puntloos

Well you perhaps saw my design with the double-height - it's all a matter of balance. I think the ratio of bathrooms-to-bedrooms should be roughly 1:2 to be "okay", if you hit that, I think a foyer would be better use of the space. But yeah frankly your drawings are hard to put in context..

Left Hand Side? No particular reason, not sure what the main difference is between LH or RH? Isn't that roughly what I put in the picture (attached below) I designated 'ferdinand staircase (in my updated discussion presentation) No toilet yet but other than that basically there? Clearly swapping LH or RH curving doesn't matter too much, I could.. go either way..

I was wondering about ASHP sizing too. Not lacking any experience it seems prudent to over-size them just so they 'don't have to work too hard, and become noisy'. Or is that way too grossly oversimplified?

These are really useful, thank you. I think that indeed perhaps the concept of an edwardian house (mini-mansion ) is perhaps interesting for me to study a bit more, trying to retain some of the 'luxurious' features of properties that are more generously proportioned.. Good picture. Not quite my style, but a more slick modern version would do the same thing. Would you agree that a 'transparent' staircase would be less mysterious than this style, so indeed the eye would move to wonder what is around the back, whilst if you can see through e.g.

Ha, well, just doing what I can to make sure I understand the nature of the project Just hoping I'm not forgetting aardvark. Well, the main idea is that we weren't planning to create a proper loft, but instead just extending the kids room unto the roof, or perhaps having some type of ladder to a fun space in there might work.. Did my render of this - Not reflect what you had in mind? (obviously it can be done a bit more elegantly..) Hmm. indeed I think I see the idea, many staircases can only sort-of show what's above them.. a ceiling light will help, no?

Since this inline discussion format is a bit tough to follow for people dropping in, let me recap where I stand after all of this: Most people seem to like the general concept of the living space, large open plan with a good separation of the areas so it doesn't become too cavernous. Also the design is unique enough to not be too cookie-cutter. Some design choices were rightly critiqued. Details below, but as a general response I would say I'm a not an architect, that's why we've hired one - meaning, while I think I could fix some of the more obvious ones (e.g. ground floor walls rarely lining up with 1st floor walls), but resolving all the knock-on effects from rejiggering things will cost me a lot of time, and the architect will only take this design as 'strong suggestions for direction' rather than exacting choices not to be trifled with ? In response I created an updated presentation. In text form most of it is below: Pantry/sneakway This little room is seen by many as 'not great for anything' - with a walkway it doesn't have enough storage to really matter. Instead, a few suggest moving the pantry into either garage,or hall, or perhaps 50-50. I'd note though that part of the reason for the pantry is the pocket doors need space to live in. Garage We're probably going ahead with a garage that for planning permission purposes looks solid/internal, but we might not finish it and turn it into effectively a car port. Future insights might compel us to close off the garage into a place where even @epsilonGreedy could tinker with Automobiles. Width-wise though, I don't think we will want to make it much wider than the current 3m, although as mentioned we might take some of the pantry. Hall The hall, while already larger than 'standard ones' had most of the focus of discussion. Various designs of the stairwell were suggested given that the current design squeezed the lowest step of the stairs very close to the front door. The main challenge is to combine various features to make the hallway feel spacious without sacrificing too much to get it. Some ideas suggested were to recess the doors to draw the eye into wondering what's around the corner, and also somehow (visually?) narrowing the hallway near the sliding doors might make it seem deeper. At the end of the day though, I suspect the hallway will feel largest if the distance one can see in any direction is the largest. For this reason I'm also not quite convinced to make the hallway less wide on the first floor, even though the 'dead end' walkway with the plant is frankly a little silly. I'd like a better or more useful use of that space, but I'm happy with the visual benefits of it. -> No substantial decision made, probably leave it up to the architect, but visually I think the stairway to the side-and-back of the hallway appeals most to me. Basement I received a handwavequote from a builder on our shortlist saying that if they were to build the house, adding a basement under it would cost roughly 2500/sqm. (compared to the rule-of-thumb 2000/sqm we're considering). While we don't deeply need more space, having a basement does have benefits, especially if there are noisy pieces of equipment (MVHR, ASHP, AC, Gym Stuff) and/or noisy kids there. -> Our current plan is to perhaps apply for planning permission for a 30-odd sqm basement, and decide later if we want to actually build it. Office Might enlarge the office a little at the expense of the play room and the 'secret' room. Rotating the desk away from facing the window might help against glare from outside. MasterBed Shape for the Master suite is well-liked but main bed area feels a bit small for the size of the house. Our main goal is to have enough storage even if we turn the walk-in into an extra bedroom. Opening up to the roof might give an extra sense of spaciousness. Kid Room Perhaps also good to open up to the roof, fun play area there, as well as perhaps adding an ensuite to improve the overall balance of the house

