ᐅ Simple Single-Family House Seeking Tips for Improvement

We have a similar staircase here; I just measured it. Ours is 2.25m wide (7 feet 4 inches) and definitely not overly spacious, just standard. I wouldn’t plan it any narrower, as even now it’s hard to maneuver larger items (mattress, furniture) around the corners.

Your bathrooms are missing the wall-installed fixtures (about 15cm (6 inches)), so you need to allow space for those.

I wouldn’t plan a U-shaped kitchen like that, since it creates two poorly usable corners. It’s better to give up the cabinet in front of the window.

Best regards,
Sabine

If the pure construction costs for the house are supposed to be €450,000, meaning the 300 & 400 groups, then your architect is off. We are planning at 8.25m x 11m with €400 per m³ (approximately $430 per yd³). That comes to about €355,000.

If you calculate with today’s values around €1,800–1,900 per m² (approximately $167 per ft²) plus a basement costing €65,000, both calculation methods basically come to the same result.

If the garage should cost €30,000–40,000, there’s still a shortfall of €50,000???

First of all, thank you for the many replies so far!
Let me explain what we were each thinking, and you can tell us if it makes sense ;-)

Knallkörper schrieb:
How is the price of 450k made up? What are the pure construction costs considered? I mean, 10x10m is quite small for the number of rooms you want to fit, and that immediately reflects in the rooms being too small, especially bathrooms and bedrooms.

Ideally, it should include everything. Even the kitchen should already be included. What could be excluded is the exterior landscaping. We are still undecided about the garage, whether we want a prefab garage or one built on site. The price will probably decide that in the end… And the land is already purchased and paid for.

11ant schrieb:
In reality, the interior walls will not all be 17.5 cm thick, especially not around the laundry chute.

Yes, we know that. But we have no idea which walls will be thinner. That's why we prefer to plan with the thicker walls. And if it ends up a few centimeters too big — great. Otherwise it would be a problem :-)

11ant schrieb:
The building area should be clearly identifiable, and so should the elevation changes on the plot.

There are no elevation changes on the plot. It is completely flat. I will upload a file with the building area after lunch.

11ant schrieb:
How do you come to this (too small) dimension?

If you mean the house size, it is purely a financial decision. We want to build large enough to avoid feeling cramped but not so large that in 20 years without children, half the space is unused...

ypg schrieb:
No, appearances are deceiving. Doors are shown with 60 cm and 80 cm widths.

We actually made a mistake there. We only measured the door without the frame... We will correct it and include it in the new plan.

ypg schrieb:
One children's room from what I remember looking at the PDFs is just 2.60 m room width. The pantry is one meter wide. The staircase is only 190 cm wide, not even suitable for a terraced house. Toilets are 60 cm and 80 cm wide, one is boxed in by a too long wall. Walk-in closet in the nice south, toilet rooms not stacked (who cares? Nowadays it is somehow possible anyway). What is lacking as living space in the ground and upper floors is instead too much in the basement in insignificant rooms. The garden to the east is very small, even though there is a field? Pasture? Nature?

We would have liked the children's rooms to be 3 m wide. But then the second children's room would not have fit... It was important for us that the rooms be as rectangular and free of recesses as possible to keep them as flexible as possible. Making the pantry wider would mean making the kitchen smaller and the pantry much too big. The pantry is meant to hold groceries, a water crate, cleaning supplies/vacuum cleaner, and kitchen appliances not used daily but too often for the basement. With the pantry layout not quite ideal for us, we thought to place a deep 60 cm (24 inch) shelf behind the door, the same on the west side, and then a narrow continuous 30 cm (12 inch) shelf with a tall narrow window on the north side. I ideally wanted our bedroom in the north since I don’t need a heated sleeping room. The bathroom mainly needs morning light, so also east. That was our thinking…
We deliberately placed the garden on the west. There is still a field on the east, but the city intends to develop it as a residential area. We didn’t want to sacrifice a nicer garden with better sunlight, only for maybe 10 years of better view on the east side. We wanted as large a garden as possible in the southwest.
We really struggled with the toilets not being stacked and couldn’t find a nice solution without ruining the upper floor plan or making the kitchen awkward... We are definitely open to ideas here! That would be preferable.
I wouldn’t call the basement rooms insignificant. The workshop is a room we have now and need/use. As mentioned, the hobby room will mainly be a music room because my husband really enjoys playing the guitar and I banished his collection from the living room… We’re not fixed on the sizes especially for the technical room and utility room because we have no real sense of what size is needed…
According to the internet, toilets should be at least 80 cm wide. We didn’t really manage that below, although we plan a glass element there so it doesn’t feel so cramped. The wall was intentionally made longer. We thought it might make a nice boundary between the wardrobe and the stairs rather than just putting a cupboard there… Upstairs, it is 80 cm. We are also considering shortening the shower to gain that width…

