The thing is: the architect's job is to plan the optimum using the knowledge from their studies. A layperson simply doesn’t have that knowledge. And so you or you all just cruise around the usual repertoire of the model house and the house-building heroes – but not around the knowledge of individuality. Which is why currently messed-up facades and a non-functional entrance situation come out, especially when you repair and straighten more than you consider new. Laypeople just dislike deleting.
That's true, I'll do it differently with the next house.
Although I know us pretty well and believe that even with an external architect we would end up with a very similar plan in the end.
He can't change the fact either,
[*]that the plot is as it is
[*]that the building boundaries are as they are (no carport and no tool shed outside)
[*]that the development plan is as it is
[*]that we want the rooms divided over the floors as they are
[*]that for most rooms we even have specific wishes regarding the cardinal directions
[*]and on top of that, that we insist on such extravagances as a covered terrace (of course only southwest), a walk-in closet, and a straight staircase.
Practically the only thing left to plan with our requirements is the entrance and the hallway. No wonder that we missed the mark on the first attempt and the now partly incompatible demands affect these connecting rooms.
Every clever design from an architect would have failed with us if the rooms weren’t where they are now. I'm sure my wife and I would have degraded every experienced architect just like the general contractor’s planner to a "drafting slave." (I mean that seriously, we came to the initial meeting with a ten-page requirements catalog that had more words than some building specifications.)
And to be honest, I doubt an architect with such honesty and directness as you all show here in the forum would have talked someone out of bad ideas the way you do here. So thanks for that already.
In the end, we already liked the first design and like the second even more. That’s why we won’t be throwing out any of our many wishes.
And regarding "layperson": sure, neither my wife nor I come from the construction trade, but we are both in positions where we deliver similar technical services in a completely different context. Otherwise, we wouldn’t come to an architect with a long requirements catalog. Starting over from scratch isn’t unfamiliar to us in our work. The problem is rather the personal connection to the design, because from the very first line you start dreaming in it. And letting go of that is the difficult part; it’s not really about sunk time/money or similar. That’s why you get attached so quickly to a suboptimal design yourself.