To be clear I'm going more for 'HUH'. Srsly, I have to be realistic about the amount of space (in my smallish plot) I can free up purely for doing stuff like that. While So yeah, if we're going for 'rate my crib' or some MTV show where superstars show of how they invested their money kicking a ball.. How small was this manor house anyway? To be fair my current design is 25ft high ceiling, 16 x 10 floor.. Good idea. One Arch I spoke to today mentioned that having the far end of the hall a bit narrower creates the impression of distance, Not sure what you mean here, 'sacrifice' the sneak pantry for a wider hallway? Good idea. Like this? (the right one is my current) I have no idea ? do you count a base cabinet as '1' and the overhanging wall cabinet as another one? Or is the entire height of the house 1? Assuming base+wall = 2, then currently I have about 25. True, but well, at least currently I'm doing computer work. No need to assemble complex machinery. Still, not terrible to reconcile a little. Thanks for your responses so far!

Looks fancy How often do you use it, and for what?

Absolutely not, this is the finalfinal amazeballs design worthy of the Bill S. Preston Esquire and Theodore Logan price for excellence and anyone raising any critique is wrong and makes me and multiple puppies very sad. Form over function, obviously. Slightly more seriously though, what I think you're saying is that for simplicity and therefore build cost, walls should ideally be in a straight line through multiple floors, not offset. Makes a ton of sense, and well, this is frankly purely laziness on my part. Meaning: our architect has provided quite a nice design for our top floor (I'm not sure I can share her work freely on this open forum.. I think they retain some ownership on this, plus they were just sketches so far. I can share privately if interested, PM me, but it wouldn't fit the ground floor either.) so the top floor of this house is not really mindfully designed to actually fit, but really just a bunch of ideas thrown together. You're very right that ha, pretty much no 1st floor walls match with the ground floor ones. I award myself a B- for Bogus design. Single-storey roof though, not sure if that's a problem? I guess we have 'more than one roof' - one 2nd floor and "a few" 1st floor sections, is that dramatically more costly than one big roof? I'm sure it is.. but the house does look prettier for it. As an example - compare a pretty old version of the house design: with the current (sorry a bunch of render artifacts in the current that I meant to fix, but you get the idea) Perhaps it's not worth the $$$ and of course mindful of your point of supporting walls vs beams and columns etc but IMO the new one is a more aesthetically pleasing design.. Uh. Ask a pro, not me. QUick note: many people speak about very expensive omgomg and actually mean "5000 GBP extra cost" - yes it adds up and I strongly appreciate sturdy/solid/elegant designs, but purely from a financial point of view 5000 isn't making me blink too badly.. Yup, sounds sensible Difficult to be honest about from my point of view, I'd like to think my view is more 'as a whole' than you give credit for but frankly it is true that my requirements doc provides a ton of 'atomic' requirements that are patched together rather than a big vision through and through. You and I had the same discussion earlier and perhaps I'm too engineery and not artistic enough ... for one, this is exactly why I'm using a proper architect in this as well I'm hoping my design has a decent philosophy behind it, and ticks a ton of boxes.. but there you go Do you have some examples of what it would look like? Well, I do agree, but if anything that's what I'd argue I was doing.. for example not going for a full garage, having a large hall sacrificing 'bedrooms' (both number and size.. I could easily do 5BR if I really wanted) etc. Well, surely that's exactly what we have with the very oversized living area? Example? As for under-sized rooms: - Utility is currently massive, obviously. Only turning it into a real garage is a compromise the 'next buyer' could choose to make - Sneak pantry... I could imagine this going away in favor of even larger garage but there should be plenty storage anyway.. it got there mainly because the wife envisioned the whole 'not bothering the movie-watchers' scenario. - secret/consumer unit- reason it's there is that for having a nice TV watching experience, the office was actually too big.. the sofa was far away from the screen... Anything else? I kinda agree with the 'feeling' but I'm not sure what exact steps to take. I think EGreedy suggested removing pantry/toilet, but he(she?) needs a massive garage, we definitely don't.. This I think you might be correct in.. of course that pantry is a culprit there.. but I'm hoping our Architect will optimize that. Yes, that's Ferdy the Fern. No, it's.. one of the artifacts of my design crappitude.. which is that my top floor is not reallly solidly designed. The key reason that I didn't do your below suggestion: Is exactly because the space is only a small amount of sqm and it makes the spacious feel of the hallway much much better in the renders: vs I would much prefer that walkway to 'go somewhere sensible' but even when it doesn't, the spaciousness seems to matter... Well, perhaps.. I'd love to hear better solutions.. maybe I'm a cynic but I think *most* of houses such as this one don't have any solution for 'sneaking into the kitchen while the main living is in use' use case, they just assume that people will have to deal with people barging through the 'theatre'.. But maybe no solution is better than a poor one? It's a fair point. I guess this might come from my simple assumption to create a small-but-feasible optional garage, and take everything else from there. The space was there, the hallway had to be in its current place to not clash with the pillars in the living room... it's good of you to flag since it might not even be needed. Good idea. Hm, choices. The problem with such a design would be that we enjoy "looking at the garden" - in particular from the seating area. Either the seats would face directly away from the garden(as I think you are proposing), or the screen would block said garden view... Someone put it to us once that "unused space is a luxury" - I wonder if thats a correct sentiment in general and here in particular. Agreed that you could never put something permanent where the bifolds are now, but Id note that the bifolds will probably be open 99% of the year, only to close in the case of guests who we would want to shield from kitchen mess/noise. This is an interesting idea i'd have to mull over a bit more, thanks. Still, the point stands that in your proposed spot, the cineroom would be too 'cine-room-y' and not 'family-living-area-with-nice-multimedia-y' - eh, depends on how many kids there will be "Very Carefully" .. Worth thinking about but that one doesn't sound too hard with some extend-o-pole-swiping thing. A lot harder with windows above a piece of flat-ish roof on the 1st floor. Thanks a ton for all your candid comments, they are much appreciated, I was hoping for you to respond

How dare you sir. It will be a household XO Cognaq bottle.

@epsilonGreedy - thanks for responding! Yup, you hit on my main concern that I'm trying to make sure I get right: pushing towards large/grand important spaces, and minimal "everything else" (utility, beds, where we don't spend a lot of waking time.). To us this seems sensible, and it's intended as a long-term home for ourselves, yet "resale value" is not completely ignored, plus we might be wrong about our own preferences.. would we "in retrospect" be "happier" with e.g. a smaller hall and larger bedroom? Yes, that is part of the plan. Interesting idea, I will mull this one over. One concern is that me and my wife have different bed schedules, so there's often one sneaking in/out of the bedroom while the other already sleeps, so indeed noise is a concern. Not sure if glazing is a great idea though, privacy and all. (ha, this view shows my shoddy attempt at lengthening the chandelier chain by means of a shower handrail ) Yep, thanks for the tip! Really easy improvement right there. Yep, as said above, I think frankly our plot/house/budget size prevent us from doing the effortless opulence of large/spaciousness and "money is no concern", but there are some thing we can do at acceptable compromises elsewhere.. I just really appreciate the opinions of people like yourselves on if this makes the house a 'nightmare' (all form, no function..) or actually positively impacts the experience of living in it (not just being ready for the off chance that the queen is going to visit..)

Would you be willing to share a few details (perhaps private message) in particular things like photo, floorplan, cost (more or less than if it were occupied space?)

Many ideas seem to be fads though. E.g. having a height difference in your ground floor as a feature, rather than a necessity bcs of the shape of soil etc..

Theoretically (...) it shouldn't be unsafe.. of course lifts of any kind can theoretically malfunction, but in general other than that it might be a bit scarier than the kid imagined while trying it I don't really see a major issue? (not that I would encourage him to do that, but.. you should be able to open from inside etc..)

How often do you use your dumbwaiter, and for what? Only laundry? Food? Garbage? Kids?

I .. kinda see it. And I assume the actual floor of the lift would be flat, not stepped.. (unless your lift is not designed for wheelchair bound people... ).. but that would leave the challenge of how/where would you put the ramp to get in..

I really like the idea of brizebox, but the key for the box seems super simple. I wonder if any mildly capable criminal couldn't open it in 15 seconds flat..

What do you mean by this? A lift that glides diagonally?

Yes. Black.. surely at least more like a Taupe design mark? But no this indeed is not quite good enough, I don't know what happened, probably when I put in the dumbwaiter I moved it to the side, but clearly it's required to be able to walk to both sides. I can correct by extending a little. Not a bad idea in general Not sure I get this part, since you'd already have to be up the stairs to see even the non-recessed door? Like this?

Btw, general question: What do you guys think about the oversized hallway? We clearly like the 'view' of it, but there's some downsides: - Privacy: lots of angles to see us moving upstairs, currently not an issue, but they might be planning houses across the street. Are there ways to prevent this in the evening? Shutters I guess? - Space sacrifice - By my calculations, this hallway uses up about 12.5sqm extra space. (*) - Noise - All doors are directly connected to the hallway, perhaps with a smaller hallway we could have 'buffers'.. (*) a standard, 'cramped' hallway would be 0.6*5 (downstairs, for a standard-straight) + 1.1*5 (the upper deadendwalkway) + 4*1 (upper normal walkway, to be put above the entrance) = 12.5sqm less

