Floor plan revision, tips and experiences for improvement?

Thanks again for the revision. Some very sensible solutions that help us. However, we would prefer not to go up and down many stairs to the house. Just a quick note regarding the stones. It should look good, but the neighbors had some trouble with granite in their complete, deep basement. By chance, we were just out and saw the following. Would that be an option, with some kind of access from the garage to the house above?

And the plan to sleep downstairs and live upstairs still appeals to us. But it is not a strict "must." In our design, we already like the sensible room sizes. Where savings can be made, something should of course be cut, at least reduced to 170 sqm. Also, that a separate apartment can later be created in the basement for a child, and the house remains flexibly inhabitable. Having the kitchen closer to the stairs is good, then the pantry is quickly accessible. Can our house be simply moved downward as it is, so that from the upper floor where you live you can go out onto the north terrace? And the garage placed sideways in front. I am sending again, among other things, the picture with the blue garage, which really convinces us. Directly behind it the house, so that garage and house are indeed connected. Perhaps this can be incorporated into the already great sketch above. For us, it would be important to get rid of the steep driveway and also to have parking spaces for two cars in front of the house.

By chance, we were just on the move and saw the following. Would that be an option, with some kind of access via the garage to the house above?

Can our house as it is simply be lowered down so that you can go out from the upper floor, where people live, onto the north terrace?

These are questions you should ask your planner/architect.

Ok. We now have many ideas in mind and are significantly further in our vision. Thank you!

The photos you showed here all depict three-story houses. You are planning a two-story house. And, although it is not forbidden to photograph, use, and publish other people’s houses, next time please pixelate the license plates of the cars. Viola and Jörg surely don’t find that funny.

Some very sensible solutions that help us. However, we would prefer not to go up and down many stairs to the house. [...] Would that be an option, with some kind of access from the garage to the house above? [ / ] For us it would be important to get rid of the steep driveway and also to have parking spaces for two cars in front of the house.

I spoke of a terrain-following path, not stairs. As I sketched it, there is no steep driveway, and also a generous parking space in front of the garage. Of crucial importance for a relaxed dog is a fixed role in the pack that is not that of the leader. One can impossible assign a dominant position to the garage or the garage-house intermediate door without the house beneath suffering. You write that the children are eleven and thirteen. Then the older one no longer needs a child seat, and the younger one can independently fasten and unfasten himself with his child seat. So it is not a sweat-inducing matter for the parents, with which one could "argue" an entry and exit ceremony in the carport or garage. A kind greeting from me to your lovely wife: the garage passage door madness is curable.