Help with new build design please

[Thorfun]

my 2 cents.....have you considered hiring a professional? looks like a great plot and what you've drawn looks like it was done by someone without any architectural experience. for me it's a shame to try and design a house on your own especially if it's not your day job!

 

i know folk on here have done, in my mind, it should be left to the professionals.

 

either that or persuade @ETC to come up with some ideas and the ones i've seen before have been ace! but then he is a professional. 😉

[LaChab]

@ThorfunWe haven't!  Just like the actual construction, we like to do as much as we can ourselves. Just do our best and enjoy the journey!

[Thorfun]

5 minutes ago, LaChab said:

@ThorfunWe haven't!  Just like the actual construction, we like to do as much as we can ourselves. Just do our best and enjoy the journey!

i agree with doing as much as you can yourselves but, in my opinion, some jobs are just best left to the professionals.

[Kelvin]

I don’t like to comment on other people’s designs generally and a lot has been said already. While not overglazing the house is a good thing generally having rooms with no windows at all is a mistake imo. Even just the external visual aspect of large expanses of wall with nothing breaking it up. The hallway at the front door forcing everyone that visits into the TV room to get to the open plan area is an odd choice. I’d flip the cloakroom round against the TV room wall and remove the door if you want to keep bigger or keep the door and have a smaller cloakroom. You then create a new opening from the hallway into the lounge and possibly have a glass door here. Otherwise you’ll have a really dark hallway depending in how you do the front door although you could a vision panel to the front door to let in more light. The long narrow utility room is a poor use of the space especially if you had a really long worktop with loads of cupboards which will either be empty or full of stuff you never use. The suggestion of shortening it and adding that space to the lounge is a good option so definitely consider that. 

[Adsibob]

On 08/12/2023 at 14:40, LaChab said:

@ThorfunWe haven't!  Just like the actual construction, we like to do as much as we can ourselves. Just do our best and enjoy the journey!

Short sighted in my opinion. House design is a real skill and although professionals don’t always get it perfectly correct they can really help you consider pros and cons of different layouts. Maybe it works for you, but I think your layout is really suboptimal and if you actually lived in that space you would possibly regret it, or simply miss out on a much better layout without knowing it. Ignorance is of course bliss, but I still think it would be a shame.

 

If it’s a question of changing the consents you have already, then a professional will have some clever ideas and strategies about how you can leverage the permission you have already and get permission for something better. 
 

You are building a forever home. Don’t rush or skimp on the design.

[LaChab]

I really appreciate people's comments and suggestions.

It's prompted me to make a small change to the ground floor layout.

I hadn't realised that the cloakroom would have been a bit inaccessible from the living area, so I've moved it, which has also reduced the utility room (!), tidied up the TV room doors, and allowed room for a nice big hall cupboard.

All good things I think!

Forum ground floor.pdf

[LaChab]

@Kelvin Thanks for the prompting to review the cloakroom. I'm much happier with the new layout.  

I'm intending to have a glazed front door for light. I did originally have a glazed panel as you suggest, which I think looks really good, but once we'd added the large window at the top of the stairs it seemed unnecessary and a lot of money for not much benefit.

Edited December 10, 2023 by LaChab

[Adsibob]

6 hours ago, LaChab said:

I really appreciate people's comments and suggestions.

It's prompted me to make a small change to the ground floor layout.

I hadn't realised that the cloakroom would have been a bit inaccessible from the living area, so I've moved it, which has also reduced the utility room (!), tidied up the TV room doors, and allowed room for a nice big hall cupboard.

All good things I think!

Forum ground floor.pdf 32.13 kB · 5 downloads

This is certainly an improvement, but two further changes I would make are as follows:

 

1) if “cloakroom” is meant to mean a room with a toilet in it, then have the door of the cloakroom open into the utility room, not the open plan kitchen/living room. This will help contain the smells. I would still make the cloakroom 10% bigger.

2) your hallway cupboard looks about 35cm to 40cm deep. Anything shallower than 54cm is going to be cramped for hanging coats, unless you don’t have a standard coat rail, and use hooks or a series of rails which are perpendicular to the doors.

