Downstairs Floor Plan - First Draft

[Cheesus]

Hi all, just having a bit of a play about in advance of getting in an architect / designer and applying for planning permission for a newbuild - this is our first rough draft for the downstairs. Property is hopefully going to be 1.5 storey built with attic trusses so the upstairs will be 1 or 2 bedroms plus bathroom. Any initial thoughts or comments on this very rough draft please? 

 

One thing to note is that the left hand side as you look will not be allowed to have any clear windows, any windows will need to be frosted due to the nature of the plot so we thought best to use the majority of that wall as our kitchen. 

 

Thanks

 

[JamesP]

Rough, you need an architect.

[ETC]

Funnily I know an architect willing to help!

[Mr Punter]

29 minutes ago, JamesP said:

Rough, you need an architect.

 

+1 a decent architect will add real value to the project.

[mjc55]

There is a lot of wasted space in your plan!

 

It does no harm to think about what you require but an Architect or Architectural Technologist will have the experience to make a better fist of it. 

[Tony L]

You have no downstairs loo, other than the en-suite. Are you going to send your guests upstairs, or into the bedroom?

 

Your enormous L-shaped hall is a waste of space.  You could re-configure & have an extra room down stairs – a downstairs loo, & perhaps an office & cloak room as well.

 

There’s too much glass in the bed room.  A room that’s closer to square, rather than long & thin will always be better IMO.

 

If you move the bedroom door towards the porch, you can make the en-suite twice as big, or make this room a downstairs loo, for everyone.  You’d still have room in that big bed room for an en-siute.

 

Which way is North?

 

I wouldn’t worry about the internal configuration too much just now.  The planners don’t care about how bad your internal configuration is, so just put in for planning to see if you’re going to be allowed to build a house that’s the size, shape & height you want.  You may find they force you to build a smaller house or a house with a lower ridge height than you want.  Once you have PP & you know what the constrains are, you can then spend time on the details, knowing you’re not wasting your time.  You may need to put in for a non-material amendment, but getting these approved is easy compared to gaining PP.

[Mike]

In addition to the above comments:

• The kitchen is out of proportion to the dining / living room (unless you're running an online cooking channel)
• Ditch the chimney, unless it's purely decorative.

[Conor]

When you go to an architect, don't give them any drawings / sketches. Just list out your needs / wants in the project brief and let them use their imagination. Keep playing around with your own ideas tho. Scrap that plan and start again, you've a huge amount of space to play with. Think of the size a room needs to be, then drop it into your floor plan. E.g. GF bedroom should be about 3.5x4m ex storage. Accessible shower room about 1.8x2m. utility/pantry the same, kitchen 6mx4m. Etc etc. word / PowerPoint is great for this. Just draw scaled boxes and move them around, like Tetris.

Edited October 12 by Conor

[Cheesus]

Thanks to everybody who has taken the time to reply, I appreciate the comments. Just to address a few:

 

• This is basically our first fag packet drawing somebody has kindly put into CAD for us, we fully intend on getting an architect onboard -  once we hopefully get PP granted for the footprint/size we want we will move forward with this. 
• Good point about the downstairs toilet, although we don't have one now and we do send guests upstairs it would be a good option to incorporate. 
• The kitchen is roughly the same size as our current kitchen, thats part of a kitchen diner. The idea is to have this and the main living room open plan. 
• North is towards around 2 o'clock as you look at the plan. 
• We would ideally like a wood burner so the chimney would be for that. 

The main point obvously is that it's just for ideas at this stage - in advance of getting proffesional advice/input. It's likely to be 2-3 of months before we are likely to get a decison on planning and we don't really want to spend much money until we hopefully get a positive outcome to the application. 

 

Thanks again. 

[Conor]

You want an architect on board BEFORE you go to planning.

 

Are you going straight for full planning, or just outline (if it's an option?) What's the circumstances of the plot?

[Kelvin]

You’d be as well getting ChatGPT to draw you something as what you’ve done is very poor. Take @ETC up on the offer. 

[Nickfromwales]

2 hours ago, Conor said:

You want an architect on board BEFORE you go to planning.

Yup. 
 

Best get the horse and the cart the right way around! 

[Nickfromwales]

2 hours ago, Kelvin said:

Take @ETC up on the offer. 

What he said. 

[Cheesus]

3 hours ago, Conor said:

You want an architect on board BEFORE you go to planning.

 

Are you going straight for full planning, or just outline (if it's an option?) What's the circumstances of the plot?

 

It would be a backland development. We are about to go ahead with a planning consultation, there are a couple of potential issues with the plot (access for fire engine mainly) so it could all be a non starter - we have been advised to have the consultation and see what objections the planning department come back with, then assuming we get a positive outcome go ahead with outline. We have not done anyhting like this before though and we are learning as we go along. 

 

Thanks.