Special floor plan or boring with basement?

The height of the floor-to-ceiling doors on the upper floor is marked as 2.11. The two doors in the bedroom leading out to the (roof) terrace are marked as 1.92. I now think that the top edge of all doors is at the same height.

Thank you – we have completely ignored the windows/doors so far because we are currently focusing on the biggest construction issues: floor plan/rooms and basement or no basement, and we are actually already overwhelmed with these decisions.

We had planned our wishes with one or, after careful selection of providers, with two different prefabricated house manufacturers. The result was about €100,000 over our budget (we would have burned through our buffer right at the start). I then tried to find a construction company for our basement to estimate the price. A regional construction company in town (recommended to me by many and with a good reputation) could help me. The boss said he would build me the same house €100,000 cheaper but as a solid construction. We did that and are fully satisfied.

Thank you for your experiences, that definitely gives hope that nothing is lost yet :) And nice that you are satisfied with your choice. Did you then have your floor plan drawn up by an independent architect, or did you work it out with the prefabricated house manufacturers, or did you once again plan a new floor plan with the construction company on site afterward?

Hi, I would swap child 2 and the bedroom. Why do you want to occupy the brightest and sunniest spot on the upper floor with a place where you only stay to sleep (i.e., in the dark)? And child's rooms absolutely need to be as exactly the same size as possible.

Hi Andreas, I completely agree with you. That is already exactly on our wishlist for the architect when he gets back from vacation. The two children's rooms must be the same size and both get the nice south-facing location.

huge kitchen and small dining area in the living room. That's what I notice quickly. So not spacious

We don't like the whole area either; something definitely needs to be changed here. But we also wanted the pantry to fully extend, and not have so much wasted space in the kitchen. So there's still quite a bit to be adjusted here.

Definitely draw in existing or desired furniture to scale and consider clearance space

Good tip. We already started that in Sweet Home 3D. But when you have to shrink everything again, soon the furniture no longer fits...

Downsizing does not mean switching to dollhouse furniture.

For example, the 3 bar stools in the kitchen disappear and the space including the traffic area belongs to the living room. Almost all storage space in the pantry fits in the space of the hidden door. The sauna moves to the bathroom or later as an outdoor sauna in the garden. As long as there is only 1 child, the 2nd children's room will be a study; later the workplace moves to the dressing room.

Think it over again. Sort everything by must-have and nice-to-have. It does no good if money worries make you sweat and you therefore do not need the sauna.

Rensch-Haus has the Clou line for affordable houses. You get Rensch-Haus quality with very limited options for customization. You have to be able to handle that. 2 or 3 floor coverings, everything else costs money. Ask around if there are smaller carpentry companies that always build only one house.

According to the soil report, you therefore can’t, or it is advised against, building a basement, also for cost reasons?!

A basement could be built, but due to the waterproof concrete tank, possibly uplift protection, more excavation + disposal, significant additional costs will arise for us. I’m attaching the soil report, but even according to the basement rule from 11Ant, it sounds more like it’s "sensible" to build without a basement.

Basement replacement room, technology, and hobby space can also be realized inside the house itself, e.g. by increasing the floor area, partial roof expansion

Is there a rule of thumb for how much the house would/could be enlarged for that? If I use €3,500/m² and thus get about 20m² of space each in the upper floor + attic? No basement would also mean that we need a gabled roof instead of our desired hipped roof for the storage area. How can I imagine a partial roof expansion on a gabled roof? And are there any basic values on how much a half storey with a high knee wall approximately costs, so that one has a rough estimate of how much the floor area could actually be increased.

I would say goodbye to the current house design.

I’m afraid so... unless the architect can still perform some magic and somehow make it great after all by solving the kitchen/dining/pantry situation better, and we’d be satisfied with a rectangle as well.

Here is our soil report for the experts :)

60 cm is not a big slope. The cellar rule from says a cellar is not worth it.
Especially not with groundwater.
In which direction does the slope go?
Without a cellar, you will probably also stay within the budget.
The northern boundary is probably still negotiable?
Are there no photos of the plot?
No aerial photo with the surroundings?
Did the architect work without a soil report and survey plan?

Yes, a cellar is obviously expensive on our plot due to poor soil conditions and not really sensible because of the slight slope.

The soil report is in the previous post: and it also contains photos of the plot.

The northern property boundary is still negotiable; it will only be subdivided once the house floor plan and location are finalized.
I uploaded an aerial photo with the surroundings here:
The architect had the soil report and planned based on it. No survey plan is available yet, as our first step with the architect should be the building inquiry.

For example, the 3 bar stools in the kitchen disappear and the space including the traffic area belongs to the living room. Almost all storage space in the pantry fits into the space of the hidden door.

We have already thought along these lines to get the rectangle "right". See attachment – it’s not nice, clumsily created with SweetHome3D. What exactly do you mean by the storage space of the pantry and the hidden space of the door?

The sauna moves to the bathroom or later as an outdoor sauna in the garden.

We crossed that out first (or rather the shower planned there earlier).

As long as there is only 1 child, the second children's room is a study; later the workplace moves to the dressing room

Here it is quite likely that child 2 will be there until the house is finished… but in the beginning you don’t need a children's room. Child 1 currently doesn’t have one either for space reasons, at 2.5 years old.

Rensch-Haus has the Clou line for affordable houses. You get Rensch-Haus quality with very little selection for fittings. You have to be able to handle that. 2 or 3 floor coverings, everything else costs money.
Ask around if there are smaller carpentry shops that always build only 1 house.

Thanks for the tip. We’ll have a look at Rensch-Haus then. The name put me off a bit because it reminded me of cheap stuff – and since there is so much selection elsewhere, it wasn’t really in close consideration.
Are such smaller carpentries really worth a try? I have heard several times that they simply lack the experience, so it takes much longer to build and more mistakes happen. Or that as a small company they are significantly more expensive.