Single-family house – new construction project from day one - and the planning begins

I found the floor plan from #115 tidier. Not ideal (e.g. small wardrobe, ballroom in front of the living room...), but better suited as a planning basis.

There were several things we disliked about #115:

- The square rooms are certainly practical, but we feel that they completely lose the coziness. We are simply big fans of functional and cozy niches. I think the current design reflects that well.
- A pantry accessible through a door in the kitchen row is a "no-go" for us. Nevertheless, the pantry should be accessible directly from the kitchen, which brings me to the next point.
- We don’t like the position of the staircase. We would prefer it on the other side. Otherwise, if you stand in the hallway, you are basically standing right in the kitchen. The staircase should therefore serve as a room divider between the hallway and the kitchen.
- The gallery is in the wrong place.
- Additionally, a wardrobe is missing on the ground floor.
- Overall, the floor plan is too large. Currently, it is 190 m². We would like to aim towards 180 m².
- Furthermore, we do not like the exterior view with the windows. We have tried to implement that better in our current floor plan.

I couldn’t have said it any better.

Then please name the program so it can be recommended to other amateur planners – because it is exactly the right thing to prevent naive ideas of centimeter-precise accuracy from arising at all. Unfortunately, many amateur planners are seduced by the thought of squeezing their furniture in with exact precision without considering tolerances, plaster, etc.

If you already wisely make such plans, I would also group identical windows together and, for example, refer to 3/5/13/15 as 3/3A/3B/3C – this way you catch yourself quicker when you’re about to create an insalata mista cacophonia with your window formats. It also immediately reduces the risk of providing easily confusable elements (very similar dimensions, etc.).

I have mentioned this several times at various places. Soon I might even be seen as a WH sales representative. The floor plan designer is from Weberhaus.

We proceeded room by room and numbered the windows.

I have to agree with that.... what happened to ? A mini dressing room as a trapped space, an additional hallway in front of the children's rooms... what made you do that? Instead of the gallery in 115, you could add a small utility room for washing machine/vacuum cleaner, etc., preferably towards the top of the plan. In 115, tidy up the ground floor a bit. But not 145.

The dressing room is 5.2 m². In addition, there is the built-in wardrobe in the hallway for bed linen, etc. The size is sufficient for us. We simply prefer a walk-in closet rather than a real dressing room.

Washing machine/dryer/vacuum cleaner, etc. go into the utility/technical room.

I unfortunately haven’t followed this thread, but looking at the front of the house in #115, normal-sized windows seem to be missing somehow. Maybe it’s just my personal taste, but if possible I would prefer a somewhat symmetrical window front there. Not quite easy on the ground floor: on one side is the toilet and the utility room, on the other side the office wall is in the way. I also don’t know if I like that children's room 1, for example, has both a floor-to-ceiling window and a normal one.

I think the walls in #145 are not aligned. The parents’ bathroom upstairs is 4 m wide, the utility room + toilet 3.8 m.

In the new 145, at first glance, I don’t like the narrow 1-meter-wide hallway.

Oh dear, now I’ve only criticized

Oh, nonsense! I prefer criticism to flattery!

I’m 100% with you on the windows in #115!

We are also very skeptical about the width of the hallway upstairs. We have already considered whether it might make sense to go to 1.20 m. We will have to discuss that at the appropriate time with the architect. To prevent the children’s hallway from being too dark, we are currently planning two floor-to-ceiling interior windows of about 1 m wide in the wall towards the staircase.

I am aware that the current floor plan is not for fans of simple and straightforward/square floor plans. However, every niche and every corner has its purpose and is supposed to combine coziness with functionality – at least that’s the theory.

Every niche and every corner has its purpose, however, and should combine coziness with functionality

Well, every niche also has its planning effort, its susceptibility to errors, and above all its costs.

I have already mentioned this several times in different places. Soon I will be regarded as a WH sales representative Is the floor plan planner from Weberhaus.

Thanks, I will take a look at it.

We proceeded room by room and numbered the windows.

I think that's good and would only deviate in the case where an element - identical or with a different opening direction - is repeated in the format.

Small status update...

We have now received a first updated offer for our floor plan #145. Ready to move in at Kfw 40-Plus standard with premium features, we are now at 440.5 TEUR or approx. 2,200 EUR/m² (including the 21 m² for the garage).

