ᐅ Large single-family house with 4 children’s bedrooms – adaptable into 2 separate living units

If you are already at the stage of planning a bathtub with a door, first mark the turning circles for a rollator and wheelchair. These spaces are already very tight, especially if someone needs to assist. Reinforce the wall construction behind the bathroom fixtures during building so that a grab bar can be installed.

Also, place two armchairs with reclining and lift-assist functions in your living room. Seniors do not want to spend all their time confined to a small room. Have you drawn your existing or desired furniture to scale in the floor plan, including clearances for movement? For example, the freezer in the utility room is usually deeper than the standard 60cm (24 inches), and you may need a large one for 4, 6, or even 8 people.

Do this and you will see more clearly where space is tight. This is especially important for personal items that set you apart, like your grandmother’s rustic cupboard, your shoe collection, or the library you furnish with your books. Your food storage will also expand, and pots and pans will be large. Don’t forget to consider all scenarios, including “what ifs” and possibilities.

I would also suggest planning larger windows in the dining and living areas. Our eyes don’t stop at the edge of the table when sitting. Large windows enhance the feeling of space.

Walk through your house. Children return from school (by the way, I know a family with six members who have a dedicated cloakroom), change shoes, hang up jackets, open wet umbrellas, put away scarves and hats, school bags, sports bags, and multiply that by 4 children plus 2 to 4 adults. Each person has more than one pair of shoes and a jacket. Add visiting children and possibly their parents if you are friends.

Where should all these items go? With limited mobility, shoes and other objects on the floor become tripping hazards. This is what I mean by family scenes. For example, just this morning—even though there were only two of us—our cloakroom contained a bag for ballet later that afternoon, a booster seat (for carpooling), a violin case and school bag for the morning, my work bag, and a basket with bread and eggs that I need to take to my parents. In the evening, the booster seat will be put away, the ballet bag stored in the cloakroom, the violin moved to the living room, and in its place by the school bag will be a bicycle helmet and a bag with change of clothes.

Or another scene: Grandma is sitting at the table knitting; child 1 is doing homework; child 2 just arrived from school and wants to eat; children 3 and 4 are playing in the living room; and medication for grandpa is being sorted into pill organizers on the dining table. Is the table large enough? Can 10 people fit comfortably around it for a meal, with one person in a wheelchair? For example, at our dining table, 10 people can fit with regular chairs, and during celebrations, we can squeeze 12. With two wheelchairs, it’s comfortable for 8, tightly packed for 10, but you really have to keep your elbows close to your body.

In your plan, the space between the chairs and the kitchen island is very tight. This might be too narrow for seniors—for example, a senior with a cane comes up to the table edge, and you try to slide the chair underneath from behind. The path to the terrace will likely go through the kitchen very often.

I find the quick alternative design quite good, especially the second terrace. The seniors have their private space. Living in a shared flat like this is certainly not easy for everyone. The cloakroom is larger, and the overall impression is more open, comfortable, and spacious.

kbt09 schrieb:

Just a thought, couldn’t your parents’ house basically become the "parents’ house" so that your wife’s parents could stay there during their visits? In case of needing care, one room with just enough space for a 160cm (63 inch) bed is really not enough.

I would also like to do that in our situation. Everyone agrees NO ...
Although a shared living arrangement does have advantages, even for the older generation. There are simply more people around. Loneliness should not be underestimated. Even if you are two people and hardly leave the house anymore, it still makes itself felt. And it would bring peace of mind. There is always someone present who can press the emergency button, etc.

Let's keep it brief. The house already works only limitedly for 4 children, and not at all for 2 elderly people, even if they are still spry and can walk independently.

There is a reason why the rooms and bathrooms in care homes appear so spacious...

Marcus. schrieb:

We are planning to use the design to obtain offers from various house builders (tender).

My advisees use my experience to approach this step in two parts: the first step involves only a preliminary design of planning permission quality, and the participants are asked two questions: firstly, what it would roughly cost to realize the design as shown in the preliminary draft, and secondly, what it would cost to replace it with a proven building proposal from the "catalog" of their repertoire; in the second case, it could be a "standard house" or a "promotional house". This way, you get a counterproposal with the major advantage that this model has already successfully passed its "dress rehearsal(s)" and therefore is production-ready. Any individual design premiere carries the risk of initial defects and is also less predictable in terms of pricing.