[Adsibob]

But two other issues I see, and why - again - you really need to draw in all of your furniture, are:

 

1) where does your sofa go in your lounge area? Not much use having a lounge you can’t lounge in.

 

2) are you sure your drawing is scaled correctly? the window at the bottom of the kitchen is detailed as 1.2m wide. That would suggest the width of that room is about 2.1m. But if the area of that room is slightly more than 40m2, then the dimensions of that room are 2.1m by 20m???

 

 You really need a professional, or at least someone who knows how to use a tape measure.

Edited December 10, 2023 by Adsibob

[JohnMo]

Not sure if these comments have been made before.

 

Accessibility toilet - missing

TV room is tiny

Utility just looks wrong and is plain daft in scale, really long and thin.

Entrance hall looks a waste of good space.

On 08/12/2023 at 12:57, Thorfun said:

my 2 cents.....have you considered hiring a professional? looks like a great plot and what you've drawn looks like it was done by someone without any architectural experience. for me it's a shame to try and design a house on your own especially if it's not your day job!

 

i know folk on here have done, in my mind, it should be left to the professionals.

 

either that or persuade @ETC to come up with some ideas and the ones i've seen before have been ace! but then he is a professional. 😉

As @Thorfun says, get the professionals in and do a proper job. Worth every penny if you choose well.

[Bozza]

Ok so if you’re trying to have it matching the houses left and right and presumably want the living space to the rear this sketch took me 5 mins to throw together, based upon a 12m x 8m house as an example, so a circa 150 sqm house as is.  Very approx.  It makes the bedrooms all around 4x4 m, and the kitchen diner 4 or 5 m wide.  Livingroom 5x4.   

 

your current design won’t match the neighbours as what windows you do have are all over the place.  The adjacent houses are balanced and symmetrical.  Your house would stand out externally and not in a good way.  I think you know what you want but are struggling to convert it into a feasible design.   You need to think about looking online at numerous house designs then tweak the best one to your needs, or get an architect.  
 

a good house designer or architect would never for example have so little natural light / windows or a toilet off a living area.  
 

Youll spend a small fortune building your house, if you’re struggling with house design get a pro in.  
 

 

 

 

[Adsibob]

I certainly prefer @Bozza’s design. So much more sensible. One minor amendment to @Bozza’s design you might consider is accessing the WC via a little passageway that goes underneath the staircase, instead of through the utility.

[Kelvin]

19 hours ago, LaChab said:

@Kelvin Thanks for the prompting to review the cloakroom. I'm much happier with the new layout.  

I'm intending to have a glazed front door for light. I did originally have a glazed panel as you suggest, which I think looks really good, but once we'd added the large window at the top of the stairs it seemed unnecessary and a lot of money for not much benefit.

Good stuff. The thing about entrance hallways is that it’s the first thing you or anyone else experiences about the interior of your house. Some hallways have a wow factor to them if you have the space but as a minimum you want it to feel welcoming and to give you a feeling of what lies beyond it. 

 

I’ve said this before but it’s hard posting your plans on here for people to pick apart. The comments all come from a good place though because we’ve all been where you are. What inspires me most about BH is how genuine and generous people are with their views and help. We all want each other to succeed. Ultimately the decisions rest with you and you  regardless of what anyone else suggests of course. 

[ETC]

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Preferences please for @LaChab

[Bancroft]

I'd consider the following for the ground floor:

 

- Switch the orientation of the cloakroom 90 degrees so that people coming through the front door can go down a small passageway to the lounge.  If the door from the tv room to front door is deleted this will allow more cloakroom space and also make the tv room more usable (more useable wall space).

- Delete the wall between the utility and lounge at the point where the kitchen cabinets end.  Add a short wall from that point to the other side of the utility.  This would increase the lounge area and a discrete door could be put in the corner for access to the utility.  Alternatively, shorten the run of kitchen cabinets to put the access to the utility direct from the kitchen.