We are now considering what we could still do with our remaining budget. At the top of our priority list is currently the upgrade from plastic to wood-aluminum windows.

Regarding the walking distances and functionality of the individual rooms, the planner from the house construction company has no concerns. We have only made minor adjustments, such as adapting the width of the hallway on the upper floor to 1.20 m.

So, I also want to give some criticism before you build it like this.

On the ground floor, you walk about 7-8 meters along a narrow corridor next to this staircase block, where the pantry is hidden. The view is always onto a wall (or a cabinet). The view into the upper floor also faces a wall. On the right, you then curve through a narrow spot around a chimney (?) or a shelf? to get into the living room, where the sofa and TV are squeezed into the corner. Overall, you're wasting a lot of space just for "walking through." In #115, although you were directly in the kitchen, this very long corridor was eliminated, which cuts the ground floor into two (too narrow) halves.



Upstairs, it’s the same. By relocating the staircase, you create two narrow hallways that steal space from the children's rooms and the children's bathroom.





I just wanted to illustrate this for you. Upstairs, of course, you would need to make the gallery accessible to have a second exit from the bathroom (circular route).

So I would also like to raise some criticism before you build it like that.

Thank you very much for taking so much time and describing your concerns in such detail! That really makes me very happy

Basically, you are addressing exactly the critical points where the floor plan still has a few issues. But that does not mean that there are already considerations regarding solutions for these. I will try to explain that below...

On the ground floor, you walk a feeling of 7-8 meters along a narrow corridor next to this staircase block, in which the pantry is hidden.

Strictly speaking, it is 4m (= staircase length). To prevent the whole thing from feeling cramped or like a narrow tunnel, a glass partition is planned for the staircase instead of a wall. Basically similar to this picture:



In addition, above the entrance area/hallway, mainly due to the gallery, there is a fairly generous free space (marked in yellow):

The free space in combination with the glass partition should (hopefully) take away the tunnel feeling of the corridor that you mentioned. We would like to discuss this with an architect.

The view is always onto a wall (or a cupboard).

I totally agree with you! We still have our concerns about that as well. Alternatively, a floor-to-ceiling window will be placed there so that you can see from the entrance area through the hallway into the garden. The downside, however, is that then in the living area basically no space remains for a cupboard... We would like to discuss that again with an architect as well.

Also, the view into the upper floor faces a wall.

I consider that absolutely unproblematic. The hallway will be very, very bright. A window or something like that is then not necessary. Possibly a picture can be hung here so you don’t have to look at a white wall.

Then you curve right through a bottleneck around a fireplace (?) or a shelf? to get into the living room, where sofa and TV are squeezed into the corner.

... around a panoramic fireplace that can be seen from all corners of the living/dining/kitchen area. It is deliberately designed to act as a "room divider." That is not a bottleneck, as there are still 2.0 m of space up to the sliding door.

Sofa and TV are not squeezed into the corner. That is intentionally planned so that the area is spatially separated from the rest of the open living area. The distances from sofa to TV and also the width of this "living niche" fit perfectly and were pre-measured and aligned with real furniture.

Overall, you waste a lot of space just for "walking." In #115, you stood directly in the kitchen, but this very long corridor that cuts the ground floor into 2 (too narrow) halves was avoided.

That is true. The walking paths take up a lot of square meters of living space. But this is simply due to the desire for an open floor plan. And with 100 m² on the ground floor, many square meters of walking paths inevitably arise.

We don’t like #115 for several reasons, as already mentioned. But the worst part is the feeling that you would be cooking in the hallway...

The same applies upstairs. By shifting the staircase, you create 2 narrow corridors that steal space from the children's rooms and the children’s bathroom.

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Aren’t the children’s rooms with almost 14 m² big enough? The basic idea for the upper floor is, among other things, to create two separate living areas by the division of the hallway: one for the parents and one for the children.

The U-shaped hallway also serves to prevent the upper floor from feeling cramped. We are planning balustrades on both sides of the staircase as well as to the gallery (marked in red).

This makes the upper floor hallway feel much more spacious and gives it a lot of brightness through the gallery window.



Something like this, only basically mirrored and with no outer wall on the left, but another balustrade instead: