is incorrectly drawn. We are sticking to our plan and a terrace door between the kitchen rows. But that is not yet critical.
5. Basement: it is still too far extended into the garage for us; it can be slightly reduced. Basically, it can start with the stairs, that is enough and better structurally for the garage.
6. Basement again: we don’t like the division at all. We have both rooms facing forward with skylights; I don’t want the utility room there. We want the stairs similar to the upper stairs, with the exit to the right (east), the hallway there, two rooms forward, and behind the stairs (currently hallway on the plan) the utility room.
7. Utility room on the upper floor: we want to enlarge it by a few centimeters at the expense of the sauna and a sink is still missing (I don’t want to carry the condensation water from the dryer all the way to the bathroom).
8. Roof window over the toilet/bidet will be enlarged. That not only provides more light but also more headroom.
9. The staircase on the ground floor is open to the entrance area and has a wall to the living area. We actually want it exactly the other way around. Then the wall for the staircase would also continue fully from the basement to the upper floor.
10. Window layout in the living room is totally unacceptable. Apart from the fact that it looks completely boring and nondescript from the outside, we don’t know where, for example, we should put a TV here. The window row to the right (east) will definitely go; a shelf is to be placed on the wall there. We are also considering leaving out the window to the south on the left side, putting up a wall—not quite to the middle—but then a stove and TV could go there and a larger window on the left, possibly also wrapping around the corner.
11. The windows in the bathroom are also too boring for us. I like looking out the window when I bathe, so we will definitely change something there. It just looks boring as it is...
