Single-family house - Captain's house - 150m² - New construction - Tips needed

Hello dear ones,

we have bought a plot of land in Lower Saxony and have already had the first planning meeting with the architect of our construction company, i.e. the first preliminary draft is done, we have three free.
We had a 3D file sent to us and were able to "walk through" the house in advance. Not everything pleased us, so I hope to get some good tips for optimization here.

Development plan/Restrictions
Plot size: 595 m²
Slope: rising along the north side from the driveway to the northeast corner, highest point approx. 1.30-1.50m (retaining wall planned along the border)
Building type: single-family house
Site coverage ratio: 0.25
Number of storeys: 1 full storey
Building boundary: north 5m, south/west 3m
Number of parking spaces: 2 according to development plan (1 carport, 1 parking space in front)
Orientation: south
Maximum heights/limits: ridge height above finished ground floor level: 9m, eaves height above finished ground floor level: 4.5m

Owners' requirements
Style, roof shape, building type: solid captain's house with gable to the south, gable roof 45°
Basement, storeys: 1 full storey, no basement
Number of persons, ages: 2 persons (30, 34), 2 children planned
Space requirements in basement, ground floor, upper floor:
Ground floor: guest WC, utility room, kitchen, living/dining room
Upper floor: bathroom, master bedroom, 2 children's rooms, storage room (washing machine/dryer elevated)
Open kitchen, cooking island: island solution (also without cooktop and possibly with seating) has not found a place so far; open topic: see below
Number of dining seats: 4 in kitchen, 6-8 in living/dining area
Fireplace: no
Music/stereo wall: no
Balcony: no
Terrace: yes, in front of kitchen and living/dining area
Cistern: yes
Heating/electricity: geothermal heat pump and photovoltaic system with power storage
Garage, carport: carport

Further wishes/peculiarities, preferably also reasons why this or that should or should not be:
- Kitchen: In the kitchen we want to be able to eat with four people, mainly breakfast on weekdays or hot meals where the pot can stay on the stove. With children/high chairs, I don't think a bar table/counter makes sense!?
- Bathroom upper floor: Other builders recommended not placing the shower (and possibly the WC?) adjacent to the bedroom wall due to noise.
- Window sizes still variable

House design
Who is the designer: by us in coordination with the architect of the house construction company

What do we particularly like? Why?:
- size of the kitchen, access to terrace
- door from kitchen to utility room
- utility room with space for our 2 shelves (1.67m wall) for food and household items and the yellow sack right around the corner (next to ventilation)
- heating circuit valve hidden in utility room, upstairs hidden in a thicker wall
- storage room upstairs with space for washing machine and dryer on pedestal and drying rack would also fit (room is ventilated)
- large children's rooms

What would we change in the current plan for the second draft:
- door kitchen-utility room to open towards the kitchen to avoid collision? (no sliding door solution)
- possibly a strip window in guest WC so that when walking towards the front door you cannot look directly inside and more light falls on the mirror than if the light is only behind you (north side is rather darker anyway) > current bathroom window then moved to hallway
- windows in living/dining area should both be shifted to the left when viewed from inside, too close to wall
- possibly skylight in stairwell because the upper floor hallway is otherwise too dark
- shelf in shower without seating, only half wall as shelf for shower items; resulting dead space behind shower accessible from storage room as niche
- children's rooms are shown with 1.40m beds in floor plan, 90cm beds would of course suffice

What do we not like? Why?:
- hallway ground floor too narrow
- door to living/dining area that opens is "under" the stairs (= right door from hallway), otherwise you can't get to the kitchen
- closed stair steps, which I would have liked, are not possible with this floor plan
- two-sided stair railing in upper floor hallway (visually), while the hallway looks more open and less narrow without it
- utility room has "unnecessarily much" space in the middle of the room
- bathroom upstairs: general layout, bathroom looks small and outdated

Why did the design turn out as it is now?
- Kitchen: Since I do not want to carry everything to the large dining table on weekdays for breakfast, a dining area in the kitchen is important to me. Visually, a kitchen seating area "next to" the large dining table seating area seemed odd, so we have currently planned a half-height wall as a divider behind which the kitchen table could be placed, so it is still somewhat open. But I am also unsure whether the wall length is sufficient.
- At first, we found a straight staircase appealing, but it protrudes very far into the house both downstairs and upstairs.

[U]What is the most important/basic question about the floor plan summarized in 130 characters? [/U]
How can the hallway be designed better so that it does not feel so narrow? We are also open to other stair shapes. There must be space for a closet niche that should not be too visible. Preferably also in front of the guest WC. Perhaps the new design upstairs will also ease the bathroom situation?

I am looking forward to your comments and ideas!

Kind regards, Erisa

It's mainly about breakfast during the week or warm meals where the cooking pot can stay on the stove.

That would even be an argument for a kitchen island for me.

Visually, a kitchen seating area "next to" a large dining table seating area seemed odd to me, so we have currently planned a half-height wall as a partition,

That doesn't make it look any less odd, but with many guests at least more practical. I would probably omit the partition entirely here.

Question: The house is rather compact. Is it really necessary to have 2 dining areas? How often do you sit at the large one? Only when you have guests, right? The kitchen is open anyway. So you can see and smell it immediately. That's double redundant nonsense that takes up useless space. If you want a cook/dining kitchen, then plan one properly!

Common practice is a large cook/dining area and a separate living room. That also leaves space for hallway, stairs, and stuff, and if guests don't like your kitchen, you can lock them in the living room.

Is it really necessary to have 2 dining areas? [...] That is double redundant nonsense that wastes space.

The bay window looks especially odd because it doesn’t accommodate any of the dining areas. In the attic, the bay window is only useful for the desk in one of the children's rooms to escape from the straight staircase there. Another staircase design would probably have solved this better. In my opinion, a real captain's gable belonged on the street side, above the mayor's door.

Hello and thank you already for the opinions

Maybe we really need to rethink the kitchen/dining area situation. We will evaluate it tonight

In the meantime, I have first modified the hallway. I hope it fits with the stairs and the door. Visually definitely much more appealing! I still have to find a solution for the corners in the kitchen, maybe in connection with further possible kitchen changes.

In my opinion, a real captain's gable belonged on the street side, above the mayor's door, by the way.

I see it the same way and would have liked it that way too, but our front door is on the north side, which is relatively narrow and faces the neighbor, so the gable wouldn't really come into its own there. The south side, on the other hand, faces the street, so the gable makes more sense there in our case.

Island solution (also without cooktop and possibly with seating attached) has not found a place so far; topic open: see below

- Kitchen: In the kitchen we want to be able to eat as four, mainly for breakfast during the week or warm meals where the cooking pot can remain on the stove.

- Kitchen: Since I don't want to carry everything to the large dining table for breakfast during the week, a dining area in the kitchen is important to me. Visually, the kitchen seating area "next to" the large dining seating area appeared odd to me, so we have currently planned a half-height wall as a divider.

To be honest, I have no idea what you actually want in the kitchen now: island, bar, dining table...?
I would simply differentiate for you a) what you WANT and b) what is POSSIBLE. And then have it planned accordingly.

We had a 3D file sent to us, and were thus able to "walk through the house" in advance. Not everything appealed to us,

What exactly did not appeal to you? 3D always distorts quite a bit anyway... It is just a program that converts 2D into 3D with a fixed perspective.

I don't like the living room at all: with 32 sqm it is compact, but the first 10 sqm are unused. The impression with the furniture is deceiving. Draw your furniture to scale... then you will see where it gets tight.
With a one-meter thick sand-lime brick, sitting on the bed on Sunday morning won’t work...