Single-family house for 4 people - Opinions

It's best if you don't write down any measurements at all

Or only important measurements that must be met in any case.

If you make the attic as the upper floor (i.e. in the floor area equal in size to the ground floor, not reduced by sloping walls) = "town villa," then you have avoided all head height bottlenecks, even without also increasing the floor area. So stick to the "original" floor plan size if you already enlarge the attic/upper floor by "removing slopes." Two enlargements at the same time are one too many.

I meant: 1. only enlarge where something is specifically "too tight"; 2. changing from "one and a half" to "two" storeys automatically cures all low spots; 3. do not combine the two methods "increase external dimensions" and "replace slopes with full height," otherwise it becomes too much in total; 4. don't perfect the design to death – that was already overdone more than enough some time ago by StanSch and now currently by Shiny86.

Upstairs it only pinches in my office. So the room between the two children's rooms. The rest is spacious. However, I wouldn't overvalue the room now. The important thing is that my furniture fits in and it does with house dimensions of 12.85x9.6m and a knee wall of 140.

Downstairs, the guest WC is tight and could generally be a bit bigger. But 4.5 sqm is not terribly bad yet.

Since I do not want a town villa for now, I will enlarge the house dimensions and lower the knee wall once again. The ground floor is more important to me than the upper floor. If I went for a town villa, I would pull back, meaning smaller house dimensions, since as you have already noticed, all bottlenecks are avoided in the upper floor.

I just basically don’t like it when shower and WC are next to each other over about 2 m. I like showers that go across the width of the guest bathroom; in that case, such a bathroom can also be limited to less than 2 m width down to 150 cm.

Okay, understood.

In my experience, builders prefer it if you give them your need for rooms, wishes, and budget (i.e. maximum living area). Then they are supposed to make a proposal.

I think setting a budget is pointless. I have experienced that the budget is then usually fully used. I also don’t want to orient myself on the budget but on personal needs. The maximum budget, however, sets the upper limit.

Attached is the floor plan from the planner. The house dimensions are now 13.05m x 9.80m with a knee wall height of 130cm. On the ground floor we then have about 100sqm and on the upper floor 92sqm. I had the windows on the gables on the upper floor changed since the distance to the neighbor is quite small. Depending on the neighbor's house, it is 6 to a maximum of 10m, so I find floor-to-ceiling windows impractical.

Instead of a skylight for the hallway on the upper floor, the planner has now placed a small window on the ground floor in the stairway area. This of course lets less light into the hallway of the upper floor, but the window is much easier to clean as well as to open and close. YPG had said that I should make the window nice and large. I think it is still too small, or what do you think?

On the right side of the attic, the children’s room and bedroom have been swapped. The planner awarded the parents' bedroom the size increase.

I would still discuss the kitchen and bathroom with a kitchen supplier or bathroom fitter.

The wardrobe should now also be sufficient for 4 people as there is floor space on the wall to the living room, storage options under the stairs, and floor space behind the guest WC.

The hallway area now amounts to a total of 24.64sqm on the ground and upper floor and thus 12.83% of the total living area.

I would be interested in your opinion. Are there any mistakes? Comments. Feedback.

Thank you very much!

EG: I would plan the sofa against the wall to the guest room and definitely add a window on the west side. I would place the door to the living room in line (left) with the front door and the terrace door. For this, the door to the living room could possibly be designed as a sliding door that runs to the left in the hallway. Then it can easily be left open and won’t be in the way anywhere. It could be a nice glass door. Between the dining area and the kitchen, I would also plan a sliding door, which could run downward on the dining room side. Then it might be possible to accommodate a small island in the kitchen, since with the door it’s difficult, especially as it will probably be in the walkway more often. OG: I would probably add a skylight each to the left or right of the beds in the children’s rooms. Possibly the same in the bathroom, and make the other window single-leaf so that from the window to the wall toward the children’s room there might be room for a shower. I’m not such a fan of showers right next to the bathroom entrance. I generally find the space distribution quite good this way.

Solid thing - partly a bit old-fashioned and somewhat wasteful here and there. For example, I would find the bathroom very large. I definitely wouldn’t let anyone cut back on the light in the upstairs hallway. On the contrary, I would really go overboard there. The slanted skylights clean themselves with every rain. You can file the little silly thing on the ground floor from the planner under joke. Let the sun in! When you then enter the beautiful large hallway upstairs, you immediately feel good.

Hello,
When I placed the start of the staircase directly next to the front door in my floor plan draft, it was rightly criticized that you always have to walk through the dirt area of the front door when going upstairs. It is the same situation with you.