CADjockey

Yes, we could put two very nice houses side by side on our plot, but it's what I call our 20 year house (to my wife's distress). First house 5 years, second house 10 years, this house 20 years but let's call it 20 years from build completion. We are not planning to move so my only concern in financial terms is to try and come out the other end where the result is worth on paper the sum of purchase & build. More than that I don't care.

Don't know if we would get away with that or particularly want to, It would mean building in the back garden and we'd rather end up with more back garden than front as we will drop our existing house whatever. So, we have planned in the cost of renting a house for the duration of the build... it's either that of factor in the cost of a divorce too... The garden space is why we bought the house in the first place.

Hi, I've posted a couple of topics already but I thought I'd throw this in too... Family of 4 (2 girls 7 & 10), North Worcestershire. Conceptually we are going to drop our house and New Build in its place. Plot is about an acre and we've lived in our house for 5+ years. We have renovated 4 rooms (3/4 bedrooms and the dining room), back to frame, new wiring, insulation, board and plaster, skirting & architrave. However, I did some quick maths one day and figured that what it was going to cost to finish the remaining rooms, plus kitchen, bathroom, windows, roof & cladding was considerably on the way to 1/3 of building from scratch. So we stopped looked down the back of the sofa and decided we could afford to rip it up and start fresh. We have spent probably 8 months on the layout so far and as you may see from my other posts, are questioning whether to ditch our 'Architect'. You may also see were we have got to with the plans, also posted on here this week. I really don't know if we can salvage what we have so far... Watch this space... Your comments so far have set the cogs whirring and I think I'm at least about to rework the hallway which means I can reduce the cellar, and also try and do away with the variation in GF-FF footprint. Balcony to MB might also bite the dust. Anyway, hi, hello, bonjour

When did they become too expensive? And on that note, where's the chauffeur going to sleep if I put the media room over the garage? Seriously though, my dad has lived in NZ for 20 odd years and NewZealanders seem to love the kitchen/dining/lounge space. Two things that we didn't like about it from experience was the simple fact that we don't want to sit in the same room as the pots and pans whilst eating and also have the smell of food lingering about the combined space after. Or maybe we are just grumpy and unsociable, or maybe that's just me :-)

Thanks, I think... I probably should have added some additional detail before opening the flood gates, but all comments interesting. So, a few things, by no means all... I for example might have said that layouts of bathroom, kitchen content are just plonked in by the designer and are not reperesentative of final condition. As are the naming of all the 'Stores'. The Study/Playroom is a reflection of how we use our current one off our existing lounge, whereas in this plan it's more Study, no intent to watch over little ones now they are 7 & 10. I take your points about the scale of the hall/landing space, yes it's big, you should have seen his first draft! My only real intent for that was that I want to access all the main rooms of the hall/landing without passing through other rooms. This is not an issue for the en-suites or dressing room or boot room and laundry which are functionally different. The stores on the first floor are wardrobes, except the landing accessed one which is linen, airing cupboard if you will. But can be repurposed to accommodate stairs if ever we wanted to expand into the loft. The family bathroom was accessed from the landing but ended up being too small and there was an intent to try and make the kids rooms as similar in size as possible. I can't be doing with Jack'n'Jill, I just not going to happen, but I do see the point. We use our separate dining room every meal time unless we are outside. I get the distance from kitchen comments, and my wife has some reservations in that area, I just think an additional door between kitchen and dining is a waste of storage space, and a 70s hatch seems out of time. Still undecided. We are not fans of the current trend for endless open plan living, and personally I think it's really a just side effect of rooms being too small in modern houses. I do have a minor concern that if we put in an island that drops down into a table on the patio side we end up never using the dining room, but only because we have an additional table that is... yes... closer. Thinking still required. Balcony wasn't our idea, but came from the designer, I've skinned it down from the 5m square landing pad that he originally drew, I could literally have relaunched the Falklands conflict from it, and am leaning towards a Juliet as shown on the RH bedrooms. The cellar... yes, I know it's pouring money into a hole, quite literally, but for one thing I can't see where to put the additional rooms, connected to the house in some kind of flow with the other main rooms and have them on the GF where they belong. Yes I will have a 9m space above the garage, but I don't plan on going out to the garage to watch a movie. And for another thing, we want a cellar. Additionally it's kind of free planning space. Interesting comments on the differential footprint GF to FF and additional cost implications and the GF ceiling heights is not something I'd considered. I can go on, but that's probably enough for now. Further comment still appreciated, I still think :-) Added site plan for interest, the garage is in the wrong place and so are the steps to the first floor and the huge patio is all wrong, so not much right then...

