ᐅ Does the floor plan work? – From a bungalow to a two-story single-family house
Created on: 19 Aug 2022 16:41
J
Janinashome
Hello everyone,
we are working on realizing our dream home and welcome any input.
We are renovating a bungalow built in 1961, adding an extra floor using timber frame construction. On the ground floor, we removed several walls to create a large open space for the kitchen, living, and dining areas. Our dream is to have garden views and access from all living spaces, as well as direct access to the terrace from the kitchen. Our architect has given us very good advice in this regard. However, there might be something we have overlooked in our considerations. Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees 🙂 Please forgive me if anything is unclear; I am, of course, open to changes or additions. This is my first post in a forum, but if not now, then when. In this spirit, thank you in advance for your feedback 😉
Zoning plan / restrictions
Plot size: ~1300sqm (14000 sq ft)
Slope: no
Floor area ratio: based on neighboring buildings
Building line and boundary: based on neighboring buildings
Number of parking spaces: 4
Number of floors: 2 full floors
Roof type: gable roof
Style: modern
Orientation: north/south
Maximum height / limits: based on neighboring buildings
Owners’ requirements
Style: modern, roof type: gable roof
Basement: partially basemented (slightly damp, so heating planned in a separate room)
Number of floors: 2
Number of occupants: 5, ages: 2 adults, children: 5 years, 3 years, 1 year
Room needs on ground floor: guest room, bathroom, utility/technical room, large living and dining area, open kitchen
Upper floor: 3 children’s rooms, master bedroom with bathroom and dressing room, office, children’s bathroom, open play area
Office: family use and home office
Occasional overnight guests: friends with children from time to time
Open or closed architecture: open
Conservative or modern design: modern
Open kitchen: yes, with island
Number of dining seats: 8
Fireplace: yes
Music/stereo wall: no
Balcony, roof terrace: no
Garage, carport: garage
Utility garden, greenhouse: no
Additional requests / special features / daily routine, also reasons for certain choices: -
House design
Who designed the plans: architect
What do you like most? Why?
Large open spaces on the ground floor, open open area upstairs
What do you dislike? Why?
Cost estimate according to architect/planner:
Approx. 450k for renovation
Personal budget limit for house including fittings: 550k
Preferred heating technology:
Heat pump
If you have to give up something, which features / extensions could you do without?
- could do without:
- could not do without:
Why is the design the way it is? For example:
Standard design from the planner?
No
Which wishes from the architect were implemented?
Windows in the stairwell
What do you think makes it particularly good or bad?
Open spaces, plenty of south-facing glass fronts towards the garden
What is the most important/basic question about the floor plan in 130 characters?
We look forward to honest feedback. We are uncertain about the angled wall in the left children’s room upstairs; are there alternatives? Also, what should the window height / sill height be in the children’s rooms?
we are working on realizing our dream home and welcome any input.
We are renovating a bungalow built in 1961, adding an extra floor using timber frame construction. On the ground floor, we removed several walls to create a large open space for the kitchen, living, and dining areas. Our dream is to have garden views and access from all living spaces, as well as direct access to the terrace from the kitchen. Our architect has given us very good advice in this regard. However, there might be something we have overlooked in our considerations. Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees 🙂 Please forgive me if anything is unclear; I am, of course, open to changes or additions. This is my first post in a forum, but if not now, then when. In this spirit, thank you in advance for your feedback 😉
Zoning plan / restrictions
Plot size: ~1300sqm (14000 sq ft)
Slope: no
Floor area ratio: based on neighboring buildings
Building line and boundary: based on neighboring buildings
Number of parking spaces: 4
Number of floors: 2 full floors
Roof type: gable roof
Style: modern
Orientation: north/south
Maximum height / limits: based on neighboring buildings
Owners’ requirements
Style: modern, roof type: gable roof
Basement: partially basemented (slightly damp, so heating planned in a separate room)
Number of floors: 2
Number of occupants: 5, ages: 2 adults, children: 5 years, 3 years, 1 year
Room needs on ground floor: guest room, bathroom, utility/technical room, large living and dining area, open kitchen
Upper floor: 3 children’s rooms, master bedroom with bathroom and dressing room, office, children’s bathroom, open play area
Office: family use and home office
Occasional overnight guests: friends with children from time to time
Open or closed architecture: open
Conservative or modern design: modern
Open kitchen: yes, with island
Number of dining seats: 8
Fireplace: yes
Music/stereo wall: no
Balcony, roof terrace: no
Garage, carport: garage
Utility garden, greenhouse: no
Additional requests / special features / daily routine, also reasons for certain choices: -
House design
Who designed the plans: architect
What do you like most? Why?
