Thank you very much for the many responses. If you deal with the topic for too long, you eventually overlook important points and quite quickly develop a kind of tunnel vision for many things.
It would also be somewhat boring if everyone just said, Fits!.
So please always send your unvarnished opinions and criticism. :)
Yes, with larger windows you get light into the study. I don’t know the use of the study. For occasionally opening mail and doing a tax return and sporadically a few hours of home office, the study would be OK for me. As a regularly used workplace, that would not be an option. If I spend a large part of my life there, I also make it nice – with light and view.
Here, a multi-purpose room is described as a living space that (at least) includes "cooking, eating, living." The space between the kitchen and the dining table is a pure passage area and relatively large for relatively little use – I call that waste. I also see no aesthetic benefit from this area with an opening to above.
The idea of directing heat from the stove upwards is physically comprehensible at first. Positioning and type of stove belong to such considerations – and I see no conceptual integration here. In the end, you have bought the disadvantages of a loud upper floor without any significant aesthetic or thermal benefit with expensive building space that you could better use in a compact building.
The stove also serves as a "room divider" between the living room and the rest of the multi-purpose room. I also agree with you on the air space. That wouldn’t have to be there. You can also get the thermal effect through an open staircase and gain more space upstairs. The noisy upper floor hadn’t even been on my radar yet.
I’m fine with the garden access from the living area on the ground floor. Downstairs, highly attractive rooms with a lot of potential for living space are created. I see that little used, even if a guest is pushed into a "generous out-of-the-way."
Given your property location, the idea occurs to me that one could let a central entrance lead onto a gallery, from which you can see the living area below, which has double ceiling height except for the kitchen. Straight open stairs up and down in free space (no stairwell). Office over the kitchen, small room for guests, wardrobe. Upstairs the sleeping and children’s rooms, in the basement behind the living room technical rooms and a cold pantry. That would give me a much better feeling of life and daily joy from a "wow effect" in the house. The office would be a real living room, far enough away from the action but still appropriately placed. Of course, such a concept also has impractical sides – for example, when groceries have long distances to the kitchen/pantry and the way from the bedroom to the breakfast table goes over two staircases.
We had the idea with the gallery in the beginning as well. What speaks against the living area in the basement, including access to the large garden, is that we will build all exterior walls in massive visible wood. We wouldn’t have that room climate/feeling in the basement with concrete walls. And of course, with the double ceiling height, we would also "lose" living space.
I am massively bothered by the garden not being connected to the house.
One does not plan a staircase between kitchen and eating/living without necessity.
Generous guest area. The office is even too small for me, gallery and thus relatively small rooms.
The nicest room is the guest room.
Budget is more than tight. What is included in the price?
Is the staircase between kitchen and dining area really that bad? It is not in the walking path. Or am I not seeing the problem here?
We will reconsider the office size. Thanks for that.
The floor plan shows a compact "standard house" without basement (the mini office was the utility room) and below that a living basement with generous space was added. So it all somehow doesn’t fit together ...
My concept would be:
Basement: multi-purpose room (living, eating, cooking) with terrace
Ground floor: parents’ area, study, guest room (seems important, can also be used as a second living room, e.g. TV room)
Top floor: children’s area
Alternatively, if you definitely want the living area on the entrance level, swap basement and ground floor and put the guest room upstairs.
Here the architect probably used a standard and added a living basement. That almost seems to me to be the case. ;-)
More important than the multi-purpose room, i.e. the living space where you spend almost all your time (except sleeping)? The garden is also additional living space in the summer. I don’t see that here. It may be nice that you give your granny flat the possibility to use the garden, but shouldn’t it be better accessible from her own main living space than via the long way of the staircase via terrace?
If you let the child play in the garden, you are there and tend the beds or flowers or sit at the swing/sandbox. Then the child wants a cookie from the kitchen, and what do you do? Either the slalom path over stairs, terrace and large dining area or through the granny flat/yoga room crosswise through the basement, stairs up and into the kitchen... and the child? In this time unobserved and runs onto the street or falls or whatever...
I agree with you. However, I have no solution for the issue.
If I had such a great plot, I come through the entrance and am greeted by a smart staircase in the air space that leads into a light-flooded multi-purpose room in the basement. Everything else can then be subject to compromises – the multi-purpose room greets and offers quality living space.
Personally, I would also decide against a captain’s gable on a slope and adapt the roof shape to the slope, but that is, as is well known, a matter of taste: those who absolutely want a captain’s gable or half-hip roof are often very fixed on it.
The captain’s gable was not a requirement from us at all. It is needed to create room/space for the staircase upstairs. What other options would there be here?