Floor plan new two-story single-family house 200 m²

I find the second shower valuable and sensible. We had that in my parents' house as well. At first, no one used it. But later, when we children became teenagers, we used it a lot. There are families where children sometimes want privacy and to shower by themselves. Then one bathroom doesn't work.(...)

Yep. I find it a rather strange thought that my 16-year-old daughter is showering while I am sitting on the toilet or standing at the sink washing my hands.

Yep. I find it a rather strange thought that my 16-year-old daughter is showering and I’m sitting on the toilet or standing at the sink washing my hands.

That is correct. However, the case would also be covered without a second shower. The sink and toilet are already present downstairs.

Anyway: This afternoon I quickly straightened the floor plan, meaning I straightened the hallway, moved the bathroom with storage room upstairs, and as a result got pleasant window facades without any problems.

We have now taken a look and I am trying out some of the ideas. What is still unclear to me is the drawn-in carport. Where would the car park? Next to the room for the bicycles doesn’t work, as the doors wouldn’t open there. Or did you make the whole ensemble wider? If you increase the width, the comments regarding safety at the entrance can of course be better addressed.

I definitely like the exterior view. In my last draft, I had equipped the bathroom with a wider window facing east, but an additional window on the north side might be the more pleasant solution.

I can very well relate to the straight staircase. I grew up for the first 13 years with a half-turned staircase, then in the following years with a straight staircase. In the apartments afterwards, always with spiral staircases. I still find the straight staircase at my parents’ place super comfortable. You have to put more planning effort into it so that you don’t need too much hallway space. I also don’t understand the argument that a straight staircase requires much more space. If you can sensibly accommodate a straight staircase, I would absolutely prefer it. Maybe the iterations that are currently running are needed for that.

In fact, it is beyond my imagination that a staircase could be terrible to walk on because of a spiral. But as I now read, apparently, that does exist. My experiences here in the forum, but especially our own (we absolutely wanted a folding truss staircase or similar in the middle of the open gallery room) tell me that the straight staircase brings more and more planning problems similar to the roughly square so-called “substitute villa.” For a good architect, that might be easy, but without one I am gladly convinced otherwise. The previously shown structure including the hallway/stairs in this plan does not actually please me. Added to that is the so far weakly designed daylight, the detour around the front door, etc.

So, with us there are such situations in a row, too.

Also with these narrow dimensions right at the front door? The net dimension of about 3.5m is the point of criticism; otherwise, we have it the same way but mitigated with a landing. As soon as the comments get on your nerves, say stop. Nobody wants to talk you out of your “dream,” neither the straight staircase nor your entrance situation. I can only report from our side how the planning gradually changed in areas that we initially considered fixed.

Or did you make the entire ensemble wider?

But of course it is wider. As I said, I planned the storage room between the carport and the house. There are countless possibilities, this is just one of them. And someone who moves cars more than 10 times in 5 years should be able, even with even smaller dimensions, to park in such a way that they can still get out of the car (just a little joke). I would still have the bike shed open to the front, because otherwise the bikes would be blocked.

An example of this is the washbasin question. "Like" is a strong simplification of the evaluation process we went through to reach the decision that we only want to install one. We included the expected usage and maintenance intervals based on our habits and the expected (and not expected) changes over the usage period of the bathroom.

Evaluation process, usage interval... that has nothing to do with living and dwelling anymore.
What was actually on the 10 pages of room program if no usage intervals were tabulated yet?

I am certainly not the "one could if one wanted, so I want" thinker. But I think I better stay away from this disaster stanza of the house discussion.
Good luck!

I am almost certain that this must have been lost from your post within the 4-minute editing time.

The time limit only applies to visible editors.

I am gradually beginning to believe that you only consider your current state and do not even think about eventualities or 10 years later, just as habits change and children, the older they get, develop needs.

This is the most widespread amateur planning mistake: to plan the realization of wishes and avoidances as if they were static phenomena. If humans cannot fly, at least they would like not to be mortal, and wish to live in once optimized circumstances without aging. But even beautiful things remain in flux (even if one shackles oneself to one’s dream house for life out of basic real estate transfer tax stinginess).

My experiences here in the forum but especially our own (we urgently wanted a folded beam staircase or similar in the middle of the open gallery room) tell me that the straight staircase always brings more planning problems, similar to the roughly square so-called "instead villa". For a good architect that may work off the cuff,

The rigid-axis staircase and the squareness are the core curses of the instead villa. Supplemented by symmetry and making every window that is not at three on the tree floor-to-ceiling, they apparently exercise a pied piper-like appeal on the general contractors’ clientele. Together, the "magic trio" rigid-axis staircase, square floor plan & symmetry produce a curse with the effect of a "locked-in syndrome" that reliably counteracts every improvement attempt. If you defuse one aspect of this triangular bomb, the other two immediately ignite and the design collapses like a house of cards. This phenomenon is virtually "physics" and therefore theoretically applies also to good architects (who however avoid this devil’s cocktail). Moreover, they guarantee an overgrowth of the size "living area". Together with amateur planning (or in effect identical amateur-controlled draftsman planning) the total area is regularly inflated by about twenty percent (which as many amateur planners doubt as their designs prove). First-time building hopefuls do themselves a great favor by weighting the posts of multiple-time builders about twice as much as those of others in all discussions (and by reading most attentively in the forums the confessions about which supposed must-haves in the "first house for an enemy" actively implanted the seeds for later regrets – even if “only” about money thrown away). Deceptively, the saturation level of mere apparent perfection manifests itself in the design feeling "final". Just as frostbitten people strip naked when and because a derailed cold sensation suggests heat.