Large open spaces on the ground floor, open open area upstairs
What do you dislike? Why?
Cost estimate according to architect/planner:
Approx. 450k for renovation
Personal budget limit for house including fittings: 550k
Preferred heating technology:
Heat pump
If you have to give up something, which features / extensions could you do without?
- could do without:
- could not do without:
Why is the design the way it is? For example:
Standard design from the planner?
No
Which wishes from the architect were implemented?
Windows in the stairwell
What do you think makes it particularly good or bad?
Open spaces, plenty of south-facing glass fronts towards the garden
What is the most important/basic question about the floor plan in 130 characters?
We look forward to honest feedback. We are uncertain about the angled wall in the left children’s room upstairs; are there alternatives? Also, what should the window height / sill height be in the children’s rooms?
J
Janinashome20 Aug 2022 10:12K a t j a schrieb:
@Janinashome First of all, thank you for including the doors in the plan. 🙂
About the plan:
Ground floor:
I assume that the room with the car and the adjacent storage room will remain unheated. If so, the washing machine is, in my opinion, wrongly placed there because it could freeze in winter. Overall, that space seems quite unsuitable when I think about the walking routes.
The same goes for bottles and anything else stored there, if that room is intended to be a pantry.
You have gone through the effort of removing walls, but the sofa at the top of the plan feels quite lost in the now-open living area, which is 10m (33 feet) long and 4m (13 feet) wide. Apart from the narrow feel of the space, it quickly feels like a hall. It does not create a cozy atmosphere—especially not when guests constantly use the toilet right next to it, without the bathroom being separated from the living room. There is only a door in between. That’s not enough to feel comfortable.
The room at the bottom right, which belongs to the living room, doesn’t seem to have any clear use except as a huge closet. Sure, with three kids, they will probably spread their stuff there. I’m not worried about that, but they also have a similar amount of space upstairs, plus the kids’ bedrooms and the basement room. You’d have to have a lot of stuff to fill all that. Next to it, the large dining table offers plenty of space for tabletop games. So what to do with this big hall? Apparently, the architect didn’t come up with any ideas either. Often, in such cases, a grand piano ends up there out of frustration—I’m still waiting to see that.
First floor:
Yes, sloped walls are frustrating, especially when they are this long.
Besides that, the laundry room is too small, the walk-in closet is cramped, the master bathroom is a joke (I wouldn’t want to “live” like that as a homeowner), and the kids’ bedroom right next to the master bedroom is uncomfortable for both.
The requirement for all kids to have a view of the garden is impractical. Generally, the corners of a house are its prime spots. You would expect child 1 to be in such a corner rather than all of them stacked next to the master bedroom. It looks nice and orderly on the plan in a very German way, but in reality, it’s nonsense.
The bed in the master bedroom is placed with the footboard by the window? But the nightstands are consistently at the foot end? That’s quite odd. Normally, having a window behind the headboard is uncomfortable. So that’s not how I would position the bed.
There seems to be a knee wall or something similar at standing height. How exactly is that? And what about the extension?
Summary:
On the ground floor, I would:
- separate the bathroom from the living room or better yet, put back a partition wall as high as the chimney to zone the hall and block noise from the toilet and shower.
- turn the current sofa room into a guest room and convert the guest room into an office to ease the space upstairs in the parents’ area.
On the first floor, I would:
- straighten the wall—probably benefiting the parents’ area.
