Single-family house 150 sqm in Lower Saxony

Hello everyone,

after having been reading along in this forum for what feels like an eternity, I now have to "spill the beans" myself. Some time ago, we bought a plot of land in rural Lower Saxony right next to our current apartment and now want to slowly but surely start building our house.

I have filled out the questionnaire as far as possible. Regarding roof shape, number of floors, building envelope, etc., I only have information from an old preliminary building inquiry from the previous owner of the plot. However, a lot has changed since then (several houses with 2 full floors, etc.), so I can well imagine that 2 full floors are no problem.

I have attached the floor plans of the ground floor (EG) and upper floor (OG) as well as a corresponding section from Google Maps. The two floor plans are not oriented to the north; I have drawn the north arrow there. The Google Maps map is oriented to the north. The red frame roughly marks the plot. The small red box on the street shows the lowered curb, over which the driveway must be made. The larger red box is meant to roughly show the area in which the house including carport is to be placed. I hope this is all enough for now?

Development plan/restrictions
Plot size: 1978 sqm
Slope: no
Building envelope, building line and boundary: 6.0 and 19.0 m from the street-side plot boundary (still under clarification, a lot has changed here recently)
Number of floors: 1.5 or 2 (still under clarification, a lot has changed here recently)
Roof shape: gable roof

Requirements of the builders
Style, roof shape, building type: gable roof
Basement, floors: no basement, 1.5 or 2 floors
Number of people, age: 4 persons (33, 32, 5, 2)
Space requirements on ground floor, upper floor:
Ground floor: kitchen with dining area, living room "separable," office, guest bathroom with shower, utility room, small storage possibility
Upper floor: 2 children's rooms, bathroom, storage room, bedroom
Office: family use or home office?: home office
Overnight guests per year: negligible
Open or closed architecture: rather closed
Conservative or modern construction: a "middle ground"
Open kitchen, kitchen island: open kitchen with island, living room separable
Number of dining seats: permanently 6
Fireplace: no
Music/stereo wall: no
Balcony, roof terrace: no
Garage, carport: carport for one car and possibly a simple parking space in front of the house (cars are absolute utility items for us).
Utility garden, greenhouse: unclear
Other: The kitchen island is deliberately "only" 1 meter deep. That seems like a comfortable depth to us because then both of us can still reasonably reach the far end (neither of us is very tall (about 170 cm) and we tested by placing a 1-meter-wide wooden board on the current work surface). As a nice side effect, there is more space left for the dining table. Overall, however, we wanted to move the kitchen planning over to the other forum anyway.

House design
Who designed it: do-it-yourself with presumably the usual method (we looked at many floor plans from friends and prefabricated house providers)
What do you particularly like? Why? Actually, we are quite satisfied with the design. We like the sliding door in the dining area and the large window in the living room because of the direct connection between garden and interior. The sliding door between living room and dining room allows retreat to the living room when there is a visitor (it's not a big deal that one still has to walk through the dining area). The stairs should be separated from the living area but not in the immediate dirty zone. The children's rooms are sufficiently large and have windows facing south into the garden.
What do you not like? Why? We are still tinkering with the exterior appearance and window positions. These are especially far from finished upstairs. For the stairs, I took a floor plan from a stair builder that fit (concrete stairs); I hope this is realistic in measurements "in real life" too?
Personal price limit for the house, including equipment: 300k, the average square meter costs from the bank guy match pretty well with the costs of several friends who are also currently building (rural Lower Saxony, about 1650 - 1850 €/sqm)
Preferred heating technology: heat pump with horizontal ground collectors

If you have to do without, which details/extensions
-can you do without: hmm, honestly, not really anything
-cannot do without: office, sliding door, kitchen island

Why did the design turn out as it is now?
We looked at many floor plans from friends and prefabricated house providers. Changing the plans mostly didn't help, so we finally spent nights drawing ourselves (which is fun anyway).
What makes it particularly good or bad in your eyes?
We managed to fit our entire room program within our approximate limit of 150 sqm. When we mentally go through our normal daily routine, the floor plan works quite well and all rooms are, I think, sufficiently large.

