Floor plan for family. Notes, criticism, improvement suggestions.

We would also like to present a floor plan. We have received an offer from a house building company with a completed floor plan. We do not find it bad, but we are very happy to receive further comments, criticism, and suggestions for improvement.

A few more facts:
- Semi-detached house in timber frame construction, 8.48 x 10.23 m
- The house is located in a newly developed residential area
- The house will be built into an embankment about 2 m high (so that the entrance is in the basement, but it leads from the ground floor to the southwest-facing garden)
- The semi-detached neighbor is not yet present (we can still build)
- The gable roof may only be 7.5 m high, the roof pitch is 30 degrees

About the floor plan:
- "Above" is a residential street
- connections come from the street
- the "lower" side faces southwest, left is northwest, above is northeast
- "below" and "left" at ground floor level is the garden with a terrace (southwest-facing)
- the gentle valley lies "upper left", i.e. in the north, there should be nicer views there
- the cellar is a residential cellar
- knee wall on the upper floor is about 2 m
- the drawn-in furniture is for illustration purposes only

We thank you very much in advance for all responses!

Here are the floor plans:

Do you need the study on the ground floor? If not, I would add this room to the living room. 29m2 is quite small for a family of four. Leave out the pantry in the kitchen. It just makes things more cramped and you are better off with a (tall) cabinet. Otherwise, I think the floor plan for a semi-detached house is really good.

I can only agree with that. The only annoying thing is that you always have to go one floor up from the entrance to the ground floor. But that probably can't be changed with your property... Do you need a shower on the ground floor? Is it okay for your children to have rooms of different sizes? You could potentially still adjust that. Good luck with the construction!

Nice floor plan! I think "Arbeiten" serves as a placeholder. I also considered whether the room on the ground floor should be allocated as a living area. Still, a guest room near the shower bathroom wouldn't be to be despised either. Maybe remove the door and instead have large sliding doors to the living area. That would make room usage more flexible, e.g. for playing for the children, a workspace close to family life, a cozy corner there, or... It just depends on the habits, or whether you, as a single person, already need a retreat on the ground floor while the children are still around.

So, took another look, found a mistake: remove the pantry for the tall cabinets, then add a door from the hallway to the kitchen. You can do it, but you don't have to. I think it's better - you already walk enough on the stairs.

Swap toilet and shower - then the hallway won't be so boring (you can look out the window) and the hallway from the shower won't become a neighbor cinema.

Hello,

I also like the floor plan.

In contrast to some others here, however, I would keep the pantry. The size of the kitchen allows for it, and I can store different things better in a pantry than in a tall cabinet.

I would also rather count the study on the ground floor as part of the living room.

The smaller study in the basement might possibly suffice as a guest room.

In the bathroom in the attic, I would also recommend swapping the shower and toilet – or generally reconsider the T-layout. I know, the T-layout is currently terribly popular, but a clever bathroom planner can usually use the space better.

Regards,

Dirk

Thank you very much for the quick responses! We are glad that the floor plan is quite well received. We actually thought it was quite successful too, but since we basically have no idea about it, we wanted to consult the combined expertise of the forum to see if there are any conceptual errors anywhere.

Yes, our biggest sticking point is the relatively small living room. In addition, there is a patio door and three large floor-to-ceiling windows there. So we can hardly place our furniture against a wall, which means we end up filling the relatively small room even more. On the other side of the room, a stove is supposed to stand by the fireplace, in front of which you also need some space, so the room becomes tighter than expected there as well. As a solution, we possibly see widening the house (which we probably won't be able to afford) or replacing the large floor-to-ceiling windows with smaller ones, under which you can place a sideboard or a couch. And maybe the office can still be reduced in size (we need a proper office because my wife will work a lot from home - however, we find the suggestion of the sliding door very helpful).

We are also considering where to fit a bathroom cabinet in the bathroom (attic). We actually like the "T solution," but we are open... what could a cleverer solution look like? Or where can you find a clever bathroom planner?

Thanks for the suggestion with the tall cabinet in the kitchen. A pantry was our wish - probably mainly because we are not the tidiest and such a pantry can also be messy. But we do not know if it will be too tight in the kitchen then.
We are used to carrying the groceries - if we are lucky, our car currently parks 30 m away from the current residential building, where we also still have to go up to the fourth floor.

And then there is the question about the right heating system for the house. It will probably be the (seller-proposed) air-water heat pump, but we are not quite comfortable with this type of heating system. Does anyone have experience with it? Maybe gas would be better? Or maybe the innovative cloud data storage server heating is possible (offered by another provider; a computer that belongs to a cloud provider is basically put in the basement, and its waste heat is used to heat the house and hot water – crazy what exists nowadays).

We are still very grateful for any hints, tips, and suggestions of any kind!