Floor plan single-family house approx. 140 m² for discussion

My husband and I are both pollen allergy sufferers.

Well, then it's no wonder that you want to keep your distance from the garden.

Hello everyone,
I have to chime in briefly as the wife of the OP.
We have already had a wonderful dream kitchen planned, but have not yet received the plan because we still need to carefully choose all the appliances, fronts, etc. (and of course buy the kitchen). The kitchen planner can and wants to go through this with us only when the house plan is completely finished, which is why the draftsman cannot faithfully incorporate the kitchen plan.
This "U-shaped kitchen" already has the correct dimensions, no worries.

I don’t want a utility room or a pantry in the basement.
I cook every day and it would never occur to me to constantly dash down to the basement just for a pack of noodles. (Although it would be good training, but I’d rather do that in another way )
My husband and I are both pollen allergy sufferers, so unfortunately I cannot hang our laundry outside.
The laundry room must stay on the upper floor!

Thanks for your contributions, the focus is really on the ground floor at the moment, especially on the living room/office here.

Best regards, Katrin

Not so open to criticism after all? [emoji4]

Well, all good [emoji4]

Exactly because you want the pantry by the kitchen and the utility room on the upper floor, I have presented my suggestion to dispense with a floor that is actually not needed.
And if the balcony is desired like that, one could also consider enlarging the ground floor accordingly and opening the basement to the south so that the bedrooms can enjoy a south-facing terrace [emoji6]
You don’t always have to look for the "basement floor" in horizontal separation; you can also build it vertically.
Well then, also not desired, right?

I then see the only option to move the office to the basement. If it is going to be a heated basement, then there should be no problems regarding heating either.
Then the ground floor can relax accordingly, so that the living room can be where the office currently is. The fireplace can be turned 90 degrees and the dining table can spread out.
Then the effect of the fireplace also comes very close to the photo that was posted.

However, I don’t see how you can manage laundry for 4 people up there without enlarging the utility room, meaning a reduction of the other rooms.

By the way, with the idea of a vertical basement, you would have enough space on the sleeping floor for utility room, sauna and storage as well as hobby room if you include the garage, on the ground floor your generously sized open room, office as well as pantry and balcony...

Dear Katrin, it is exactly about avoiding unnecessary stair trips here

And I was already wondering what my better half is up to while us men take care of the gardening. Tz

I’m definitely curious now what the planner will say about the proposals or how they will be implemented this time. It will probably come down to painting the entire office on the ground floor or maybe just planning a small corner. The shower in the guest bathroom definitely has to go. I also told him that he doesn’t like the staircase as it is. And the utility room on the upper floor should be planned, if at all, in favor of a separate chamber for the laundry – he himself said that “this is not the problem on the upper floor.” It worked in the very first draft as well, and back then the box was quite a bit smaller in terms of floor space. The bedroom would be, for example, bigger than our current one, and that’s more than enough despite the considerable sloped ceiling.

Attached are the room heights.

I think redesigning the entrance area to make it more compact and to be able to omit the separate garage inner door is a good idea.

Essentially, I don’t find any tangible points of criticism, but I am very unhappy with the dining room furnishing in both variants, which each block the path of anyone moving between the living room and the cooking area. I don’t find the additional one and a half square meters needed for the staircase with a landing instead of a spiral staircase dramatic.

I believe I would rather try an independent alternative design here than try to improve the designs shown here. They are not really bad, but shifting the dining table a bit won't suddenly turn them into George Clooney.

*Update*

Yesterday, new sketches arrived based on our change requests – this only concerns the room layout; windows were not taken into account, for example.

I find the upper floor quite successful by now. The room layout seems sensible to me, the bathroom meets our expectations, and the utility room also fits well into the picture. We just need to get the fireplace out of the bedroom, otherwise, it restricts the width of the wardrobe.

The ground floor is also a real improvement in our eyes; now there is a bit more space possible. But since we can’t really make it work here – at least with the existing living room furniture – I have done some tinkering myself (GF 4 new):

Completely eliminating the office or the room, in our opinion, would be over the top; then the “L” would already be around 55 – 60 m². So the only option left is direct access via the living room, which is how I have sketched the room accordingly. Honestly, I don’t find the path too disadvantageous. I like having a computer nearby in the evening if I want to work a bit more. My wife is right next door, but there is still a certain spatial separation. 8–9 m² are more than enough to accommodate the existing office furniture.

We still need to look at a few models for the wood stove or figure out how best to lead the chimney upwards. We have only looked at a system model so far, which, for example, can be integrated as a small room divider of about 1.20 x 71 m (roughly sketched). Of course, this thing can also be rotated – I don’t necessarily need to look into the fire from the sofa (we don’t do that with our current tiled stove either).

Whether to keep the corner window depends on the furnishing. Behind the couch, a normal window could still be planned. With the dining table, we would also no longer be very restricted in terms of placement. We will discuss this again with the kitchen planner; perhaps a corner bench solution would be possible again now.

What do you think of this layout? What speaks against trimming the office this way (besides completely eliminating it)? Would you also change the staircase then? The kitchen entrance might possibly still be slightly shifted. The shower, as said, should be eliminated on the ground floor; I would rather reduce it by half a meter and add that to the hallway.

It would be helpful if the north arrow is always clearly shown on each floor plan, so you don’t have to keep flipping back. Hmm .. in EG4-new ... there you get a relatively narrow (280?) wide area for the dining table below the living area on the plan. I find it quite impractical for furnishing. Above all, a dining table will always somehow end up in front of the terrace access. OG .. where is the 2m line of the roof? I’m afraid the shower cannot be entered like this. Is the wardrobe in the master bedroom sufficient?