Floor plan self-designed - Realized single-family house

Hello, I have been reading along in this forum for a long time and it is always interesting. I thought now that I might post our planning here. We started planning at the end of 2018 and began construction in 03/2019 and moved in in 12/2019.

We planned the floor plans, dimensions, materials, etc. all by ourselves and then found a retired architect who made the construction drawings and structural analysis for us and submitted the building application. He also handled the approvals and insurance.

Since we live in a heritage conservation area with classical architecture, we wanted to incorporate this into our house and I read up a lot. I know nothing is perfect and it is a sum of compromises (size, budget, historicism). We wanted about 120sqm of living space, did not want to exceed a certain budget and wanted to select and plan all trades ourselves (really saves a lot of money!). I am basically zero skilled in crafts, yet we did or tackled a lot ourselves (preparatory work for electrician, applied window facade stucco ourselves, ceiling stucco, wooden baseboards, cladding the carport, assembling the garden house, distributing 55 tons of soil, planting, manually drilling garden well, etc.). Okay, father-in-law helped a lot because he is skilled with crafts.

We wanted to have as much symmetry as possible and had a Georgian house as a rough model in mind. Sash windows and front door in wood from the local carpenter, facade stucco, 2.75m ceilings on the ground floor, beaver tail roof tiles.
The staircase was a small challenge because the hallway is in the middle and the whole house is limited by the dimensions we (arbitrarily) specified for a straight staircase. But the stair builder still managed it with many tricks (a bit steeper and with a stronger step or something like that).

Since I talked a lot with energy consultants and wanted a reasonable price-performance/usefulness ratio, we had the following thoughts:
* Energy standard just enough (saves construction costs)
* therefore intentionally only double glazed windows
* gas condensing boiler with underfloor heating and gas fireplace
* solar thermal for hot water (I would have preferred to do without because a price driver and in summer you don’t need 270l of hot water and in winter the sun usually is not enough despite south side)
* no electric window openers (but laid empty conduits)
* 36.5cm aerated concrete exterior walls and 17.5/11.5cm limestone interior walls
* inside everything with cement plaster in Q3 (so relatively smooth)
* sanitary and heating company installed everything. Toilets, sinks, fittings but all procured by ourselves (all Villeroy & Boch and GROHE and mostly via eBay)
* floor tiles and parquet also procured by ourselves and then laid

The total costs excluding land were 297,000 € in the end including connections and outdoor facilities, garden greenery (partly 500 € per tree), double carport, 12sqm garden house, 150sqm paving work, 24sqm travertine terrace, insurance, surveying, 55t topsoil (we filled up about 20-30cm), kitchen and electrical appliances, electric garden gate and masonry gate pillars (incl. historically correct pillar caps) etc. pp

680sqm plot
122sqm living space
* 29sqm living room
* 11.5sqm kitchen
* 7.5sqm utility room (laundry hangs from ceiling with Foxydry)
* approx. 9.5sqm hallway downstairs
* 11.5sqm children’s room
* 9sqm guest room/library/study
* approx. 9.3sqm bathroom with shower, freestanding bathtub, toilet, bidet, vanity
* approx. 20sqm bedroom with walk-in dressing room/wardrobe
* attic is currently a cold room, but could still be developed.

The space is sufficient, here and there 0.5-1m is missing but the extra space would only come at significantly higher building costs.

What do you think of the floor plan or do you have questions?

I have attached a few pictures so you get a rough idea.

Here are more drawings of the house.

I don't like it from the outside. It doesn't matter, the inside is what counts. Very individual. The living area would be too dark for me. I love the view outside. But the fireplace is a dream. A bit of a fixer upper. Does it work or is it more decoration?

The fireplace has 7 kW and is fully functional. We were also considering the brightness, but the room is normally bright (very pleasant in summer with full sun). Ideally, I would have liked floor-to-ceiling and 2.25 m high windows everywhere on the ground floor, similar to the terrace door. But since everything should be symmetrical or the same, and two floor-to-ceiling windows were not possible in the kitchen (because of the wall with the countertop), they became "normal windows".

Congratulations! I like it extraordinarily :)

Hello, I have been reading along in this forum for a long time and it is always interesting. I thought I might now post our planning here. We started planning at the end of 2018 and began construction in 03/2019 and moved in in 12/2019.

I am glad that you, as a former reader, have taken the step into visibility - especially with a house of which you have probably long since read that it is not mainstream here in terms of taste (and modesty).