Planning/Floor plan single-family house (approx. 140 sqm, basement, ground floor, attic)

Hello everyone,

we (my wife 28, our son 9 months and I 32) bought a plot of land last fall and since then have been pondering and drawing, trying to figure out how we can plan and design our house.

The more you look, the more you see and the more indecisive you sometimes become.

In principle, we are satisfied with the layout and division so far, only the attic still gives us some trouble. We would also appreciate opinions from experienced home builders and homeowners on whether our ideas and the floor plans drawn on the plan are actually livable in practice.

Here are the basic data:

Development plan/restrictions
Plot size: 497 sqm (see also site plan)
Slope: no
Number of floors: 2
Roof type: everything allowed
Style: everything allowed except bungalow

Requirements of the builders
Style, roof type, building type => single-family house with bay window, gable roof, 25 – 28 degrees (relatively flat)
Basement, floors => basement, ground floor + attic (knee wall 1.80 – 2.00)
Number of persons, age => currently 3 (he 32, she 28, son 9 months); 2 children desired
Room requirements on ground floor, upper floor:
[I]GF => living, dining, kitchen, WC/shower, storage/pantry
Attic => 2 x children's rooms, bathroom, master bedroom with dressing room
Office => family use
Open or closed architecture => open in living/dining area
Conservative or modern construction => modern but cozy
Open kitchen, kitchen island => open, kitchen shape not yet fixed, depending on what fits best
Number of dining seats => at least 4 but 6 – 8 should fit
Fireplace => no
Music/stereo wall => no
Balcony, roof terrace => no
Garage, carport => double garage with direct access to the house
Utility garden, greenhouse => normal garden, nothing special planned
Other wishes/special features => we like the ½-turned staircase with landing, but it unfortunately needs quite a lot of space; we have a relatively large couch (3.50 m x 2.0 m; I have manually drawn it in on the ground floor plan because the couch drawn by the builder does not correspond to the proportions at all).

House design
Who designed the plan:
=> planner from a construction company according to our specifications (hand drawing)
What do you particularly like?
=> we actually like the ground floor in terms of layout and openness and brightness (maybe kitchen a bit too small; little workspace)
What do you not like?
=> attic! children's rooms somewhat too large, should be about 15 sqm each, master bedroom and dressing room too small; the layout of the bathroom is not really nice; due to the location of the stairs, a room layout in the attic is somehow not so easy.
Price estimate according to architect/planner: approx. 330,000 EUR (turnkey excluding flooring and painting)
Personal price limit for the house, including equipment: 350,000 EUR
Preferred heating technology: gas condensing boiler or air-to-water heat pump

If you had to give up, on which details/extensions
can you do without => actually nothing, there is nothing special included; maybe a different staircase design
cannot do without => direct access to the garage; open living/dining area
[/I]
Unfortunately, the builder did not provide measurements in the plans but only the sqm indications, but I hope you can imagine something from it.

Thanks already for your feedback.

Best regards
Schorsch

Hello Tobias,
if the floor plans were dimensioned and you had a few elevations and had drawn the house on the plot, that would be helpful. What is the orientation of the roof?
I have already noticed the following:

[*]The ground floor has a lot of circulation space
[*]Storage room is too narrow to place a shelf in it
[*]Wall stub in the living room brings no advantage
[*]What is the purpose of the bay window (except costs)?
[*]Bay window in the children's rooms is probably hardly usable. Not much light will come into the rooms through it either.
[*]Neither in your bedroom nor in the dressing room will you be able to place proper (60 cm) wardrobes. Certainly not with the corner window. Better leave out the wall to the dressing room.
[*]Furnishing in the bathroom is, to put it mildly, a disaster.

and one should also seriously reconsider the kitchen; as it is drawn, I would not want it that way it is also not a real kitchen island, it is more like an attachment that is hard to use and where the spectators get splattered with grease. Besides, how is the space behind the peninsula seats supposed to be used? Do you need 2 huge doors directly at the corner there?

Hello Tobias!

Why exactly is the staircase positioned the way it is?

Did the BU just copy your specifications or did they also contribute something themselves?

To me, the house doesn't fit the basic idea. You say that the children's rooms are too big, but that can only be changed by a completely different room layout. The dressing room is too small (why do you even need it if you can only access the wardrobes through the bedroom?), on the ground floor there is too much hallway in relation to the cloakroom area (hardly possible) and storage room (also hardly furnishable), but only a few sufficient spaces for furniture in the living areas. You urgently should also draw the rest of the furniture in realistic sizes!

Overall, it should be a very small (or at least narrow) house, so measurements are all the more important!

Short wall stub in the living room brings no advantage

Somewhere the interior sliding door has to go.

If a passage from the garage is desired, the kitchen and storage room should also be there, otherwise you don't really gain much advantage from it.
Have you ever considered swapping the kitchen and living room and also exchanging the guest toilet and storage room?

Yes, I really can't imagine the house on the property right now. I assume that the site plan is oriented to the north - right?

Otherwise, see jochen104