Single-family house, 1.5 stories, 155 sqm

.How can anyone get so worked up over a heartfelt wish?

Thank you for this remark. If it comes across that way, I apologize. Often, there is more behind the expressed desire for a concrete solution. My assumption is that people do not wish for a specific type of door, but for something they associate with it. That might be the largest possible opening, a specific tactile feeling, a good memory - whatever. By weighing alternatives against other aspects, one can gain the confidence that the wish is viable or not. Often, as a builder, one stands like a deer in the headlights and misses the solution that actually corresponds to the real need. If that solution here is the lift-and-slide door, then that is good, and later one does not think, “Oh, I wish I had known about that earlier.”

Well, I have one more:

What an effort to deliver such a great design for someone. This house is livable and very coherent in itself.

Oh, lift-and-slide doors are simply effective as an architectural element that was charged with symbolic power as a wealthy accessory two generations ago, and a generation ago the motor-operated sectional garage door was added. Today, both are seen as symbols of house price equivalence, just as the clientele fooled by mock-villas also feel loved by their general contractors in proportion to the dose of floor-to-ceiling windows. As a confessed blue type ("engineer with ascendant merchant") I can only yawn wearily at that. As an aluminum window manufacturer, I had Porsche-driving customers, for whom lift-and-slide doors were almost considered a poor man’s building element. From a balcony or terrace exit, I primarily expect good one-handed operability and a comfortable passage width. With a tray going through there, I appreciate a flat threshold (which, however, seems dispensable to me in the shower). And when you can look up the skirts of desks from the street, I smile thinking that in the time before private television, people joked that news anchors might be wearing shorts with their jackets. The more you go along with fashion, the more often you have to change it (or you simply aren’t consistently “up to date”). A house should be “timeless” enough not to have to lower its price for fashion reasons at resale in ten or fifteen years. And above all, it should be a home, nest, or even a tangible family member to its inhabitants.

Oh, lift-and-slide doors are simply effective today as an architectural element that was charged two generations ago with symbolic meaning as a wealthy accessory,

these doors allow for a larger opening. That is an added value. They have the disadvantage of requiring a bit more effort in handling. That is a drawback. In my personal consideration, I immediately choose the larger opening.
In the previous townhouse, built in 2000/01, we had a hinged door to the terrace. I would have preferred a lift-and-slide door every one of the 18 summers we lived there. Back then, we made the mistake of cutting costs in the wrong place and should have chosen not to realize something else for the same purchase price. The developer’s options list, who developed the area, was finally long. We still liked living there, but for the current building in 2018/19, we had learned from that.

We still liked living there, but for the current building 2018/19 we had learned from it.

... and actually chose folding doors that open wide, instead of lift-and-slide doors that stand in the way at half their width.

As the owner of a lift-and-slide door, I have to stick up for it. We still love it after 3 years and do not want to do without it. Our width is 3 m, leaving a passage of 1.30/1.40 m. Even an 11ant with a tray would get through there. But actually, we do not use it for daily access to the outside; usually, the hinged door, which is located a bit further away, is used. However, the fixed element of the lift-and-slide door (which is located at the dining area) is a great large window. And we often open the sliding element during the transitional period when you don’t want to sit outside yet. You can then open it as wide as you want and as much as the weather allows. Hinged door elements would get in the way there.