Floor plan of a single-family house, feedback

Without real furniture and their dimensions, good planning is difficult. One or the other edge or function can greatly impair a nice floor plan or make the piece of furniture useless; both unnecessary and a shame in any case. The roof shape would be almost irrelevant to me, I like individually thought-out floor plans, that fit exactly to the residents; that alone would be my goal. A nice facade or roof shape can always be found later.

Actually, we were busy today and painted, crafted, and thereby "played". A picture of it:

This is somewhat to scale. Not down to the last millimeter, especially the cardboard not, but quite extensively. It's exciting when juggling 3, 4 couches, kitchen islands, and such in different sizes.

This is just one of the combinations of possibilities. Then questions arose towards the house builder (what sizes of conservatories are feasible there? Maybe instead of a conservatory as a bay window, how about that? ...) so now there is a break until I have answers to that.

Even though I don’t find the involvement of the children bad, in my opinion it is still the case that a child is not able or should not be able to have a substantial influence on the fundamentals of house building (floor plan, daily routines...).
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Of course, the child should be comfortable, can participate, and especially design their own room, but an intervention in the overall concept/floor plan is not allowed. A small, seemingly insignificant change to the floor plan can completely ruin it – I would be rather cautious there.

Well. It is indeed a family project. The children have certain influence and will keep it – but the final word (except their own rooms) lies with me and my wife. I think it’s good when they contribute. That’s not the same as having unlimited opportunities for changes.
The thing with the doors is funny – the second child actually wants a swinging door (not like a half saloon door, but a fully functional one that opens both ways). So everyone has their own wishes there.

Things like "size must be the same" sometimes also necessarily result from life and past experience.

Here too, I would find it important that you as the earner also have a nice workplace. Because ultimately, you are also enabling this house construction with that. Since you apparently work a lot from home, you should pay particular attention to having an appropriate and nice workplace, so that you can work there for a long time, in a good mood, gladly and healthily.

Remove “a lot,” replace with “only.” Here it’s the same as with the kids – so far I have much less space, so it will be better anyway. That’s fine.

I basically also think that’s good, although I still advise caution from my own experience. In fact, with the first house we implemented a lot of unnecessary and expensive stuff that was especially meant to please the children. We should have rather invested in real comfort gains for all of us or simply spent less money and still could have had a nice house.

I’m curious about your new drawing. As said, I would take a close look at the subject conservatory regarding costs and real design/use, because the floor plan is not particularly generous so far. It doesn’t have to be, but if I have a conservatory, I would rather give more comfort to my actual living and working area than “sink” square meters and money there. Do you know the costs of good shading/cooling in the conservatory?

No, I can’t specify the costs exactly. How could I, since I simply lack experience with that. Apartment, always – and also optimally shady, i.e. I generally have quite little heat impact. And on top of that in an apartment built in the late 80s, so insulation is completely different than in a new build. And I also can’t say how well the cooling via underfloor heating and heat pump will work.

Well, I can specify part of it at the moment – the costs for the shading itself and its control (KNX).

You can also call the conservatory a bay, an extension or a light court. I think already understands where space is needed.

I hope so. :)

This is the right way - some draw, others stencil. One box is 10cm, you can immediately see the bottlenecks



The hallway should also be widened by 20cm at the expense of the technical room: it will be tight when coming home.

This is the right way - some draw, others use stencils. One square is 10cm, you can immediately see the tight spots

The hallway should also be widened by 20cm at the expense of the technical room: it will be tight when coming home.

The kitchen at the top right is actually abandoned for the time being ("First wait and see exactly how the conservatory/bay window will look"). One of the ideas was also to possibly replace the last 90cm cabinet (or both) with something not so deep. Depending on how the window will be, there might also be a tall cabinet for a device. Or the whole row won’t be 90, but only 80 deep. If you have the island where you can also put things down, that could work.
But - that’s future music.

I have noted the thing about the hallway. We’ll see, with all the technical stuff there are clearance areas that must be kept, so that 10 or even 20cm don’t mess everything up.

Remember, you calculate 1 meter of movement space from the edge of the table. So if you want a 1x2 m table, you need a 3x4 m template. It's an enormous thing that has to be accommodated there.

This is somewhat to scale. Not down to the last millimeter, especially not the cardboard, but still quite far-reaching. It’s pretty exciting when you juggle 3, 4 couches, kitchen islands, and such in different sizes.

