Floor plan house with granny flat - improvement suggestions?

How many parking spaces are required according to the development plan or parking space ordinance at your place? You have to specify that many in the building application as well.

Luckily, only 2 parking spaces for both residential units.

We are also over 70, but I would never move into this tiny condo and certainly not with my relatives, if I don’t need care and my child would be willing to take care of me. The son coming by as a student is limited in time, but the place really gets crowded. EVERYONE living in the house will have to make compromises. I suspect this is about money; the parents are contributing to the financing of the house, which might otherwise not be affordable.

This tiny bathroom for 5, the absolute morning nightmare. And the 3rd bathroom cannot be used by the family in the morning at all, although it is only used occasionally. Madness. A "Jack and Jill" bathroom would be ideal.

And exactly what someone wrote about a bigger garden. My daughter and family did housesitting for friends. It was kind of living on trial for what they will have from October, including a 4000m2 plot. Their boys are 6 and 8.5, and contrary to her expectations, the boys showed no interest at all in the garden’s size. There were old trees on the huge lawn. Their old garden was much smaller, but it always fit. What she learned is that the area itself is uninteresting for children and that there is nothing more boring than mainly looking at a grass area with something taller around it.

The two adults only use the garden for chilling/grilling/parties.

What use are three bathrooms to you? None is barrier-free, none can be used with physical limitations. A bathtub can be very helpful in old age or after illness/accident for pain relief. The two people have two of them and you five have one?

In both apartments, you have no possibility to accommodate a proper dining area. Draw real furniture to scale including clearance space.

You are five people. The grandparents will probably also sit at the table from time to time, so 8 people. The recommendation is 50-70 cm width per place setting. Your table should therefore be 1.8-2 m long and have a width of 90-100 cm. With clearance space (at least 80 cm between table edge and wall) this makes a width of 250-260 cm and a length of 340-360 cm. With a width of 260 cm you won't make it, because on one side the groceries have to go into the kitchen and on the other the access to the terrace must remain.

The kitchen in the granny flat is only enough for making coffee. Plus this tiny table. Maybe 3 plates with cutlery fit on it, but no coffee pot.

I understand that your disappointment is great now, but just think how much greater it will be once the box is standing and no one feels comfortable. We would also like to look with you to see if there are alternatives, but for that we need the exact plot dimensions.

Fortunately only 2 parking spaces for both residential units.

And where are they? Are they allowed to be one behind the other? Such things are usually rejected. Whether your sneaky architect will get away with this garage as a double parking space - no idea. But realistically I only see 1 parking space. Your focus on compactness and the garden is nonsense here in my opinion. You should rather focus on making sure each party has a cozy terrace. Maybe a small flower bed but then it gets tight. The time with sandbox and stuff for the children is over anyway. It is much more important that they have somewhere to store their bikes. We can also still pick apart the design but why? Do you really want to put a dining table on 2.6m width? Try that and then pull all the chairs back and sit down. That’s annoyingly tight and you are five! Or do you want to, out of desperation, then put it in front of the living room door? Then you come in and trip over it, but for that you have a hole in front of the kitchen. That’s all rubbish. I also strongly recommend you pull the ripcord before you sink the money into something like this. Once it is built, the money is gone and you can only sell such a thing way below price.

By the way, your problem is not new, see here at @Claudia-W: – and also Yvonne's proposal.

I don't need to compare the designs in detail to know that the former is our current MarlenP.

I find some statements misleading:

We are currently in the final planning phase

As I said, we have already received the building permit.

Regarding the parking spaces:

2 parking spaces will probably not be enough. But we can park additional cars at the house in the north.

That doesn’t sound good :-(. Regarding the garage – only one car will be parked here. The remaining space will be used for bicycles, gardening tools, etc.

The architect did not draw these in because the building authority might object to them.

In the north, I only see an emergency spot... of course, the architect did not mark this because it will officially not be allowed.

2nd residential unit (both over 60)

We thought that two seniors who are almost 70 wouldn’t need much more space.

Over 60 means, precisely 60, one or two years beyond. Almost 70 means 69 years... At this age, much physical decline happens, so one has to say that over-60 activities, also at home, are different from almost 70.

My parents will mostly stay on the ground floor. The stairs and the room upstairs in the granny flat are planned as a guest room because my parents often have visitors.

My parents need quite a bit of space since they regularly receive visits from their children and angel children (they live near the new development area).

My parents’ youngest son (that is my brother :)) studies somewhat farther away from the parents and often comes home and sometimes stays for days or weeks.

Then again this contradicts itself:

We thought that two seniors who are almost 70 wouldn’t need much more space.

My parents need quite a bit of space since they regularly receive visits from their children and angel children (they live near the new development area).

What do the seniors say about this whole plan? Are they not even asked if they are satisfied with the space?
For example, I see more of a 3-meter kitchen with a small dining table rather than a kitchenette, which wouldn’t even be sufficient on vacation.

Regarding the criticism of our floor plan. To be honest, I am very disappointed that despite months of planning with our architect, we apparently did not get the optimum out of it.

Maybe you should look for the fault within yourselves? The beginnings of a floor plan discussion were there at the beginning of the year. And then came

We are reasonably satisfied that we have more than one option for later.

If you only plan for options or later, most people here drop out of the discussion. But you also did not continue it further. However, I found the approach from January better than now...

Mostly the floor plan of the granny flat was criticized, but how is the floor plan of the main apartment to be judged?

No, for example, I wrote among other things that you should try to furnish it with real furniture. I find no planning at all in the ground floor part of your house section so that it was left at a loveless rough semi-detached sketch solution. For me, that is just something like a sketch, but nothing worked out or fair for a family of five. The approach from January was better.

So that he can have his peace, and the parents in front of him, we planned the room upstairs with a shower bathroom.

There is practically an ageless studying youngest child, which does not fit at all with a senior-friendly apartment. The question for me would be where he will basically live. It reads as if he is still registered at his parents’ and not just visiting.
How old is he? 23 or 32? So can one say that three people will move into the senior apartment, one of whom is occasionally away studying?

The bathroom is sufficiently large for us. We currently also have a bathtub in the bathroom, which the children and we have not used for years. That is why we left it out.

Size is not defined by a bathtub. What, of course, was not mentioned is the location of the bathroom above the intended living room...

The 2 people have 2 of those and you 5 only one?

That already shows the inadequacy: a guest/son gets his own bathroom, while 5 people squeeze around nearly the same size.

Topic compact: You have to stay compact anyway, as the plot does not allow much. If you use the garage mainly with the children and also expect noise and activities there from lawnmowers, children’s fleet, daily commuting by car, friends visiting, etc., then I’m aiming now to the idea that the granny flat for the seniors should lie rather on the play street. Playing children usually release happiness hormones in older people rather than rattling metal and grumpy or quarrelsome morning grouches. You could spread out to the east and south then. In between could be the utility room with guest section (student plus shower WC), which later the now 17-year-old could get, or possibly other visitors (grandchild was also mentioned somewhere).
But maybe I am completely wrong with the idea of switching the layout of the two residential units.
With the floor area ratio, you are already tied now. That means: significantly larger is not possible.

I also see a lot of potential for optimization in the floor plan. The guest room + private bathroom is for your brother? Couldn't he then use your staircase? And if he is not there, couldn't the room and the bathroom simply be used by you? Where is the technical room? I only see the utility room for the granny flat downstairs? If you live in such a tiny granny flat, I don't think you can also keep a guest room with its own bathroom. Anyone visiting should understand that and go to a hotel. Or sleep on the sofa in the living room. Another question is: do your parents always sleep together? Even if one is sick?