DaSch17
2020-08-01 10:26:36
- #1
Hello everyone,
Thank you very much for all your suggestions! I will now try to systematically "work through" your comments.
The current preliminary floor plan was independently checked by two architects for practicality and traffic flow. The only comments were "Implementable without problems" or "I find the floor plan OK." In short: We still have optimization potential here. We definitely need to make some minor changes.
Just one thing in advance. Due to our ideas and the conditions, much of the floor plan is difficult to impossible to change. Ultimately, it is always a matter of the homeowner's taste. I think in your floor plans one will always find something that at first seems useless, impractical, or simply not feasible. But what is important is that it works for those who have to live in the house.
First again the site plan (room division is very old; it only concerns the placement of the house on the plot):
Let's start with the ground floor: The office and multi-purpose room should face the garden. The utility room must have contact with an exterior wall due to the air-water heat pump. We would like to have a small cozy living room corner, and the kitchen should be directly adjacent to the dining area and the breakfast terrace. The rest is distributed accordingly.
The position of the stairs is also fixed to meet the requirements of the upper floor. By changing the stair position, on the one hand, there would no longer be direct access from the kitchen to the pantry, and on the other hand, access to the parents' area (in connection with the chimney flue) would be difficult to implement.
The basic concept of the upper floor is to separate the children's area from the parents' area. In addition, the children's rooms and the master bedroom should be positioned on the garden side. The rest is distributed. My wife definitely does not want a dressing room as a walk-through room to get to the bathroom. The requirement here is therefore: to get directly from the bedroom to the bathroom and back.
Your criticism regarding the living room (12 sqm) in relation to the rest of the multi-purpose room (59 sqm) is absolutely justified. But it's exactly as you say: we consciously decided on a small cozy living corner based on our priorities.
By the way, the living corner in our current apartment has the following dimensions: 3.00 m (wide) and 3.70 m (deep). We oriented ourselves on that. We like it very much that way. Our L-shaped sofa is 2.70 m x 2.20 m (and big enough for us plus 2 guests), so there is still 1.60 m left to the wall. Only the TV on a lowboard should go in the corner. Something like this:
By the way, the fireplace is not that expensive. Fireplace + chimney flue and final installation about 12k.
We had the fireplace at that location in the very beginning. Somehow it looked totally lost there and brought a lot of unrest into the floor plan. In short: we simply didn’t like it. Therefore, the fireplace must either stay where it is or be omitted altogether - which would be a shame.
The storage room at the garage must be there so that I can reach my tools with dry feet even in winter. We find skylights and window bands absolutely horrible. That is one of the reasons why we are building 2 full floors. My wife always calls these window types "loopholes" - somehow she is right
1.) Beautiful living area that is topped once again by your garden. Respect! Really great!
2.) Basically, I like your suggestion quite well. Especially your solution for the office, utility room, and guest WC is simply better than the other design, but at the expense of the living room. In this variant, however, we would probably completely omit the fireplace. We will keep that in mind for detailed planning with the architects.
Exactly. A home cinema is not important to us. Cosiness is the top priority for the living room. Last year it was already difficult to find a decent TV that is not 60 inches.
Regarding the furniture, it should be mentioned again that we used a greatly simplified planner, which unfortunately only offers one shape of sofa, table, etc. In short: the furnishing in the floor plan is of course not the original furnishing. We have, for example, as already mentioned, an L-sofa.
Once you have had a fireplace, you want one in the future too. It’s about the feeling of living... Of course, it is luxury... has already written exactly the right thing.
We are not yet fixed on the fireplace. We could very well live with a smaller model that does not have so many kW. Because the fireplace is basically not for heating but for cozy autumn/winter evenings.
I can fully agree 100%.
The problem is that upstairs in the upper floor, you would run into the chimney shaft. That’s where the stairs go up...
Also, the utility/technical room must have contact to the exterior wall.
Swapping the living room and kitchen is not an option for us.
I appreciate your open and direct manner. But that was not objective criticism, right?
No. #115 simply doesn't work with 180 sqm.
Why should the pantry not be accessible? We intentionally decided to place it under the stairs. The space is sufficient for us, which we have already confirmed in several model homes. The freezer will go into the utility/technical room.
