Maybe at this point a few thoughts on the topic of house ideas, floor plans, and building partners. In the thread by , things are heating up again and an architect is being recommended. At some point, the question will certainly come up here again as to why we have so far mostly gone with prefabricated house builders or standard house models. Many factors play a role in this, the most important certainly being that originally we didn’t want to build at all but buy something, and my personal distrust toward architects as a profession. The — perhaps somewhat naive — assumption that a pre-designed house is cheaper surely also plays a role.
Building a pre-designed house is of course much closer to buying an existing property than planning freely. Instead of thinking about where you want the stairs and where a window has to be, you flip through the catalog and choose a floor plan. I honestly don’t believe our needs are so special that they couldn’t be satisfied by a standard house model. When I wrote in the last post that we would build various floor plans, I think that should be understood more as we would buy a house with the floor plan and be happy with it. A house designed by an architect always seemed exclusive to me, for people who either really build exclusively or consider themselves so special that they think the architect has to add a little corner somewhere to be exclusive (see also willful indentations and edges in car sheet metal). Actually, we just want to build a completely normal house on a rectangular, almost flat plot, like thousands of others do every year. Somehow it doesn’t seem obvious to also pay an expensive architect to draw a floor plan that you can find one way or another in 15 catalogs. (At that time, I didn’t yet know that you can also leave a lot of money to the architect even with a prefabricated house ;) ).
That doesn’t help that my impression of architects has so far been rather negative. Honestly, who comes up with the idea to plan an elevator that you can only reach by stairs? Who comes up with planning floor-to-ceiling windows, 2 meters wide, where you can only open a tiny loophole, by the way in a building without air conditioning? I think you understand what I mean: architects are the people who either design outrageously expensive villas, make football stadiums look like bird nests (totally innovative...) or produce huge rubbish that any normal person could plan better. And all the while, greedily holding out their hand. Not exactly the starting point at which you would go to an architect when you want to build.
A bit has crystallized in the last few weeks that all of this is not quite that simple after all. Moving the front door from the north side to the east side at the prefabricated house builder is almost equivalent to rotating the house 90 degrees. Apparently, all people seem to live south of the street... or it seems not to matter. Prefabricated houses apparently are usually not handed over finished but without floors and without painting. If you have vinyl flooring included in the offer, you get click vinyl for 140€/sqm (hopefully gold-plated on the underside) with a thick cork layer laid on top of the expensive low-temperature underfloor heating. Prefabricated houses are quick to assemble but it takes months on the waiting list before a truck arrives. And all the work that still has to be done on site, although it obviously should be included with a house...
In short, everything is very confusing right now and decisions are difficult. Maybe the local general contractor is actually a good entry point into the topic of individual planning. Since it has mostly been about making a rough cost estimate so far, not much of the designs are particularly individual yet, but if you don’t want to estimate costs in the (built-up) vacuum, at least a rough draft is needed. Certainly a few appointments to refine it will be necessary before you can submit an application. The advantage would, of course, be that in the end you don’t pay for deviations from a standard design but for the design itself. And the structural engineer would have the advantage of not being affected by my (pre)judgments about architects. Let’s see what comes out of the estimate, but definitely 15 model houses do not have to be co-financed.
(I hope I’m not confusing anyone too much now. But I think sometimes it doesn’t hurt to put your thoughts into words and some might even find it interesting)