Wastl schrieb:
I don’t find the children’s rooms at 12 and 13 square meters too small. The office will be somewhat smaller than a children’s room but still usable. Moving the walk-in closet to the south, as a dead space, is a matter of taste; I would rather swap bedroom and walk-in closet, so you don’t sleep next to the shower and it could be a bit quieter in the mornings...

As I said, I didn’t want the bedroom in the south. And we don’t want to go through the walk-in closet to get to the bedroom either. One idea might be to swap the bedroom with the walk-in closet and bathroom. But then the laundry chute upstairs wouldn’t fit in the ground floor...

Climbee schrieb:
Does it have to be this square floor plan? Are you so attached to a town villa design? A hip roof also makes things a bit more expensive than a simple gable roof... Swap walk-in closet and bedroom for sure! Though I’m getting less thrilled with southern bedrooms. Overall, the upper floor has a functional room layout but it’s clear that the floor area isn’t quite enough for the rooms you want. Room widths at 2.6 m are not generous. What’s the likelihood of a third child? If that’s low, I would take some space from the relatively large basement rooms for an office/guest room and free up space on the upper floor for children’s rooms and bathrooms. Or make a slightly bigger bedroom and skip the walk-in closet. The staircase is far too narrow and small for me; it is more a ladder.

No, it doesn’t have to be a square floor plan. For cost reasons, we will anyway forgo the hip roof. But larger means more expensive… and the width of the plot only allows a few more centimeters. With a longer floor plan to the south, we would block the south garden and haven’t found a nicer layout (with the same area) this way either.
The bedroom situation was also a consideration. We don’t want a bedroom in the south and not to have to go through the walk-in closet to the bedroom.
The narrow rooms upstairs are actually too narrow for us as well. Unfortunately, we have no better solution yet.
A third child is still very uncertain. But regardless, we want an office not in the basement. Ideally, on the ground floor. Big enough to function as a bedroom when we are older. But that made the space too large… We also often have guests staying (mainly family), even now in the apartment regularly with six people and no children yet. They are only coming now… So we definitely need another guest sleeping option.
We made a mistake with the staircase but have now found options only 30 cm wider. This width could still work. We want to look into this with the staircase builder tomorrow.

Caspar2020 schrieb:
What does "WA" mean? Laundry chute? If yes, that will be interesting for the drainage installation in the upstairs bathroom. Routing all around… I would put the guest room directly in the basement.

WA stands for laundry chute. We haven’t really looked into plumbing or drainage yet. We need to check what to consider there. For now, it was important to know if our ideas, budget, and house size will work ;-)
We would really prefer not to put the guest room in the basement because it should mainly be used as an office and later possibly a children’s room. The basement is pretty impractical for that.

brotpeter schrieb:
Important factors are:
- Is this even structurally feasible and, if yes, how would the desired section affect construction costs (e.g., how are the ceilings designed and where do they rest (load-bearing walls...), are beams necessary (looking at the big open kitchen/living area...) )
- Where do supply lines run? There is almost no wall directly above another...
- Staircase at 2 m width won’t work... There are minimum sizes that must be observed (calculate rather with 2.4 m)
- How does the house look from outside? The windows are positioned kind of "anywhere", which in my opinion doesn’t look nice in the end.

