ᐅ Introduction to the Floor Plan

Curious... is this a completely new build?

- Why is there a staircase in the walk-in closet?
- The upstairs bathroom seems a bit too narrow for furnishing.
- Living area is too small.
- Entrance hall is too large.
- What is the purpose of the storage room?
- What is the idea behind the kitchen layout? Do I really have to carry the pasta across the entire kitchen to drain it!?
- I assume the second car in the garage is a Smart?
- How did you envision the concept? A shell? With 24 cm (9.5 inches) aerated concrete, you won’t meet energy efficiency regulations – unclear if there are exemptions for this.
- Bathroom as a passage room to the roof terrace?
- Long plumbing runs!
- I would guess this will be very expensive.

In summary: very curious, costly, partially impractical, key areas are small while others are very large... I like the overall concept, but not so much the execution.

That’s quite a statement, implying that children don’t need to be considered. My thoughts have still been circling around how this might be planned.

Let me take a look at the room layout:

• Kitchen: large but impractically designed. The distance between the sink and stove, the uninspired island in the middle of the room, etc. You don’t really know where to place the refrigerator most conveniently. Information about your cooking habits would be useful here. Cooking together? With friends? Etc.
• Huge room: absolutely fine if you often have many guests (is that the case?)
• Large living room: I actually like the separation
• Access to the storage extension from the kitchen: 188 cm (74 inches) is really not deep. You mention wanting to store the grill there, probably also the lawnmower, etc. Outdoor seating furniture for winter? For purely kitchen and pantry storage, however, the space is too large and for beverage crates etc., really very impractical compared to the car’s unloading spot.
• Guest room / ironing room: do you have that many guests? Maybe consider moving the guest room upstairs and planning an office here, especially if you also work from home. That way, the coffee is not too far away 😉
• Fitness room: if fitness is important to you, I find this almost too small. I could imagine combining it with the guest room in a way that allows, if selling later, the creation of a master suite here, with bedroom, dressing area, and bathroom together with the guest bath.
• Technical/laundry room probably fits... the question is, are the washing machine and similar appliances well placed here? Maybe better upstairs?
• Upstairs bedrooms look okay, sufficient and fitting, except for the balcony access.
• Walk-in closet I find too small, especially as the attic stairs are supposed to be there.
• Private room for the wife: okay
• Office: okay size-wise
• Bathroom: yes, the 208 cm (82 inches) are for the office... but I still find it too narrow, especially given your overall room layout. And then the privacy screen opposite the entrance door 😉 What’s great about a walk-in shower is also spaciousness, and I think 100 cm (39 inches) width is worth aiming for.
• And then there’s the attic again: another huge storage space... what exactly is supposed to go in there?

Basically, I could imagine placing the garage with an adjacent garden storage room on the far left, on the west side, then a kind of connecting structure, and then the main house. This could also reintegrate the east side.

venraij schrieb:
OK, I’ve noted that. I think it could also be installed later on in the guest bathroom if needed, but it must be planned with the structural engineering in mind.

The need usually arises suddenly. You just need to fall ill downstairs, and sitz baths become necessary. But where? In the shower? In a large basin? I’m not talking about age-related ailments that develop gradually, but rather situations that occur suddenly overnight.

venraij schrieb:
I think children can be considered excluded; the house is big enough, but it’s just not planned for them...

venraij schrieb:
The idea here was also to have openings that can remain open; the room next to n is my wife’s domain, so she could use it as a dressing room or similar. This way, there are three rooms that can be separated as needed, at least in theory.

Alright, just 2 people (in a pinch you have two rooms upstairs), but I’d plan it like this: your wife’s domain, however she wants it (I’d love to know how and what for 😉) and a proper dressing room planned right away. If I could, my dressing room would have nice drawers, my husband could walk past me, and a dresser would stand in the middle for folding clothes... a small sofa wouldn’t be bad either 😀

Let’s be frank: you don’t have to watch every single $1,000 now... the house will be impressive, so cutting down on the must-have square meters shouldn’t be an option…!

venraij schrieb:
The idea was for the partition wall to be open on the left and right between ez and wz, so there’s separation but still two rooms. The sliding door to the kitchen is planned the same way.

Yes, I know the idea, but with so many little windows it might all become too boxy, restless... both for the eyes and the mind.

venraij schrieb:
I didn’t want to make it wider in order to have a straight northern edge for the extension

venraij schrieb:
can you describe the problem in more detail

Too narrow and too long. My wife goes in to get the deep fryer or bread maker from the cabinet but can’t, because it’s too tight. You come to help and you can’t either, because everything is too narrow. Shorten and widen it. No: not square, but a reasonable space between the shelves.

venraij schrieb:
I actually found the kitchen fairly practical... Is this about the large distances between sink, fridge, and stove?

Exactly. A kitchen should be planned like the house, focusing on short routes between cleaning, preparation, and storage.

venraij schrieb:
The easiest solution would be to put the stove in the island, but I’m not too keen on that idea because of grease splashes etc.

Grease splashes on the wall or on the countertop behind the stove? It’s the same either way 🙂

venraij schrieb:
OK, noted. I think you could also add it later in the guest bathroom if the need arises; it just has to be planned structurally. We can do without it for the next few years — we hardly ever used ours so far.

venraij schrieb:
The roof pitch was set by the architect; I had planned 5 degrees less,

I would go with 25 degrees...

kbt09 schrieb:
Fitness room… if fitness is important to you, I find it almost too small.

Yeah, me too 🙂

venraij schrieb:
Maybe you can find a few more centimeters for space in front of the washbasin; otherwise, I can’t think of real alternatives.

venraij schrieb:
Yes, the main problem is probably my decision to ‘add’ a basement. The total footprint of the extensions is smaller than what a basement would need but it requires space beside the house. So the garage has to go. I can’t think of a better solution for the plot.

I’d let the architect work on it: driveway and entrance on the same side, reconsider your concerns, and plan according to your needs. It wouldn’t be a big deal if much of the house were rotated 90 degrees.

Something good will come out of it, especially if you don’t cut down on the marked areas and rethink the kitchen layout. Are you not cooking at the moment? I mean: just the mental walk from stove to sink already leaves a slippery trail on the floor.