Our floor plan design for an affordable house

…the kitchen photo.. I just want to remind you of the kitchen photo ;)

Hello, oh God, it has actually already been half a year since we moved in. I wanted to take and show pictures much earlier, but as it always is... other things had priority. For example, in winter we had to tear out all the windowsills again because we had forgotten the moisture barrier behind them.
But now at least a few impressions from our furnished and inhabited little house. There are still some cluttered corners, but they will probably stick around a bit longer - maybe never disappear. But we really feel comfortable.

How did you manage with your budget?

You can see in some places that it was built with cost-awareness. It is not meant negatively. It often allows more room for individuality.
Just the shower curtain alone. The color and it tempts me to feel the texture. It doesn’t seem like a plastic piece.

Congratulations! You have created something great for yourselves!

How did you manage with your budget?

You can see in places that some price-conscious choices were made. That’s not meant negatively. It often leaves more room for individuality.
Just the shower curtain alone. The color, and it tempts me to feel the texture. It doesn’t come across as a plastic piece.

Overall, we were at about €224,000 when moving in (without pile foundation and kitchen, including the floor slab and exterior shading). The budget was €230,000, so it really worked out very well. I have to say: that is really only for the house without additional costs like development, surveying, and exterior landscaping. But that’s how I had also indicated it when creating the thread. For additional costs, pile foundation, and kitchen, another €100,000 will be added on top. And what’s left now will be invested in the surroundings.
We didn’t have the budget to move into a house on a perfectly laid-out lot with a blooming garden after all ;). Garden landscaping will come little by little; we recently commissioned the entrance canopy + platform, the terrace will be done this year by ourselves, and the driveway’s paving also only later in the year. But paving is incredibly expensive, that definitely won’t happen. We want to inquire about a water-bound path surface and see where that leads us.

The shower curtain is nice, isn’t it? :) It’s made of linen with a waterproof undercurtain and was quite expensive for a shower curtain after all. But still cheaper than a glass wall.

Although I have to admit that since moving in six months ago, only ONCE my sister and her husband used the downstairs shower on New Year’s Eve. Otherwise, it has been completely unused by us so far. Where I then do recall words saying that a second shower is often not necessary... maybe it will come yet when the kids hit puberty.

Overall, we are satisfied with the floor plan. A few small things do stand out in everyday life which are not perfect or were initially estimated differently:

[*]My sewing and home office space is upstairs in the dressing room, separated from the bedroom by a sliding door. The sliding door just doesn’t absorb any sound at all. So sewing while my boyfriend is trying to sleep is almost impossible. Also, in the home office, I am always super far away from everything, and when the delivery person comes, I really have to rush through the WHOLE house to open the gate. I’m already thinking about eventually moving my desk and sewing table to the gallery. There is space there.
[*]We still find the stairs in the living room great for almost all situations. Only, if everyone upstairs wants to go to the bathroom simultaneously, the route to the lower bathroom is further than it would be if the stairs were by the front door and thus usually right in front of the guest bathroom. Generally, I don’t like walking barefoot in the sometimes somewhat sandy entrance area to the guest bathroom in the morning. But the bathroom right next to the living room/kitchen is also not that great. I don’t even know how you could or should have optimized that. Once we have our entrance platform, hopefully, the hallway won’t be quite so sandy anymore.
[*]When the kids are home in the afternoon and hanging out or playing on the couch, it is sometimes difficult for my boyfriend to concentrate while working at his desk in the home office. We could still put up a wall and door between the living and working areas. But then we wouldn’t be able to hang our hammock anymore ;). And with hammock vs. quiet for working, the hammock will probably win ;).

Well, in the end, you always have to make some compromises, you have to set priorities for your own wishes and can’t fulfill them all. The more people come together, the more so. But basically, we feel very comfortable, there isn’t a major blunder where we would have wanted to do something completely different in hindsight.

Why not swap the sewing room with the office?
(However, I no longer remember what the current floor plan was. ;))