ᐅ Separate Apartment for Parents: 210 m² Detached Single-Family House with an 80 m² Self-Contained Apartment

schustrik schrieb:
I would also be very grateful if you could share your ideas on how you would plan something like this.

I have pinned a helpful guide at the top of this subforum.

Best regards, ypg

schustrik schrieb:
I would also be very grateful if you could share your ideas on how you would plan something like this.

Not with your ideas and wishes wrapping around reasonable planning like a corset.

It is perfectly understandable to have wishes. But they need to be feasible and truly make sense. Sometimes we have wishes that we forget about once things work well in a different way.

Basically, you already have a somewhat minor issue with orientation, but that is manageable. It becomes more difficult to integrate an adequate granny flat (whether with direct access or without), including parking spaces, into an urban villa. I would consider the connecting access between the units as a nice-to-have, but not essential. More important when weighing options is privacy and having separate entrances, rather than eventually having to enter the granny flat through the living room of the main house because there is no other way. The outdoor areas should also be privatized.

You should also reconsider whether the garage, which you have made a central point (access to the granny flat, the bathroom, corridor to the garden, sauna, etc.), should even still be a garage or just a second hallway.

A garage is for a car. It might be amusing and sometimes practical to be able to use a toilet from the garden, but it is completely unnecessary. I think you are overestimating the dirt you can bring in from the garden. That might be the case in the first couple of years, but otherwise, people behave quite civilly in their own garden. After showering, you usually want to put on clean clothes, and then you have to go through the garage, garden, or the whole house to get dressed. In five years, no one will use that toilet because it will be forgotten in everyday cleaning and will deteriorate along with the sauna, which then becomes an expensive, unused feature. Also, what friends want does not have to be practical — it may be nice for visitors, but you should consider whether it fits your own daily routine and your budget.

Now I digress to your budget, which we do not know. For a single-family house of about 180–220 sqm (1900–2400 sq ft), granny flat 70–80 sqm (750–860 sq ft), roof terrace, staircase platform, front entrance centered on the house with small side projections and the door recessed within those, corners, niches or bay windows, sauna, presumably a children’s bathroom for three kids, and a granny flat likely tending towards accessibility... we are somewhere around 600,000–650,000. This does not include landscaping, garage, painting, and flooring. I don’t know if additional building incidental costs are included or if it is a lump sum.

schustrik schrieb:
The main house has two full floors and a hipped roof, and to reduce costs, the granny flat and garage have a flat roof.

Oops: with that budget and planning an integrated granny flat, you will need an architect!

I don’t know if you are budgeting in this direction, but I think you should focus on clear and practical planning to save costs and potentially separate the two living areas later if one or both units are sold. This doesn’t mean you have to give up sauna with outdoor access, roof terrace (who needs a roof terrace if you have a garden to care for?), a third shower, etc. But the first focus should be the main living space rather than the passage from garage to sauna. Honestly, that comes last.

Suggestions regarding your wishes:

If possible, consider combining the sauna with a shower-toilet and guest room on the ground floor. You don’t have to exit the sauna but can access the outdoors either from a small hallway or directly from the guest room. If you expect heavy snowfall after building the house, think about how often you actually get snow here. If the roof terrace really can be planned, you might place the sauna upstairs, potentially accessible from the bathroom.

Regarding the playroom: do you have one now? I find it surprising. Where I live, parents no longer go to playgrounds with the kids but let them play in the living room so they can work in the kitchen or at the ironing board at the same time. Children are either too young to be left alone or too old and don’t want to. You have planned nice children’s rooms, and they should be used.

If you still have time for digital image processing (EBV), I envy you. Without kids, I hardly have time beside work, house, and garden to do time-consuming EBV. But you are right: you need an office and a guest room for up to 20 guests per year. Maybe you could plan a large combined play and computer room? Just an idea. It could also serve as a bedroom.

So: turn off your computer and get a 100-square-ruled notebook. Make sketches of where things could be located. You should always keep a grid in mind, with water and heating relatively central, staircase according to the sketch grid next.

Take @kbt09’s suggestion and place two garages as a separation. Behind that could be the utility areas. I would place this whole complex toward the east, so a courtyard area forms in front of the garages, with a floor above for the parents and the entrance to your urban villa below. On the garage side of your house, you could locate the utility room, sauna, shower-toilet, office/guest area, etc.

It is basically possible to plan a semi-detached house, where one party has no upper floor and the other uses that upper floor area.

Room program for the single-family house for the architect: kitchen, dining and living room, kitchen with sliding door, storage room, utility room on the upper floor, potential passage between garage and house, sauna, guest/office or play/office, bedroom with walk-in closet (not a cramped space), three children’s rooms, bathroom, roof terrace if possible, bright and open toward the southwest.

Good luck!

I have prepared something else.

... but I stopped halfway.
It would be great if you could also comment on it, even if you imagine a “bigger” house or something different.

ypg schrieb:
It’s always good to keep a grid in mind,

However, this does not have to be a strict guideline, and in my opinion, it’s not really necessary for mostly owner-occupied residential construction. First, design the room layout. Then identify points that determine measurements (like the staircase or the space where a favorite piece of furniture should fit). If a planning grid emerges from this, great. If not, that’s fine too – after all, we’re talking about a single-family house (with or without a secondary suite).

Rounding to full increments of a construction module can be done later – thinking strictly in units isn’t required here. What’s much more important – and can be clearly seen in this thread – is “tidying up.” For example, mark rooms with six corners with a question mark and cross out those with eight corners in bold. The less a sense of dimension and proportion there is, the more one tends to get lost in complicated layouts and awkward corners (which are doubly problematic: they interfere with furniture placement and increase costs).

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11ant schrieb:
First, identify points that define dimensions (the staircase, or the space where a specific favorite piece of furniture should fit). If this results in a planning grid, great. If not: also fine – after all, we are talking about a single-family house (whether with or without a granny flat).

Nooo!
Without a conceptual grid, the staircase ends up somewhere random, the kitchen becomes too narrow, and a sensible room layout can only work by chance.
And honestly: the favorite piece of furniture is worn out and/or replaceable after three years. Basically, you should plan enough space for as many and as wide pieces of furniture as possible – then the favorite piece of furniture will fit anyway.

Yes, I agree about having a playroom for the kids... rather have the parents’ bedroom on the ground floor, and then on the upper floor a guest room, a separate office, and three really large children’s bedrooms.

I have simulated parents’ bedrooms on both floors for now.

The sauna is integrated into a ground floor bathroom with garden access.

The garage... well, having it in the middle is not very satisfying to me. You could also put a carport on the north side.

The entrance area to the granny flat has plenty of storage space for coats, but possibly also for vacuum cleaners, etc., in the connecting section.

Just putting these ideas out there... I’m not good with pen and paper and work faster with drawing software, especially since my goal is always to create good storage niches. For example, on the ground floor under the stairs... you could certainly plan a landing in between, but my program doesn’t allow that, so I made a very deep step to roughly make the space available.

I hope it’s somewhat visible after clicking.

P.S.: The garage is generally a bit too short when you put a large car inside.

P.S.2: Wood-burning stoves against exterior walls are not ideal with hipped roofs either.