I think it’s great and surely extremely helpful for you. Even if this effort ultimately only prevented 3 or 4 bottlenecks or tricky points, it was already worth it. The drawing and pushing back and forth makes it at least more tangible for me. I better don’t tell you what we arranged on our side to simulate things with the possibilities available to us.

Well. It is definitely a family project. The kids have some influence and will keep it as well.

I understand that and don’t want to be misunderstood, I would never consider an ego trip good, because really EVERYONE can contribute positively and I have always considered every idea thoroughly, even if it sounded wild. I don’t know you and just wanted to report what I have experienced/seen and (unfortunately) partly also created myself, because you get caught somewhere. I always mean it only as a constructive food for thought.

The thing with the doors is funny - the second child really wants a swinging door (not half salon doors, but a fully functional one that opens in both directions). So everyone has contributed their own wishes.

Exactly, that for example is such a nice example and if a child “regrets” their decision later, they also learn something and you can always correct it again. If you get your children or they themselves to plan their room alone in all possible details for them, then that in itself is already a gain, as long as there aren’t any cost shockers involved.

Things like “size has to be the same” sometimes also necessarily result from life and previous experiences.

I don’t understand that alone, and I don’t have to necessarily, but I strictly disagree with the general statement that something “has to be” given this level of knowledge. In many projects over the years here, it has become clear to me that too much “has to be” causes the whole thing to suffer elsewhere, be it in planning, functionality, or financially. I always advocate (and handle it this way myself) to free myself from all possible “must-factors” I bring from previous life. Thus my previous construction projects always turned out completely different than how we originally thought they should/must be. The individuality of your own life processes (which are also completely different among children) can produce a visually different result than initially thought, but a more harmonious one for each individual. With “must” I always hesitate and precisely ask why… you have to be able to afford that or deal with the consequences that then appear elsewhere.

No, I cannot specify the costs exactly. How could I, I simply lack the experience. Apartment is always the case – and also still optimally shaded, i.e., I generally have very little heat influence.

Exactly – and I understand that. But precisely because of that, you should at least roughly know the total costs of such a position and what equipment is necessary for it, so you don’t regret it later. Depending on the direction, window size and type, shading, insulation, etc., it can become a real oven and affect the entire residential building. So if that cannot be afforded comfortably, I would just remove it and have money freed up for elsewhere; so: definitely no “half” measures with such a strong impact on the residential building and climate. Many things can be corrected later if you were wrong, but that hardly.

On top of that, in an apartment built in the late 80s, so insulation very different from a new build. And I also cannot say how well the cooling via underfloor heating and heat pump will work.

You should also acquire your own experience/knowledge here because everyone perceives differently. For example, I don’t like rooms that are too warm, rather the opposite, and I heat punctually. Warm rooms in summer, like right now, are comfort killers for me, which is why I installed an air conditioner for €10,000 that I saved elsewhere. I believe (no own experience) that the cooling function in underfloor heating is more of a marketing gag. For us the AC is running lightly and silently during the day right now, which we consider highly comfortable. Also the venetian blinds at the large windows so the rooms don’t have to be darkened. It is absolutely bright and yet no sun comes in, so for me venetian blinds are also a “must” (not on the north side or bedroom).

Well, I can specify part of it currently – the costs for shading itself and its control ( ).

What does that look like in type and cost? We don’t have KNX, we press switches in a rather old-fashioned way when needed.

Things like "size must be equal" also sometimes inevitably arise from life and past experiences.

My experiences are completely different:
1. my brother and I had mirror-identical, equally sized rooms and he still managed to imagine that he had "drawn the short straw";
2. several friends also had brothers with rooms of unequal sizes - in one case even the older brother had the smaller room - and nevertheless they all turned out well-grown. None addicted, none alcoholics, none in a psychiatric clinic, all doing well;
3. the delusion "equally loved children = equally sized rooms" I encounter here constantly - however, you are the first parents with children already going to secondary school (in all others with this delusion, at least child 2 is only planned and child 1 is at most a tiny little kid.

the second child actually wants a swinging door (not just a half-saloon kind, but a full-fledged one that opens both ways)

A restaurant kitchen door then. The bigger Porsches of gastronomy fitters compared to those of notaries and specialist doctors do not come out of nowhere. Such doors can only be so expensive because they explicitly make their money with their bidirectional door hinges. Does the child also want to have this door when given the choice, instead of a rain shower with light organ and always the latest models of iPhone and Playstation until the end of studies?