Two-story single-family house without a basement with an outbuilding and driveway to the south

after all, this way I have the shorter route from the front door to the kitchen for shopping

Replace the window to the terrace with a second proper entrance to the kitchen area and you will appreciate a wonderfully short path from March to October. Then the path is really comfortable.

I am not a floor plan specialist but also a sauna owner. With a 1000 m² property, I certainly wouldn't place my wellness area / sauna behind the garage like that. It could be an external construction in the garden. Electricity and cold water for a shower are not that difficult to install in the garden either. We also have an outdoor sauna attached to the terrace. I am always glad that we didn't put the sauna in the basement because it's simply wonderful to be outside after using the sauna. You might even have space for a swimming pond or something similar...

I quite like the arrangement and it fits your considerations. Of course, the straight staircase takes up a lot of usable traffic area to be built, which makes the construction relatively more expensive in relation to the actually usable living space. The cost per sqm estimators in the forum will tell you more about that, I’m not so up to date on that, so just a general note.

Thank you for the hint, we will now wait for the offers and then we will know in which direction it goes and whether we need to redesign the staircase to save space.

The hallway to the front door is naturally somewhat darker. Too dark? Certainly not. When the sun is gone, a light simply shines. Maybe you can even do the opposite and let vines grow over it, then it becomes a sheltered entrance cave. I would be more concerned that the living rooms become too dark – I don’t see any light on the long wall facing southeast. I would also allow myself some morning sun in the bedroom.

Thanks for your assessment – the entrance cave idea sounds quite good, I’ll definitely think that over :) Regarding light in the living rooms, I have on the southeast side one window each at the very corner top and bottom. At the top a floor-to-ceiling narrow window to let in the low sun, and at the bottom a window with a higher parapet to have a bit more space for furniture or also to be able to sit more comfortably there if that should ever be the dining corner (I believe the pictures unfortunately got very pixelated during uploading, if I get the chance I can try to upload them in better quality... I think my drawn-in furniture is also rather hard to recognize – I have already drawn in the furniture we would take with us to estimate whether the space is sufficient). Unfortunately, the outbuilding casts quite a lot of shadow on the southeast side in the autumn and winter months, as I have noticed, so there are only windows at the corners where some sun might shine in. But I will take a closer look at that on site again.

That's what I'm looking for right now. Do you mean the children's bathroom by that? By "extra WC" I understand that the toilet is separated. But okay..
The shower is more like a foot basin, so small?!

Hi, yes the "children's bathroom" is primarily intended to function as a separate toilet, in case someone occupies the bathroom for a longer time, so you wouldn't have to run downstairs every time – for the shower we would initially only have the plumbing installed so that we could install one later if the need arises (if the children no longer want to be in the bathroom with us and block the bathroom for longer), therefore it is only thought to be very small as an emergency shower, although I am not sure if one wouldn't just go downstairs to shower after all – so for now we will only have the plumbing installed. At the moment, the children do not leave our side anyway, so I can't assess how it will be in a few years...

On the one hand, I think it's good that you also integrate the front part of the property a bit. Also that the children's rooms get the sunny side.

Thank you, the location of the children's rooms was one of the most important planning aspects for me.

But now comes the but, and I’ll start at the front:
The various LBOs are similar yet different. Still, I know of no state building code that allows more than 12 meters of edge development on one side.

I looked up the building code again, in our case only a maximum built-up area of 100m2 and a building height of 3m applies for the ancillary building – we are below that and also the builders we have spoken to so far have not mentioned anything like that. Only for the wooden shed at the front we would have to be a bit creative in the execution, but that would probably be a very usual approach here.

Also, I think a sauna is a living room (Aufenthaltsraum), and if not, then it is not allowed to plan and build a room with a stove as edge development. At least the sauna is therefore out there where it is located. Probably the storage room too.

Whether the sauna counts is probably a matter of interpretation by the municipality – on the other hand, a bathroom is explicitly listed as a possible room use in an ancillary building in our building code since it is not considered a living room. But that is probably regulated differently in each federal state.

Regarding the design: I consider the cold storage room too small. Since the WC and cold storage are subordinate in location, I would place the cold storage with a short conduit path to the street, the WC facing the garden because of a sauna in the garden, too.

Really too small? That surprises me. We recently visited acquaintances with a comparable house for "house viewing" whose cold storage room was even smaller than 5m2 and they even managed to accommodate washing machine and freezer there. But I keep that in mind and have already asked my husband to research the dimensions of the necessary appliances. Then we'll know for sure. The location of the cold storage room is a very good tip, I think I will implement that as long as the sewage pipes from the WC work well, thanks!

You want views, you want sun. Both justified. But I’m completely with Katja here: kitchen at main terrace and vegetable garden. Vegetable garden likes partial shade, so not south.

Maybe the vegetable garden would fit well in the southeast then – the way from the kitchen wouldn't be too far. I will try the kitchen location again, but so far I have gotten nowhere with the arrangement of kitchen furniture. If I put a kitchen line on the north side, my fear is I only have very limited view of the garden.. :/

Ask yourself when in which months you use the living room or sofa: in the dark season you only have sun during the day on weekends. In summer you want to be in the garden all day. Is the living room where it is really properly placed?

I have thought about that and realize: since we feel that most of the time we spend at the dining table or playing on the floor, the sofa plays a rather minor role. We only lie on the sofa in the evenings when the children are in bed or of course when a child is sick. How it will be in the future I can't say, but my feeling is that we will rather move away from floor play toward table games and the dining area will be our main living area, at least during the day.