OK, so I just posted plans and images in the appropriate section for comment. Maybe I'm just an idiot...

So I'm in a quandary over why I'm not excited about the design we currently have. Not gone to planning yet, Could do with some external comment as cannot now be objective. Here are the floor plans from the designer, and some SketchUP views by me. Any help appreciated, thanks in advance.

Thanks for all your initial responses, I get the feeling that an Architect should give you blue sky thinking and an Architectural Technician maybe more nuts and bolts, but neither are exclusively true. I kind of feel that there can't be so many opportunities to design a house from scratch given that the total number of self builds was only about 10k last year of national built stock from what I've read, and on that basis I expected more from our designer in enthusiasm alone. Maybe I also should have cast a little wider, but, I was focused on local knowledge of the planning dept and better drawings to get the design over. I'm painfully aware that not everyone can envision a 2D drawing. Although we gave him a starter for ten, we were not overly prescriptive on layout or style, even if our 'mood boards' were of a style. I think as we went along It seemed more apparent that he knows what he knows but is a bit out of his depth in some aspects. Didn't want to do a floating balcony because of thermal bridging (which is partially valid but there must be a solution), didn't like the cellar not following the profile of the ground floor (ok it would have required a bit more concrete) and when we suggested we might install ground source heat recovery, he suggested air source (which from what I understand requires more to run at the time of year when you actually need it - I may be wrong!) Oh and I forgot that he also suggested we could put in faux beams if we wanted (I figure if you do use an oak frame, then make it do the work, not that we ended up with an oak framed design or were specifically set on one.) On the plus side, he did kind of hit on an exterior treatment that my wife and I could more of less agree on. I thought telling the neighbours was going to be the first difficult point, I guess I was wrong. Any further comments welcome.

Hi, So a little background as I'm fresh on here... Decided we would knock down our house and build from scratch (As you do!). So we spent some time trawling the planning portal looking at local builds that had been approved and the state of the drawings etc. The theory being that someone who had experience and success with the local planning office might be at least a starting point and the the quality of the drawings (I know a fair bit about CAD) might also be a plus. We prepared a starter pack that included my initial concepts & sketches, bubble diagrams of how the rooms should ideally link, some mood board images of what we kind of liked, a list of wants in an ideal world &ct.. &ct.. Met and engaged an 'Architect' who it turns out is an Architectural Technologist or whatever, but didn't highlight the fact or difference to us. And not that we are snobby about that kind of thing, but just saying! Gave him the pack as a starting point. So other than the evolution of the layout, the First draft was incomplete as a design, no garage block and several fundamentally missing rooms. Second draft still missing a garage block and a topological survey still outstanding, which given the 1m drop over the length of the footprint we felt was required to continue. Bear in mind that by this point I'd completely modelled it all up in SketchUp to review in 3D and push to VR (Well you may as well engage the technology at hand given what you are potentially going to spend!). And I'd sent 3D images of changes and ideas back to him in detail after some discussions with my wife more than once. Third draft garage still not correct or to envisaged scheme sent to him. Now the crux of the matter is that though it's basically done, we are, neither of us whooping with joy at the current plan. It's a house/location we want to stay in for 20 years+. Are we expecting too much to be excited, to feel our designer gets us and how we want to live? Is it time to find another 'Architect', cut our losses and start over. It's undoubtedly better to write off £2-3k than commit hundreds of thousands on what's just not right. I'd value some opinion... Many thanks.