By involving typically three timber builders and three masonry builders at this stage, it is also possible to identify if the design happens to be significantly cheaper to build using one method over the other. Then you can either have the architect develop the preliminary design further, specifically optimized for one or the other construction method, or you take one of the counterproposals as a new basis, and the architect’s next task is to customize that for the specific building family. The “actual” tender is then the second part. According to the different focus of the task, these two instruments are named in my services “Setting the Course” and “Builder Search.” Many advisees have the “Setting the Course” phase carried out by me or another independent building consultant, but it is basically also possible for laypersons to carry it out themselves; the trick lies, as described, in the second question.

Especially if you only carry out this step as a single process, you end up receiving a mix of incomparable offers and, as a layperson, might struggle desperately to manage this chaos with the very unsuitable tool “Excel table.”

What is almost certain to cause disappointment is the hope that the participants of the inquiry would provide substantial improvement ideas to the individual design or even fully debug it (assuming they are professionals). This, however, spectacularly fails: they only debug the errors that would cause a building permit application to fail outright. Otherwise, any possible (and unfortunately highly likely with non-professional planning) mess gets approved almost one-to-one. Dimensions are rounded to the nearest half centimeter, usually remaining fantasy measurements that ignore the octameter grid (masonry construction) or the beam axis spacing (industrial timber construction). In masonry, this results in construction defects visible as “patches” in the disrupted brickwork pattern.

An owner-builder who is not warned about these shortcomings tends to sign contracts more quickly – and that is all that counts for the general contractor competing for the job.

In your case, you will receive offers based on the individual design shown; none of the participants will likely propose a classic two-family house with stacked apartments for two-child families as I suggested. For large spans, they will plan beams and/or thicker ceilings, but they are unlikely to experiment with alternative arrangements for load-bearing walls. Especially if you approach builders cold and it is unclear whether you are requesting offers in a practical scope or rather as a time-filling exercise, and whether you are actually asking for bids or more so counteroffers, no one will put real effort appropriate to your project into it. Preparing truly useful offers takes time and thus costs money.

For the majority of laypersons who send cold inquiries and whose “tenders” are more like “Russian roulette,” even the good building companies only put in effort consistent with this gamble. This explains the secret why the market is not gradually being cleansed of poor builders: they participate more often in the “price competitions” of literally “excel-lent” prospective clients and naturally win these more often. And if they are not dead, there will always continue to be “butcher houses” ;-)

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11ant schrieb:

(...)
What will definitely be disappointing in any case is the hope that participants in the round request would bring significant improvement suggestions to the individual design or even fully debug it (based on the idea that they are professionals, after all). But that completely fails with loud fanfare: they only debug the errors that would kill a building permit / planning permission application. (...)

However, no malicious intent or cunning should be assumed on the part of the companies here. You receive a design and are asked to provide a price or to present an off-the-shelf alternative model. And that is exactly what they do, because they are sure the competition does the same. If I sit down and start refining the first details out of the design, the prospective client will say, “Thanks, but your competitor who offered a lower price will build it.”

Precisely because they are professionals, they know how things work, how clients think, and how the competition operates. Ultimately, everyone wants the contract, and in most cases, with comparable performance, it comes down to the price.

MachsSelbst schrieb:

When I sit down and start cutting the first bricks out of the draft, the future builder says, "Thanks, but your competitor will do the build because they offered a lower price."

Worse, and this is something we often see here: the contractor Schlampenhuber gets the job not primarily because he is (seemingly) the cheapest, but because he (sometimes untruthfully) promises "no problem" for special requests, while the more experienced and thorough provider appears "less competent" to the client due to raising concerns. "Jürgen does it this way, Willi does it that way, so we want it too." The builder who says "this will warp," or "he just can’t do it" or "only wants to charge extra" for properly sizing the component is seen as difficult.

MachsSelbst schrieb:

In the end, everyone wants the contract, and in most cases with comparable quality, it comes down to price.

Price is often the only parameter that laypeople "understand." "My" contractors do not want to win the contract by undercutting price: a necessary profit is essential to securing the business’s survival. I want contractors who will at least reach the end of the warranty period. Satisfied customers keep acquisition costs low through referrals, which is why reputable providers seek collaborative planning with the client (or their knowledgeable advisor). More sensible, sometimes "more expensive" options can (and often should) be explained. There are simple reasons—like those described here—why Fleischerhaus general contractors and excellent clients keep finding each other. Likewise, it’s not a bug but a feature that solid general contractors view "bargain hunters" like "Krethi and Plethi Billigjakob" as a burden they gladly avoid. In addition to advising future homeowners, I also consult companies, always considering the risks of insolvency.

Attentive readers will also know this: behind many stories of unfinished builds is a general contractor who won the contract mainly due to a price-leading bid.

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