The recliner will definitely not be decoration. Especially when watching TV with several people (football)? Otherwise, we also like to read in our armchair. We would then use the recliner for that...
Thank you very much for all your suggestions! I will now try to systematically "work through" your comments.
The current preliminary floor plan was independently checked by two architects for practicality and traffic flow. The only comments were "Implementable without problems" or "I find the floor plan OK." In short: We still have optimization potential here. We definitely need to make some minor changes.
Just one thing in advance. Due to our ideas and the conditions, much of the floor plan is difficult to impossible to change. Ultimately, it is always a matter of the homeowner's taste. I think in your floor plans one will always find something that at first seems useless, impractical, or simply not feasible. But what is important is that it works for those who have to live in the house.
First again the site plan (room division is very old; it only concerns the placement of the house on the plot):
Let's start with the ground floor: The office and multi-purpose room should face the garden. The utility room must have contact with an exterior wall due to the air-water heat pump. We would like to have a small cozy living room corner, and the kitchen should be directly adjacent to the dining area and the breakfast terrace. The rest is distributed accordingly.
The position of the stairs is also fixed to meet the requirements of the upper floor. By changing the stair position, on the one hand, there would no longer be direct access from the kitchen to the pantry, and on the other hand, access to the parents' area (in connection with the chimney flue) would be difficult to implement.
The basic concept of the upper floor is to separate the children's area from the parents' area. In addition, the children's rooms and the master bedroom should be positioned on the garden side. The rest is distributed. My wife definitely does not want a dressing room as a walk-through room to get to the bathroom. The requirement here is therefore: to get directly from the bedroom to the bathroom and back.
First of all... it's your house. That means you have to build it the way you like it. So I can only give you my opinion when I look at the floor plan.
The opinions you get here are usually quite objective because nobody knows you, so in principle, nobody really cares how you build. Maybe a little subjective if personal experiences and your own floor plan influence the thoughts. And as you can see, there are different opinions.
At the moment, I just think you are deluding yourself a bit because you have already drawn an unrealistic furnishing in the living room.
3.8 m is okay in depth for a living room. But not more. It's okay if you put an L-shaped sofa on the left side.
As furnished by you, it actually doesn't work at all. I currently have 3.7 m depth and can estimate the dimension well.
Mistake 1 that is often made: sofas are placed against the wall in the plan. Do you do that? Aside from the fact that you shouldn't for ventilation reasons, it also looks strange. So move the sofa 15–20 cm away from the wall.
Mistake 2: the dimensions of the sofa are unrealistic. I didn't measure yours exactly, but it looks very small. It depends on the sofa of course, but a sofa has about 90 cm depth. Sometimes a few cm less, but also more if it has adjustable headrests etc. This also applies to width. Often 2-seaters with 1.50 m or 3-seaters with 2 m are drawn in the plan. With armrests, I'd calculate about 2 m for a 2-seater.
So now calculate:
Wall distance 0.2
Sofa depth 0.9
Sofa width 2
Sum 3.1 m
Now you still have 70 cm left. That's where your TV cabinet goes.
If it has drawers or doors, depending on the cabinet depth, it gets tight.
With a coffee table, it gets tight too.
For me, 3.8 m is not deep enough for the furnishing.
It works, maybe just barely.
Besides, no window in the living room. Yes, a large terrace door at the bottom. But that's far away and doesn't really feel like part of the living room anymore. Some floor plans have the dining table there.
Where I now agree with , I don't know your priorities. If the living room is not important to you, that's fine. But for me, the proportion compared to the rest is not right either. You are building 180 sqm (I didn't look exactly) with 59 sqm "multi-purpose room" and the living room effectively has about 12 sqm.
That would be too little for me.
You have somewhat disguised it with a plant and the armchair in the corner. But I stick to it: you have empty unused space, which I see differently than .
I have already illustrated this graphically.
Another approach, the panoramic fireplace. I am out price-wise, but with fireplace, installation, spark protection plate (or whatever it's called) and everything, the thing probably costs you 20k, right?