Cheers, sorry didn't mean to sound pushy in general this forum is quite lively so I figured I just call out a few people as a friendly ping Fair.. as we hinted at here and there we're basically in a "london style" environment where (plot/floor) space is at a massive premium so we are finding ourselves in this constant pressure field of making the best use of what we have. In the case of the garage: - We don't need a place to store our car indoors. - Our main purpose is literally storage, utility, and drying clothes. but.. for resale purposes, people expect a garage, and often feel "cheated" once they notice the garage couldn't fit even a 'smart' car. So we figured creating the possibility of having a proper garage was the right balance. A *proper* garage (4x7m?) doesn't make sense for us I don't think. Ha, make it a proper man-cave - not a terrible idea really. Have the 'chair' in the 'secret' room be a toilet.. Will consider. Good point. The principle is pretty nice I think, we saw it in one house we viewed before we gave up on buying other people's dreams (that somehow always included low ceilings). The main downside of the design is that we like the option to convert a walk-in closet into a complete new room (moving from 4br to 5). Would need to take care that there's enough clothes storage either way.. Focusky seems a pretty nice option for 'free' Thanks for your comments, great stuff to think about..

I was wondering about the canopy, is it included in the planning permissions etc (since we are required to fit in line with the other houses we can't move too much stuff forward.. Ah, very good to know. Fair. Yes, hopefully our Arch can make it work. Agreed, perhaps there's a better way to solve this. I was gently assuming that with the limited product I'm using all kinds of tolerances of stair angles etc are so loose that once we do this 'professionally' it would be resolved. Ha, as I noted in the comments it's mostly I didn't know what to do with the space Interesting point, hadn't thought of that. Yeah I really need to start a discussion there. - Done - Dumbwaiters Well the intended usage was storing largeish stuff, as well as hanging laundry. (plus of course the option to create a garage) Yes, bikes/bins primarily. Stroller for the kid for a while You think it looks limited? You're primarily talking about the living room? Or overall? Livingroom wise, our main idea was to make sure the glazing was covered by awnings both for the privacy/comfort (solar gain) parts. Heat loss wise.. I was hoping glazing would be fairly good nowadays. Cost.. mm.. fair point I'm sure, I guess we will look at that once we need to start comprimising after recovering from the shock at the price tag of the current design.. For the kids' room? We were debating suchlike.. for our own purposes the current is fine, but I guess for a house of this particular 'caliber' it might be warranted.. Thank you for your comments so far!

In our house, we have a constant 'stream' of stuff going up and down our stairs. - supplies that go up (shampoo, toilet paper, washed laundry) we put on the stairs until someone feels like carrying them up - stuff that goes down (minor ('clean') rubbish, dirty clothes) same thing, near top of the stairs. Therefore the thought was maybe a dumbwaiter would be a more elegant way of handling this stream of stuff. True? False? Is having a dumbwaiter anywhere near useful in a house with only 2 floors, and maybe a loft? -M

Not a bad point, yes 2600sqft, which was what a few estate agents suggested.. the plot is really central village, and is 'reasonably' appropriate.. we prefer it a little smaller to be honest but didn't want to compromise important rooms too much. At the front, we have: - 4.5x3 utility, which is reallyreally ample - 4x3 office, not terrible? - 2.7x3.2 play area connected to main living.. Which ones do you consider too cramped, or too subdivided? He (she?) was probably quite right the stairs need a slightly different design but currently they are really flat. To be clear though, one might claim that my house design is trying to incorporate 'design features of luxury houses' (double-height entrance halls, large open plan living etc) into a constrained footprint.. such is life in the inner city? It's an important point to get right I think, so will make sure to mention it to architect! tx.. I hope the arch can make it work in the final design If I haven't already I was planning to start a topic on the use of a dumbwaiter. Corridor> yeah it's an interesting one, given kids with different lifestyle than us I could imagine we would want to be able to sneak into the kitchen for supplies while the 'other party' watched a movie. But it's a bit of a limited use case and not a massive deal. Agreed the pantry is tiny, frankly it was mostly because I'm a poor designer and didn't really know what to do with the space Will suggest it, I think it indeed might not be worth including, it was mostly my wife's feature request. Ah, didn't know there were specific numbers there.. I'm assuming arch will handle that.. Well there's room for 3 cars on the property, which is what our regs ask for - but you'd probably need to cut away the hedge and/or allow one car to block in the others. Pretty common in the local area (london-style space constraints..) Done thing That's what I'm hoping.. thanks! By 'flow' do you also mean the architectural 'break' in the house? Or more just the sort-of S-shape? Fair point, I guess the core reason for the current design is that the office was intended to double as a 'retreat room' for parents (with a good TV and surround sound) if the kid has friends over.. Thanks a ton for your detailed points!