Single-family house 160m² - Second draft

Hello everyone!

I have already reached out to you regarding our floor plan.
Some good suggestions came from you which we have incorporated.
We enlarged the utility room and reduced the previously too large office accordingly. We also changed the staircase so that it is no longer fully in the dirt area.
Additionally, we moved the children's room door on the upper floor far enough away from the stairs due to the risk of falling.
Now about the floor plan:
On the floor plan, north is at the bottom.
The large terrace door is on the south side in the kitchen. A small door is still in the living room on the west side. We are also considering adding a small door in the office.
All windows in the children's rooms are floor-to-ceiling to let in plenty of light.

The door to the garage is still our biggest problem. We would love to be able to enter the house from the garage with dry feet, but unfortunately that would cost us a lot of space.
Making the entrance on the east side does not seem practical because we would otherwise have to relocate the staircase and then change the upper floor.
Here, experiences from homeowners would be helpful to know if such a passage to the garage is really that practical and if you would give up so much storage space in the utility room for it.

If I forgot anything, please just ask.

Thank you for your feedback!

Regarding the ground floor: I don't like the solution with the wardrobe. Neither the access to the guest WC nor to the office is very nice. I wouldn't want to go to the toilet through our wardrobe because my kids don't like tidying up, there's always something in the way,... On the upper floor, I find the bathroom huge, and it would be a pity in my opinion to have only a small shower for that,... The bathroom offers more possibilities. Your bedroom is also very large, especially since you also have a walk-in closet. What are you going to do with all that space? Maybe redesign upstairs and build a utility room upstairs for laundry and such.

Lots of space on the upper floor but not used well. This can also be done with less space/cheaper. The bathroom and bedroom are much too large for what is eventually inside. Unfortunately, the ground floor does not convince me either. Entrance very narrow, wardrobe far away - dirt throughout the entire hallway.

Hello! Thank you for the answers. The bathroom is only a placeholder so far; there will be a large open shower. Also, a large wardrobe will be placed against the south wall in the bedroom, and somewhere there should still be a dressing table. The bedroom is really large, but so far no good idea has come up on how to use the space. Where would you put a utility room there? The entrance only looks very narrow on the plan; it is an open wooden staircase. That means it doesn’t look so massive.

Access to the bedroom through the dressing room. Separate a utility room or the back part of the bathroom as a laundry room between the bathroom and the bedroom.

Regarding the entrance:
Imagine the four of you coming home from an autumn walk or sledding. Everyone walks (one after the other) through the hallway to the cloakroom. Either the whole hallway is muddy or – if you take off your boots at the door – the last one slips and falls.

Or another scenario (for this, just mom and two kids are enough) trying to get dressed for kindergarten, school, work at the same time. Then someone gets hit in the face by the school backpack while squeezing past. Pure stress! I speak from experience.

Downstairs, I might perhaps carve out a corner of the utility room to set up a cloakroom or at least a shoe corner. I have to agree with Milkie: there is a difference between an entrance area that simply looks spacious and one that actually is spacious. And I also know the problem with the school backpack. You can’t stand under the stairs, so you can’t avoid the backpack there either.

I find an exit in the utility room quite practical. However, not to get to the car. I find it useful for drying laundry in the garden, for quickly washing your hands when working in the garden, and also for storing garden shoes and boots there. Therefore, it was important to us that you can get from the utility room onto the terrace (side terrace). But from the terrace, we get to our carport. But everyone has to decide that for themselves. I would place the exit in your utility room at the same height as the entrance from the hallway—this way, you can place a nice wall unit along the wall to the kitchen. Also worth considering is whether to split the utility room into two: one utility room and one pure technical room. I have had the experience that when people have 12m2 available for electricity, telephone, water, and heating, they fully use that space, and in the end, with luck, there’s only just enough room for a cabinet next to the washer and dryer. But when people only have 4m2 available, that somehow suffices for them. It gets adapted accordingly. And then you really have the other 8m2 just for "yourself alone."

Downstairs, I would also find the kitchen too dark. I would miss a window on the exterior wall there. Upstairs, I think it’s okay now.