- rearrange the kids’ bedrooms and separate them from the master bedroom.
- move the office downstairs, redistribute the bathrooms—this also depends on drainage. I might experiment with layouts, but only once a decision about the office and living room has been made—whatever that may be. Thank you very much for your detailed feedback. I realize this is a lot of work to respond to everyone (which we hardly manage at the moment with small kids... but I’m doing my best).
The plan is to insulate the pantry and the current “garage” so it won’t get too cold in winter. We are currently planning to place the washing machine in the small room upstairs between the bathroom and child bedroom 3, also considering the laundry routes where it accumulates. In summer, when laundry is dried outside, it can be carried out there.
Regarding the living room: I’ve had similar thoughts. We plan to place the couch extending from the dining area and use the area towards the north as a second play space for the kids while they are still small. Later, possibly dividing the space with a room divider to create a craft area. For now, all “living” happens in the living-dining area since the kids are so young, hence the large space.
Would a sliding door between the hallway and living room make sense? We had thought about that but somehow lost the idea again.
Your idea to ease the parents’ area and move the office downstairs was something we considered at first. But then the upper floor became too narrow to arrange the walk-in closet and bathroom properly. It looked very odd in the initial planning.
Regarding the first floor: I now also see the benefit of straightening the wall.
The house is located in a quiet 30 km/h (18 mph) zone, but we still wanted all bedrooms (parents and children) to face the garden. Do you think the kids’ bedrooms lose spatial quality this way? From our point of view, they are still large enough.
J
Janinashome20 Aug 2022 10:16SoL schrieb:
I would carefully read the previous answers, as many flaws in the plan are mentioned there... Thank you, yes, of course I have read everything. I was referring to the feedback from my side, otherwise I won’t finish replying today 🙂 After uploading the plan, I also noticed many mistakes. A missing door in the bathroom, a dead end on the ground floor instead of a technical room. Somehow, quite a few things got mixed up. The ceiling height in the laundry room also doesn’t make sense. But my intention was to position the windows low in the children’s rooms, so the kids can already look into the garden now and not only once they start secondary school. On the south side we also have an unobstructed view, so no one can look into the bedrooms.
M
Myrna_Loy20 Aug 2022 10:17If you have to partially demolish, I would be cautious about using the space as storage. Using a garage as storage is strictly prohibited and can result in fines. Usually, nothing happens, but it only takes one annoyed neighbor.
You already have so much space; with good planning, storage rooms can be integrated in other, sensible ways.
The plan doesn’t seem professionally designed to me; it looks more like you just expanded the entire bungalow into a living area and then added the same floor area on top. Therefore, I disagree with evelinoz—this is an attempt to turn a bungalow into a two-story house. The result is a large open living hall without the house having coherence, a logical sequence of rooms, or proper structure.
You already have so much space; with good planning, storage rooms can be integrated in other, sensible ways.
The plan doesn’t seem professionally designed to me; it looks more like you just expanded the entire bungalow into a living area and then added the same floor area on top. Therefore, I disagree with evelinoz—this is an attempt to turn a bungalow into a two-story house. The result is a large open living hall without the house having coherence, a logical sequence of rooms, or proper structure.
M
Myrna_Loy20 Aug 2022 10:41Currently, almost 40 sqm (430 sq ft) are planned as play space alongside the three children’s bedrooms. The phase during which children play like this doesn’t last very long. My sons are both primary school age now, and thankfully they no longer use all the living areas for playing. I would move the kitchen closer to the dining area and properly plan a pantry and utility room/storage space near the kitchen, instead of including a narrow hallway section with three doors and a garage for that purpose. There is enough space available. The garage will already be full enough with bicycles and sports gear.
M
Myrna_Loy20 Aug 2022 10:48That’s about 280 sqm (3,000 sq ft), with just over 40 sqm (430 sq ft) designated as a play area for toddlers. And the storage / cellar substitute is in the garage, accessible through a tight squeeze? That doesn’t seem very like a dream house to me. There is space for a great mudroom, but all the extra area is planned for Brio toys and fuse beads?
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