With the split living room: do you want to take away the chimney use in the evening by locking him out? I just say: the stairs are wrongly placed in a household with children.

Yes, that's true, it’s not optimally solved.. hmm.. I will think about that, but where to put the stairs? A new stairway changes everything. However, I would also have placed the sliding door rather on the wall where the kitchen line is, then the fireplace would not be locked out.

The 80s doors catch my eye (sorry! Everything a bit pixelated). They should be extended to 100.

True, I will at least extend them to 90cm, on the ground floor 100cm where possible! Good tip, I totally overlooked that!
Guest WC and children's bathroom can stay.

There is no cloakroom. As a reader of some threads you should know the usefulness.

Yes, I’m aware of that, I also struggle with it.. I hope to make good use of the space under the stairs for a bench and hooks, a cabinet will fit next to the entrance door or vice versa. That is definitely still a problem area.. I have thought about making a small bay window as a windbreak but haven’t come to a good result yet.. The “waste of space” without really generating storage space bothers me too.. That is the big disadvantage of the straight stairs. But we want to enter the first negotiations with these stairs because we use the stairs often based on experience and it would be very comfortable... If costs shoot through the roof because of this, I will have to plan again anyway. I actually thought there would still be space in the utility room for a few jackets or such things but your assessment is different..

24 sqm hallway only on the upper floor makes one speechless.

Yes, there is the space, but it is not meant to remain unused. Surely a few narrow bookcases will fit and the rowing machine has to go somewhere, I would probably put it there..

I just can’t deal with the roof at all. From the street it looks like half a house.

Haha :D yes, visually it is an acquired taste – so it probably doesn’t look as charming as a 3-gable courtyard house? We will try to estimate how much added value the roof area has for photovoltaics – if it’s not that great, we would rather opt for a gable roof.
Thanks for taking so much trouble and for the honest feedback!

I like the idea with the entrance, also because you can find nice solutions to design this area with little effort; the adjacent extension with the sauna is successful, but you could just as well place it somewhere else on the property without real extra costs.

Yes, in case of doubt it will possibly be one of those "barrel saunas" that you put somewhere in the garden. You just have to walk through the cold in winter to heat it up – I haven't looked into that in detail yet but will find out how such a sauna would work.

It is supposed to be a carport probably made of wood, and there are design options for more light so that the entrance area does not become too dark.

Hmm... well, design-wise I am a complete novice – I am open to suggestions. The carport will be wood, but the garage behind it will be massive and let in little light, so I haven't planned any window there yet. I need to take a closer look at the sun position.

I would precisely check the rather small technical room regarding the necessary equipment; I also find it reasonable to store at least a few small things (tools etc.) there.

We will do that!

The hallway, partly because of the straight staircase, is a long tunnel, which I usually do not like; I miss daylight there. The foyer does take up space but currently offers hardly any space for wardrobe, shoes etc.

Yes, the narrowest width of the hall is about 1.2 m next to the stairs along a length of about 3 m. I think that is still bearable. Daylight is indeed missing. Maybe it will help if I place a floor-to-ceiling window opposite in the living room – even if no direct sun will shine there because of the neighboring building, it might still look friendlier... The sliding door will probably be open most of the time anyway. Yes, I already wrote something about storage space above. Currently, we have to manage with less space, so maybe it's not so bad. But I will think about it again.

I see the usefulness of a fireplace with simultaneous underfloor heating rather critically; in that place I would rather indulge in a large window surface; in fact, I find the window areas rather sparsely distributed considering the specific demand.

I see it differently. We once had a heating failure in winter and were very happy to be able to keep the house a bit warm with the decorative fireplace... The electric heaters helped very little in comparison. And it is also nice, of course... The window areas in the southeast are sparse because the neighboring building casts a lot of shade on this side of the house, especially in the transitional seasons. I have drawn windows where the sun reaches. The glass surfaces in the kitchen and dining area cover about 20% of the floor area, if I remember correctly. In the living room, I just about reach 10%, that’s true. But I will take a closer look on site again with the sun position, now that the days are getting longer again.

The living room only starts after the beam; therefore, I find the planned area quite tight; I would also be interested in the concretely drawn and real furnishing there.

Well, I wouldn't define such strict room boundaries – the living and dining areas basically share the space in front of the stairs. I assume the potential sliding door will be open most of the time anyway. But I could be wrong. I have drawn a large sofa, which we would get if we buy one someday. Currently, we have a smaller set, so that would fit... but yes, I have tried to make it very small because we mainly use the living room only in the evening to relax. I thought we wouldn't need that much space, but maybe I am wrong... I will reconsider it, maybe I can let the living room area jut out 1-2 m, then a window could also be placed there for lighting.

I would actually question the staircase shape, which strongly influences the living rooms behind it, not to say disadvantages them.

We currently have a narrow half-turn staircase, hence the wish for the straight staircase. Do you mean by disadvantage the size of the living room or what exactly?

The stairwell/hallway could also be rather dark on the upper floor.

You think so? Despite the window?

Instead of the window to the terrace, build a second proper entrance to the kitchen area and you will appreciate a wonderfully short path from March to October. Then the path is really comfortable.

Hmm.. does the path get longer in the winter months? :D I think there are patio doors that can be opened/locked from the outside, so with a handle on the outside, I can well imagine that.