Floor plan with setback - yes or no?!

If one were to finally build from bottom to top, the budget would be used up before the ground floor ceiling. Feels like...

If you were to build from the bottom up in the end, the budget would be used up before the ground floor ceiling. Feels like that...

....not uncommon in some countries...

In some countries, you build the shell + roof and continue construction on your own for 20 years

We haven't dealt with the topic of financing yet, as we are still stuck on the basic idea of our house.

Financing would be the first step. So not the financing itself, but a bank meeting where it becomes clear what kind of house you can afford. Where do the 350,000 come from? Is that just pulled out of thin air? The plot already exists. Let's take the 350,000 (with a lot of own funds), then subtract 30,000 for ancillary construction costs, leaving 320,000. At 2,000€/sqm you can build 150sqm... let's just keep 20,000 back for kitchen and so on. Even if own funds are flowing... let's just take the figure. Or if you like 160sqm... garage and garden materials also cost.

Basement, floors Basement, 2 full floors, attic

Ground floor + upper floor approx. 200 sqm + attic sqm not yet finally decided

That explains a house with ground floor and attic, whether one or two floors. No basement, no elaborate garage situation, no balconies, no finished attic.

Now distribute your room program over 160sqm. This won’t be created by sketching but by listing what is needed WZ: 20sqm Living kitchen: 25sqm 3 kids’ rooms: 45sqm etc.

Only this way will it work. You don’t need to submit anything else. Maybe factor in the attic, but with a question mark whether it will be built.

Just a side guess, without looking at the budget issues:

- obviously the bedroom is too small - that’s why I asked you for tips on how to solve it.

You can’t simply make the room bigger without the upper floor “growing” as well.

- There is supposed to be a bathroom on the ground floor because this will be our "only" bathroom in old age, if the 1st floor and attic are occupied by someone else. - There is one bathroom on each floor - so "only" 3 in total

You can’t see it like that. If you basically plan a house to later separate into two residential units and the ground floor unit remains for old age and then has about 80sqm, then you should plan a guest WC with regard to separation, which leaves enough room for old age. An additional guest WC would then be silly in terms of use and in relation to the apartment size.

Your step back (by the way, I know other similar U-shaped layouts) is your smallest problem.

We had to submit a provisional house plan to our municipality (Salzburg Land/Austria) on relatively short notice for certain reasons.

Can this be explained in a way that even a Prussian could understand?

It’s pointless to have such a spacious house with all kinds of frills (balconies, garages, basement, a dozen bathrooms, etc.)

It seems to me that the building mass turned out highly concentrated and multifaceted, similar to model railway houses where some details are exaggerated in scale or look slightly overloaded in variety and density.

And I share the concerns that the restlessness (the floor plans don’t seem to belong to the same house and such) will indeed require some financial investment that will not be apparent in the living quality afterwards.

The design strikes me as if it were based on three-hundred-year-old "grown" buildings from (also Swiss) alpine regions. To put it a little harshly: almost like how the average ugly German tourist imagines the native would live. It’s basically only missing that a wolpertinger would come out of the cuckoo clock.

That won’t work like that.
You have a finished draft, that’s more like the basic idea. Right now is the latest time to deal with the budget.
You can’t just play “wish for this” and build a draft on that, realize it costs 600k instead of 350, and then say you’ll start cutting. You can’t just cut or make something smaller on a floor plan. Then the rest won’t work anymore.
Not many will put a lot of brainpower into a plan that has no chance of being realized here.

So try this:

Total budget

- Equipment, furniture, moving, etc.
- Outdoor facilities, garage, etc.
- Additional construction costs, architect, extra costs earthworks slope, etc.
- Purchase incidental costs, etc.
- @all please add what I forgot

= Budget for the house

Now I don’t know the construction prices in the Salzburg region. In the forum, 2,000€/sqm is often assumed for good standard.
I can’t really assess what a lot of self-performance means but you also need material and tend to overestimate DIY work.

So subtract 50-100k EUR for the basement from the house budget.
Then divide what’s left by, say, 1,800€/sqm.

Then you have a rough size of how big your house can be. Depending on what is included in the budget indication, it will be rather 130-140sqm without an additional attic than 200sqm + attic.

No offense meant, but you’re getting lost in a plan that will never be realized and even worse would be trying to shrink it to fit your budget later.

Edit: equipment of course also includes things like kitchen, lights, etc.

Hello face26!

First of all, many thanks for your honest but still constructive feedback and especially for the fact that it was not accompanied by this “condescending tone.”

I know it looks different but basically this draft was really a quick-and-dirty thing and has nothing near to do with a finished draft. We only needed this plan as “leverage” in connection with our (now already completed) land purchase.

Our budget is probably really set a bit too low and I could write a lot on this topic now but had I known that everyone would immediately jump on the cost issue here first, regardless of what our actual concern is, I would have honestly indicated that differently in the questionnaire.

Regardless – many thanks for your listing and explanation – we can definitely take something from that.

I just want to briefly say that things like self-performance, moving, furniture are very individual things for me. For example, we have many skilled professionals in the immediate family, and my husband and his family are very handy, and my family has some “connections” to the construction industry. I don’t want to dwell on that but think it can make a big difference overall.

Regarding the move: our new house will be built directly in front of the house where we currently live.

For the house furnishings, we currently only want to have the kitchen and at least one bathroom “nice and done” at first. The other bathrooms can be finished at a later date and our current furnishings will move to the new house with us.
I also want to briefly mention that we will not move into this house fixed and finished within one year. We expect it to be ready to move into in at least 2 years. Outdoor facilities etc. are things that will have to wait even longer. In our latitudes it is completely normal for a house to take years to be built.

Finally, I can add on this topic that we do have financial leeway and nobody needs to worry. But of course I admit that this is because of my “naive” 350,000 figure.