Preliminary planning for renovation and extension

Hello everyone,

we have bought a small settlement house from the 1930s, which we now want to renovate and extend with an annex. We now have a first status of the preliminary planning:

The existing house (yellow) should largely be preserved in its original state and energetically renovated. On the ground floor, a non-load-bearing wall is to be moved and a load-bearing one removed (UZ addition). The upper floor is currently one large room; here two rooms are to be created. The rooms in the existing building will serve as children's, guest, and study rooms – and a small guest bathroom is to be added. The staircase is to be rebuilt as a closed staircase in the same place (built-in cupboards/wardrobe under the stairs).

The annex is to house the living area, kitchen, and utility/housekeeping room on the ground floor. Upstairs, bathroom and bedroom.

Template:
Development plan/restrictions
Plot size ~ 650 m²
No slope
Number of floors: existing building one full floor, roof without knee wall
Roof type: gable roof / flat roof with one full floor

Client requirements
Style, roof type, building type: modern, gable roof
Basement, floors: no basement (groundwater at 1.0 m)
Number of people, age (2 adults, 2 children)
Space requirements on ground floor, upper floor (large living room, small retreat for reading, resting..)
Office: family use
Open kitchen
Number of dining places: 8
Fireplace
Garage is present

House design
(What is disliked) Where we are somewhat undecided?
The window areas on the north side look a bit wild.
The corridors are very large at almost 18 m².
The corridor on the upper floor is probably quite dark?
Are the children's rooms perhaps too small? (despite an area of ~ 18 m²)
Is the kitchen too small? (storage space)
The fireplace would be nicer in the middle of the living room, but then there is a problem with the chimney.
The bathroom windows are 2.8 m high and face north; might it not get properly warm in the bathroom.
The ground floor living room windows and entrance door are 2.10 m high (rough opening), oriented to the existing building – perhaps too low?

Preferred heating technology: air-water heat pump/ground-source heat pump/controlled residential ventilation with heat recovery

If you had to do without, on which details/extensions
-you could do without:
possibly everything a bit smaller (if necessary),
-you could not do without:
A basement would be nice but is financially not feasible.
A dormer instead of skylights in the bathroom would also be nice, but it is not clear whether the authorities will approve this.

Criticism and comments are welcome; perhaps a few things have not been considered or prove impractical.

Maybe the layout can be made more pleasant by shifting walls a bit?

Best regards

Hello Lumpi, how old are the children? I assume that the OG rooms are supposed to be occupied by them???

I found the legend... if you zoom to 150%, quite a few things get lost ;)

Yes, firstly: I always find it very exciting what you can make out of a small settlement house. I also like your idea of playing with different facades. Is the old house supposed to be clad with wood and the new one with plaster? I also think the approaches are great – surely an architect was at work?

However, I don’t see the bathroom where it is. I started to see the tub in the knee wall under one meter. You won’t be happy with that. Then the toilet below the 2-meter limit: that is also borderline. Large bathroom (in terms of area) with little use because the slope gets in the way and a separate toilet that is very small... :( ... not really optimal for 4 people. Alternative thought: use the super-mini knee wall for a built-in wardrobe, meaning arrange the walk-in closet in this (NE) area by building wardrobes into the slope up to 1.80/2.00 meters height (which will then naturally be deeper towards the bottom at the back, so that there is storage space for boxes and seasonal items). Make the bedroom narrower so that the entire east part of the house is used for bedroom and dressing. Use the remaining space for children’s and parents’ bathroom (shower and bathtub). Or take the “old” dressing room with the given enlargement as the main bathroom. A separate toilet could be planned above the guest WC. And now with my version the pipes would be located in the south. However, up to that thought I haven’t really looked at the ground floor yet... From the first looks, I also wouldn’t place the living room as a passage room here, but rather the kitchen :) I would also include the small extension in the kitchen, a nice cooking island as a room divider, and then dining and living area to the back. The fireplace could then be in the middle.

- Apart from my idea, some door swings are not correct and need to be reconsidered.
- The slopes really take up a lot of space, so I would shift the children’s rooms downstairs from the age of about 6 years.

Regards Yvonne

Hello Yvonne,

and thank you very much in advance for your thoughts.
I will work my way from top to bottom:

The children are still very small, kindergarten age and even younger.
Exactly, the old house is to receive a wood-clad thermal insulation facade, the new building will be plastered white. Only the smaller southern part is also to get a wood cladding as a contrast.

You are absolutely right about the bathtub, initially there was a wide dormer on the first sketch on paper, but that will probably be a problem with the permit. The consequences of the missing dormer were then not further considered. Your idea sounds good, but I cannot imagine how to implement that without the bathroom being a walk-through room, maybe you could make a small sketch for me here?

The problem then, as you already said, is that the water supply and disposal is distributed throughout the whole house. My wife definitely wants the small annex to be a kind of small bright library with a large reading chair, that is very important to her and I wouldn’t know where else to arrange that if the kitchen goes there.
Besides that, I find the idea of moving the kitchen forward good; we would have to see if that is possible. The technical aspect also played a role, that the bathrooms, kitchen and utility room are located next to each other all at once.

Which fittings do you mean? A few are indeed quite tight and the one down in the northwest room is reversed.

Best regards

It's me again, this time a bit frustrated. I didn't manage it. Unfortunately, the 2-meter lines dictate the passage from old to new. So there is no adequate space left for the bathroom. By the way, the now planned children's rooms are roughly 7 and 9 sqm. I think that's not enough. I also only just saw that the bathtub doesn't even fit under the slope in terms of height. Was there even an architect involved? Are all heights fully utilized or are there possibilities to design the new building differently? The knee wall wouldn't make you happy.

Above, in front of the parental area, there is a quiet corner for reading. The children's room only has space for one; two little mice can share it until one moves downstairs :)