What is the most important/fundamental question about the floor plan summarized in 130 characters?
Since we are still satisfied after repeatedly "putting it away and looking at it again," the question arises whether we have overlooked something fundamental. Does anything stand out that is simply not going to work? Something we would regret for the next 30 years? And a bit more specifically: Is the kitchen with the dining area possibly too tight or too narrow?

I am looking forward to hopefully plenty of criticism.

Many thanks in advance!

Quickly, I don't get the kitchen. Only the peninsula is marked now. No tall cabinets, no row on the wall behind the island. How is that supposed to be enough? The passage with 1.5x is not enough to place a secondary row behind the peninsula

Oh, I maybe should have written that more explicitly in the original post: We don’t know exactly how the kitchen should look yet (so whether a regular kitchen unit along the wall behind the cooking island, or with tall cabinets, or whatever). The only thing that is practically set is the cooking island. That’s why we have already drawn it in. I’ll quickly update the post.

A House of Tightness:
- Staircase too narrow (2m shell dimension becomes a ladder)
- Kitchen too tight - only 1m between the kitchen island and the wall unit - too little for real freedom
- Dining area too cramped - you can’t get into the "living" room (by the way, I think that’s a very nice name) without falling over the chairs or squeezing past them.
- Distance between sofa and TV too narrow - okay, that’s debatable - the standard is around 4m. 3.78m in small houses is acceptable.
- Washbasin in the guest WC too tight - practically unreachable
- Space in front of the wardrobe too narrow - opening the wardrobe door to 80cm and choosing clothes without falling backward onto the bed is virtually impossible. Doing all that maybe even with two people is a lifelong sentence.
- Stair exit upstairs very narrow - at 1.18m just below the minimum limit - still manageable - but not pleasant.

Is it not possible to edit posts anymore or am I just missing the button?

A house of tightness:
- Staircase too narrow (2m raw dimension becomes a chicken ladder)
- Kitchen too narrow - only 1m left between the kitchen island and the wall unit - too little for true freedom
- Dining area too narrow - you can't get into the "living" room (by the way, I think that's a very nice name) without risking falling over the chairs or squeezing past.
- Distance between sofa and TV too narrow - okay, that's debatable - the standard is around 4m. 3.78m in small houses is acceptable.
- Sink in the guest WC too narrow - practically unreachable
- Space in front of the wardrobe too narrow - opening the wardrobe door at 80cm and choosing clothes without falling backwards onto the bed is almost impossible. Doing this possibly with two people would be a lifelong punishment.
- Staircase exit upstairs very tight - at 1.18m just below the minimum limit - still manageable - but not pleasant.

- We almost feared that 2 meters width for the staircase would be too little (but as is well known, hope dies last).
- Distance between kitchen unit and island: I had read everywhere about 120 cm and especially with the reasoning that you can then open drawers opposite each other at the same time. If I push the island a bit further into the room I get 1.10 meters. I'll try to replicate that later in our kitchen.
- Oops, that was not intended, hopefully the living room fits better with the kitchen. At least the living room is actually more of a cuddle and lounging room. Here too I oriented myself to the dimensions commonly found. 120cm from the table to the island and 130cm from the table to the living room sliding door. Is that really so tight?
- Just measured: we currently have 3.80 meters. That is enough for us.
- The shower in the guest WC is planned to be level with a simple curtain, which would mostly be open anyway. Then you can also easily reach the sink.
- In the bedroom, I could turn the bed and place it against the other wall, then there would be much more space in front of the wardrobe. Or push the bed further to the wall without the wardrobe (I would then have to lie there, my wife would get the wider passage. Currently, I have 40cm between the bed and the wall, which is enough for me ).
- Okay, the staircase again, I see, that needs to be tackled again.

Overall, it seems to be more a lack of house length than house width. Am I right in seeing this?

Thanks a lot in advance!

we have 1.06m between the kitchen island and the kitchen cabinets and find that very spacious, it has never been too tight for us, I didn’t want it any wider.

Best regards
Sabine