That's why it gets a supposedly "prominent" position. Of course, it is a panoramic fireplace, but the main viewing axis is "in front" of the fireplace. But there is nothing there. Only at about 4 and 8 o’clock is the viewing axis towards the dining table and the armchair in the corner. Where I would expect to enjoy the fireplace the most, on the sofa, I am already at 10 o’clock.
That means the room between 4 and 8 o'clock would be the "best" spot for me. That is probably 10-15 sqm. But there is somehow nothing.
Maybe I know too little about your usage behavior and you leave the space free so the parents can lounge naked on a big bearskin in front of the fireplace when the kids have flown the nest.
As I said, if you feel comfortable with it, that’s great, then do it.
I just don’t like the proportions in the multi-purpose room, especially in the living room.
Your criticism regarding the living room (12 sqm) in relation to the rest of the multi-purpose room (59 sqm) is absolutely justified. But it's exactly as you say: we consciously decided on a small cozy living corner based on our priorities.
By the way, the living corner in our current apartment has the following dimensions: 3.00 m (wide) and 3.70 m (deep). We oriented ourselves on that. We like it very much that way. Our L-shaped sofa is 2.70 m x 2.20 m (and big enough for us plus 2 guests), so there is still 1.60 m left to the wall. Only the TV on a lowboard should go in the corner. Something like this:
By the way, the fireplace is not that expensive. Fireplace + chimney flue and final installation about 12k.
Basically, I also like the plan (I haven’t read the entire development), but I would also consider placing the fireplace on the exterior wall between the living and dining rooms and perhaps orient it crosswise instead of into the room. Depending on the model (which may still change), you could also consider a, in my opinion, chic external chimney and thus forego a bulky, masonry fireplace inside the house. As far as I know, there are also models where you can connect a firepit on the outside if you want that.
In my opinion, 3.80 m is really little, especially as you are enclosed by 3 walls. Maybe you could avoid full-height wall coverage to the corridor to gain some "air". I agree with that the space between the sofas and the window front feels lost, so you put a plant there to fill it. If the massive fireplace were gone, the living room would feel less cramped, which I would like better overall.
I could also imagine relocating the planned storage room at the garage somewhere else or a modern garden shed etc. to create the option for more windows on this long wall; even if just skylights or a band of windows.
We had the fireplace at that location in the very beginning. Somehow it looked totally lost there and brought a lot of unrest into the floor plan. In short: we simply didn’t like it. Therefore, the fireplace must either stay where it is or be omitted altogether - which would be a shame.
The storage room at the garage must be there so that I can reach my tools with dry feet even in winter. We find skylights and window bands absolutely horrible. That is one of the reasons why we are building 2 full floors. My wife always calls these window types "loopholes" - somehow she is right
Here is a suggestion on how you could better use the unused space. Fireplace on the exterior wall, living room somewhat less deep, kitchen further upwards on the plan, giving more space for the dining table. Move the cloakroom to where you can also enter from the utility room. Makes for a better office.
[ATTACH alt="Dasch17-EG.jpg"]50060[/ATTACH]
It is very similar in our living room and we are super happy with it. The TV is not the focus for us, but the view from the sofa into the garden and on the fireplace. How terrible it is how some people arrange everything around the TV and prefer to stare at a wall with the obstructed window behind the sofa (my opinion). In your case, it's at least sideways, so already better :) TV watching still works well; we always lie in the corner of our corner sofa and have a direct view to the TV. If more than two people want to watch, we swivel the TV out further. It is mounted on a movable arm.
[ATTACH alt="Fireplace.jpg"]50061[/ATTACH][ATTACH alt="Living room.jpg"]50062[/ATTACH]
1.) Beautiful living area that is topped once again by your garden. Respect! Really great!
2.) Basically, I like your suggestion quite well. Especially your solution for the office, utility room, and guest WC is simply better than the other design, but at the expense of the living room. In this variant, however, we would probably completely omit the fireplace. We will keep that in mind for detailed planning with the architects.
How terrible it is how some people don’t have a properly oriented home cinema and suffer not only from suboptimal image but also poor room acoustics. (my opinion)
No, it’s okay. Different people have different priorities.
