ᐅ Floor Plan Fails Discussion Thread – Floor Plans Nobody Wanted

Recently, during a discussion here, the idea came up to specifically collect house designs—mostly floor plans—that turned out to be dead ends.

Therefore, I would like to invite you to share those floor plans (or even façade views) where you yourself realized that they are best left in the trash bin.

In my opinion, such examples are most valuable when you not only share the drawing but also explain the reasons for discarding it. Feel free to add an "after" picture showing the improved successor (or final) design that resulted from these insights.

In memory of Hans Rosenthal’s "that was great!" jump of joy, the heading "that was rubbish!" came to mind for this.

I have two requests: First, please do not upload all 1 to 257 failed drafts preceding the final design, but only the one where "a light bulb moment" occurred; and second, please only share designs that you subsequently changed (not just mirrored or rotated).

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Oh great that you actually started this thread! Unfortunately, I can’t attach a picture because the drawings were done by hand and I don’t have a photo of them, but originally my husband really wanted a gallery. So I tried working on the corresponding floor plans, although I was skeptical about the budget due to the larger house size that would be required... a friend who is an architect eventually convinced my husband that my floor plans were not bad. They could still be optimized, but the overall size could hardly be reduced without losing living quality. That ultimately convinced him to give it up.

The message sounds very funny.
However, I would try to put myself in the other person’s shoes and think about how someone would feel after a failed design. Personally, I would take it in stride.

Then I’ll start off

We have a plot of land with a west-east slope, about 3 meters (10 feet) difference in height over 35 meters (115 feet).
Because of the great location, I originally really wanted a granny flat that could be rented out to students or trainee teachers...
It was also very important for us to be able to get from the car to the kitchen without having to climb stairs.
We also wanted a roof terrace to have an outdoor retreat, since we were building next to my parents. Additionally, we hoped to enjoy a great view over a river valley.

Unfortunately, we painfully realized that all these wishes didn’t really match the geographic conditions when we first received plans from the architect, which we didn’t like at all.
An example of this is the following draft:

We would have had a roughly 25-meter-long (82 feet) driveway with a 10-15% incline just to be able to get out of the car in front of the kitchen. There would have been no turning space, so you would always have to reverse in or out of the driveway.
I won’t even go into other critical points of the design.

After several planning rounds, we got frustrated and gave up for a while, eventually also abandoning the granny flat (I am so incredibly glad today that we don’t have any tenants in the house).

After some discussions, the idea occurred to me for the first time to design the house as a split-level.
The architect was enthusiastic and had already designed some houses like that. Given the plot, this solution practically suggested itself.
Only our wish to avoid stairs between the car and the kitchen would be difficult to realize. But better a stair inside and dry than outside in the snow and ice.

So, after some intermediate drafts, we arrived at the final plan for the building permit:

When the costs spiraled out of control during the tender, we decided to reduce the size of the house. The main building was narrowed by 25cm (10 inches) but extended by half a meter (20 inches), and the cube with the bedroom was completely removed.
This resulted in our final version, which we actually built.
Pictures of the finished version will follow in a second post, since I can only attach 10 pictures per post.

Looking back, we are extremely happy with how it turned out. Even after more than a year, we’re still very satisfied with our floor plan. Only a little more space in the utility room would have been nice, but that just wasn’t possible.

Anyone interested in the whole process can have a look here...

Here is the final version

How is it possible that your lawn is so green? When were the pictures taken? Last summer, everything here dried out completely.

In any case, I am really impressed with your progress.