Ideas for single-family house design with basement

Then the kitchen is still too narrow and the bedroom remains a walk-through room :-( .

Then you just make the kitchen wider - the wall hasn't been built yet - and the living room shifts about 1.5 meters deeper (could shift).

...upstairs, as a builder, you can also move rooms around in terms of area. One option would be to put the children's bathroom where the utility room is now, the children’s bathroom becomes the dressing room and the entrance to the master bedroom, and the dressing room becomes the bathroom. The utility room can also be placed behind the bathroom or the dressing room... you have to shuffle the rooms around—either it fits or it doesn't. But a builder should/can also do this in the architect’s floor plan: pencil in your ideas and then discuss them with the architect. Just make sure that wastewater pipes are not routed through the middle of living spaces. If it can't be avoided: nowadays there is insulation material that dampens wastewater noise to a minimum. Besides, you hardly hear a washing machine running. Only during the spin cycle! I have one myself.

When I read some of the comments on Grün, I cringe! They advocate what they learned 30 years ago. Even in my old terraced house from 1978, which had the wastewater pipe from the upstairs toilet running through the kitchen, I hardly heard anything.

And you're currently making the mistake of already picturing your kitchen. Many stylish kitchens work that you wouldn't have imagined beforehand exactly as they are.

And yes: sometimes you simply can't combine the simplest wishes functionally because the plot doesn't allow it. Then you should take out your must-have list, see what's ranked 1-3, and eliminate number 4. After you’ve lived there for a year, you won’t remember the wishes from then/today if the house functions well. And no: an architect who receives a few thousand euros for their idea won’t just change a wall in your design for free.

Cheers, Yvonne

Yes, the thing with the sewage pipes and "noise" .. I always have to smile about that too. During the renovation of the apartment building I live in, due to the relatively free design of all the apartments, a toilet drain pipe ended up in the corner of my bedroom. It is so well insulated that when standing next to it and knowing someone is flushing upstairs, you hear nothing.

I also always find the arguments "not so far from the entrance with the groceries" strange ... well, depending on the household size, I do the shopping 1 to 3 times a week, but I use the kitchen 7 days a week. So the kitchen should always better fit the conditions of the 7 days. Panama17 has already decided this for himself .. kitchen facing the terrace.

, is the architect now working on the points from your initial post?

- we have already drawn an alternative version, I can gladly post it shortly. What do you mean by the architect? We plan to agree on all service phases with him, so he will keep working on our design until we are satisfied, right?

I am also currently considering whether we can fit the utility room on the ground floor. I would like that too, then you wouldn’t have to carry the dirty stuff from outside and after sports upstairs first, it has a shorter way to dry outside and during the day you can conveniently transfer the laundry from the ground floor, start it again, etc.

- I completely agree with you regarding shopping and the entrance. So far we live in a multi-family house, where I still have the path from front door – hallway – apartment door and then through the hallway to the kitchen.
That’s why a direct access from the garage to the house is not important to me. I won’t be driving into the garage anyway, too many spiders nest there .
Hopefully we will make the appointment with the architect next week. We will still use this weekend to discuss and draw.

A different question – if the garage has a height of 1.90m and the upper floor is 2.35m high, then I can’t fit a strip of windows in the 45cm difference to have a window on the side in the kitchen, right?

In any case, it’s fun to discuss the designs here with you and I really appreciate your help!

No, and it also doesn’t make any sense, because the garage will not only be 190 cm high; at least a roof will be added. And I wouldn’t plan a garage with a clear height of only 190 cm.

And what is the height of 235 cm supposed to be? That is at most the interior height; a story height including ceiling is higher. And do you really want only 235 cm room height?

- True, the heights don't match. The clear room height will definitely be higher, but it's not stated anywhere. It should be around 2.60m.

- oh, I don't want an alternative design from them at all.

So, here are our drawn alternatives. The bay window on the upper floor would of course be removed, as well as the balcony.

Why do you always put the sleeping area between the dressing room and the bathroom? That is just contradictory. If one sleeps longer, the other always has to go through the sleeping area?

With 30 sqm, the kitchen will be huge. And huge kitchens are not always easy to plan ergonomically. You end up with a lot of relatively useless spaces.

In upstairs variation 2, child 1 only gets sun in the evening in summer and child 2 doesn’t get any sun in the afternoon.

Overall, I don’t see these as improvements.

What, for example, speaks against the basic upstairs layout in my plan?