I could imagine that the OP is closer to your side than mine.
Exactly. A home cinema is not important to us. Cosiness is the top priority for the living room. Last year it was already difficult to find a decent TV that is not 60 inches.
So it’s not said that I only complain; here’s an idea from me too. ‘s is very good, mine is similar except I moved the wall, which would lead to a small covered terrace.
And I’m not good with drawing programs, as can be clearly seen.
I find the furnishing by clearly better than the OP’s.
Regarding the furniture, it should be mentioned again that we used a greatly simplified planner, which unfortunately only offers one shape of sofa, table, etc. In short: the furnishing in the floor plan is of course not the original furnishing. We have, for example, as already mentioned, an L-sofa.
A heretical remark on the panoramic fireplace topic: I like Porsche too, but I also know what a "car rental" is. By the way, there are also rentals for classics - if someone thinks, oh no, they always have the latest model. Thanks to this blessed invention, in everyday life I can be satisfied with my little Opel. You can do the same when building: rent a fireplace every year for the anniversary, every year in a different city with a hotel suite bundled. With the money saved, you go on vacation in between, and at home, you have the (barely less than 3 sqm with spark protection zone) fireplace area for a dance with your spouse. If only you could play the piano...
Once you have had a fireplace, you want one in the future too. It’s about the feeling of living... Of course, it is luxury... has already written exactly the right thing.
In my opinion, this chic fireplace seems too bulky for this floor plan, perhaps a slimmer model. Surely there are ways to build it more space-saving or, as I have seen once, an open fireplace on the terrace that you can admire from inside. Also, one rarely uses such a fireplace compared to how much it further restricts the already tight space here.
With these last two ideas, I think you are getting closer to the whole thing.
We are not yet fixed on the fireplace. We could very well live with a smaller model that does not have so many kW. Because the fireplace is basically not for heating but for cozy autumn/winter evenings.
Of course, you could completely forgo building the house and spend 600,000 € every year at the most beautiful resorts...
Even the cost of a pool, which is also not used often, could be spent on many wonderful vacations over the years.
A fireplace, whether used a lot or not, is always a highlight!
If you always went by the cost/benefit factor, no one would have designer clothes, no car more expensive than a Dacia, no smart home, no gallery, or everyone would have a 120 sqm house where not a single square meter is unused and where you can start the coffee machine directly from the couch.
Open spaces, galleries, fireplaces, pools shape the style and feel-good factor of a house, so they just belong. Whether useful or not is irrelevant.
: Very nice! However, the side TV would annoy me a lot, especially with the big window behind it, which surely needs to be darkened for a pleasant picture.
With that garden, I would be outside 90% of the time anyway :)
I can fully agree 100%.
Advantage: short path from kitchen to terrace, larger living room
Disadvantage: small kitchen, WC without window, longer path from living room to terrace
I don't know if the fireplace would fit on the upper floor because I don’t know it. The chimney pipe must not be directly behind the fireplace but on the right side of the stairs in this variant.
The problem is that upstairs in the upper floor, you would run into the chimney shaft. That’s where the stairs go up...
Also, the utility/technical room must have contact to the exterior wall.
Swapping the living room and kitchen is not an option for us.
Woulda, coulda, shoulda...
That could have been included in #115 as well.
You could also have done it. Now you have a pantry that is not accessible... a proper freezer no longer fits...
You keep forgetting to draw the wall on the stairs side, then you see, if you still think of a door to the utility room, the corridor (despite glass).
You would have 180 if you compressed the house depth a bit. Then you wouldn’t have square rooms either.
By the way, I don’t see where you mirrored anything.
I stand by it: lots of useless space downstairs. The recliner will be a decorative object, and see what happens...
I appreciate your open and direct manner. But that was not objective criticism, right?
No. #115 simply doesn't work with 180 sqm.
Why should the pantry not be accessible? We intentionally decided to place it under the stairs. The space is sufficient for us, which we have already confirmed in several model homes. The freezer will go into the utility/technical room.
The recliner will definitely not be decoration. Especially when watching TV with several people (football)? Otherwise, we also like to read in our armchair. We would then use the recliner for that...