We have barely looked at structural engineering yet. The open kitchen will probably be a problem. We need to sit down with a structural engineer or architect. With an open plan, a lintel is usually necessary anyway…
The middle wall from west to east is aligned on all three floors, at least the parts where there are walls. But we don’t know if that really helps structurally.
The house was planned intentionally from the inside out. The detailing of the windows isn’t finalized yet. But it’s important to us that the windows fit the interior — even if it’s at the expense of the exterior appearance. We probably can’t have both.

Caspar2020 schrieb:
Additionally, after longer consideration, I find the building’s elevations quite odd (considering the windows and their positions). For example, on the upper floor garden side there is only one window (in child room 2).

There will be a second window on the south side of the upper floor. Unfortunately, we forgot this in children’s room 1. This room will have two windows to maximize light. Still, you are right that from outside the windows will not be symmetrically aligned.

wir_bauen schrieb:
We would be very reluctant to put a guest room in the basement, since it is mainly intended to be used as an office and possibly later as a children's room. The basement is quite inconvenient for that.

I think the office/children's room 3 should remain on the upper floor. But not used as a guest room; that function should be assigned to the basement.

wir_bauen schrieb:
Yes, we know that. But we have no idea which walls will be thinner. That’s why we prefer to plan with the thicker walls. And if it ends up being a few centimeters more—great. Otherwise, it would be problematic 🙂

This is basically not a wrong approach, but placing non-load-bearing walls differently upstairs than downstairs is a different matter from working with load-bearing walls.

wir_bauen schrieb:
If you mean the house size, then that is purely a financial issue. We want to build large enough so it feels comfortable and not cramped, but also not so large that 20 years from now, without children, half of it is unused...

No, I meant this specific and, in my opinion, rather tight staircase dimension. The house is fine as it is; increasing the width and depth by almost a meter (about 3 feet) will make the floor plan work in this or a very similar version.

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Curly schrieb:
Your bathrooms are missing the space for the wall-mounted installations (about 15cm (6 inches)), so you need to account for that in the room dimensions. In the kitchen, I wouldn’t plan such a U-shape, since you end up with two poorly usable corners. Better to skip the cabinet in front of the window.

Yes, we actually forgot about that or hadn’t considered it yet :-/ But for the upper bathroom, it’s no problem. It’s large enough, and the sink location isn’t fixed yet. We’re possibly thinking of swapping it with the cabinet.
The lower toilet theoretically also has enough space. We still need to measure what “clear floor space” would remain.

I personally find corner cabinets in the kitchen very practical and perfectly usable. If I remove the eastern cabinet, I would lose much more space than if I left the corners empty with panels. And that’s not the plan. Corner cabinets are meant to go there.

Zaba12 schrieb:
If the 450,000 € construction cost is supposed to be just the house itself, i.e. category 300 & 400, then your architect is off. We’re planning for a building of 8.25m x 11m at 400 € per cubic meter. That’s roughly 355,000 €.

If you calculate with current values at 1800–1900 € per square meter plus a basement at 65,000 €, both calculation methods result in about the same.

If the garage is supposed to cost 30,000–40,000 €, then there still seems to be 50,000 € missing???

1. The plans are drawn by us, not by an architect.
2. The cost of 450,000 € is what we budget if we don’t build as cheaply as several acquaintances here in the area (with similar construction methods) have done.
3. We’ve received cost estimates from three architects, which are roughly consistent and align with our current calculations. Or rather, we adjusted our estimates to match them ;-).
4. Your floor area is smaller than what we’re planning. It would be surprising if your costs weren’t correspondingly lower in my opinion.
5. At 2,000 €/sqm I reach about 300,000 €. Even without the basement included, adding 65,000 € for that and 40,000 € for the garage, that would be 405,000 €, if I’m not mistaken?!

Caspar2020 schrieb:
I’d keep the office / third child’s bedroom on the upper floor but not as a guest room; instead, move the guest room function down to the basement.

Yes, but then we simply have an additional room in the basement, right?! Because the office would be converted to a child’s bedroom if necessary, and then we’d have to find another solution for the desk... But we don’t gain any space upstairs by changing this room’s function, do we?! I’m not sure I quite understand what you mean... I think...?