Hello everyone and thank you for the many and good feedbacks!
I want to take some time here to reflect and give the most meaningful answers possible. Please don’t be mad if it takes me a bit longer.
Here is an attempt to answer everything in a structured and as transparent way as possible:
1. Topic slanted bathroom/laundry room not considered: True, thanks for the good hint. Depending on how high our knee wall ends up being, it will have to be moved further inward.
2. 500k budget: We have actually planned 15k for outdoor facilities and carport here. Yes, it’s tight, but we want to do as much as possible outside ourselves. If it doesn’t work out for the outside at all, we might have a bit of leeway upward. Otherwise, we dare to do floors, walls, and underfloor heating ourselves.
3. The state building code is Lower Saxony. If I’ve researched correctly, the upper floor must have a max. room height of 2.20m in less than 2/3 of the ground area of the ground floor. Correct?
4. Our thoughts in favor of a vestibule: Wet dog can’t directly run into the house. House cat doesn’t always try to run onto the street. Mud area clearly separated. Large wardrobe, separate from the living area.
5. Large wardrobe cabinet in the vestibule: Yes, true. Somehow it got lost in the back and forth planning. We could potentially plan a 200x60cm niche towards the office here, without losing too much space in the office (to potentially fit a double bed). Or is that not a good idea?
6. Bathroom in the mudroom: True, good point, thanks. Entrance in the clean area would definitely be better. Would have to see how to arrange that in the floor plan. I’ll think about it.
7. Swap children’s room and bedroom: Thanks for the different perspective, I hadn’t thought about it that way. Probably the bedroom in the north would really make more sense.
8. Kitchen open/closed/sliding door: Also a good argument. It really takes up a lot of space. Basically, we find an open kitchen nicest. On the other hand, the "classic" concerns about mess and noise that we can’t “lock away.” That’s why the sliding door solution came up. We probably need to meditate on this again. Thanks also for the hint.
9. Our thoughts on the basement:
9.1 Order: Horse stuff, tires, sports gear, musical instruments, paper waste, bottles, etc. don’t have to be stored/fitted in the living area.
9.2 Safety/flexibility: I know several families who suddenly had 3 instead of 2 children. Without a basement, we wouldn’t have an office anymore, which is absolutely necessary.
9.3 Party/hobby room: We both grew up with a basement and used it a lot for parties/hobbies.
9.4 We would also like to have a sauna/wellness room.
9.5 Our (probably too naive) calculation behind this: We save the garage and filling up the property and thus basically already have half a basement (The neighbors had garage + filling over 50k, hence the value). Maybe some of the excavation can be used for filling the garden (after pushing aside the topsoil), since we have more than 1m slope in the back garden. Additionally, the technology doesn’t have to be on the ground floor, which saves space (but apparently I haven’t managed that in my floor plan yet).
10.
Here is a post with a somewhat smaller house.
I will look at it tonight, thanks.
11. Development plan will follow separately.
I hope I managed to answer the questions somewhat sufficiently. But I realize, it was a good decision to post here. Now we have to deal with everything again on a completely different intensity level. Thank you!