New build floor plan - any thoughts? (title edited by MNHQ at request of OP)

[Wel]

DH and have bought a piece of development land to build our dream house.

The land currently has planning permission granted but we hate the designs. Far too open plan for my liking. When the oldest is cooking and blaring music I don’t want to hear it.

Here is the downstairs of a house DH and I saw a few years ago. We loved the proportions and layout.

I find a lot of Mumsnetters are practical and sensible.

Please can you share your thoughts on the floorplan? Do you see any issues we may run into?

The house will be occupied by Dh, myself and 3 children (aged 9-13yo). 3 big dogs.

We see the architect next week and want to be able to jump straight in.

Location on this floor plan not ideal though. If heat pump being used, much simpler to back plant onto it and make access easier. Also keeps any noisy kit outside of main envelope. Was not suggesting it be boxed just relocated.

The only downstairs loo is an internal one with no window. A lot of people will be using it. I'd try reconfigure the layout to get it on an external wall with proper daylight and a window.

If you can manage a downstairs shower room it's always good for guests with mobility problems or future issues in the family.

With dining room as an office I think it looks really good. ( I'm not keen on dining rooms and they rarely get used) You could put a sofa bed(s) in the office or snug if you had overnight guests with limited mobility. I see what you are doing with the boot room, I guess I didn't even fully know what one of those is. Do you live in a rural area? Is it do with farming or something? Only joking, I get that it's for the dogs mainly. lol.
As a inner city dweller this looks massive and I can't really see any faults at all.
If you might have elderly/ disabled guests in future I guess maybe a slightly bigger downstairs bathroom/ wet room?

I think it's a great layout, but if your overall size is much smaller than this, I'd be wary of creating too many small pokey spaces.

Assuming that's not an issue:

• Drawing room (grown up sitting room) and kitchen diner across the south facing back makes most sense. I'd do a big run of sliders in the kitchen diner, and French doors in the drawing room.
• You need to make sure the snug is big enough to accommodate all of the teens and their stuff or they might invade your space!
• Snug and home office at the front makes sense.
• Cloaks for guests and downstairs loo also make sense, but I agree with pp it might be preferable to have these closer to the front door and with a window in the loo.
• Keeping a "clean" utility separate from a mucky boot room even if you don't have dogs is also a good idea. Definitely include a dog shower.
• That said, what's the volume of regular laundry vs dirty dog towels? I would have thought the volume of regular laundry would be greater, so an upstairs laundry room would be more my dream.
• definitely include a large larder cupboard or walk in pantry in the kitchen
• think about what other storage you may need. Do the DC have school bags or sports kit bags which get dumped by the door? Will they realistically use the boot room door, or do you need to factor storage into the cloaks?
• getting into specifics, I like to look out whilst I'm cooking, so I wouldn't want the cooker on the back wall. I'd have it on the island.

I'm assuming there's space for garage and outbuildings for storing garden crap.

Boot room/utility - works brilliantly in similar set up and layout with us. We went ⅔ boot room and a separate utility of approx ⅓ . You want enough space to dry some stuff. (Access to your garden from boot room to hang washing ?) you will need more boot and shoe storage than you realise!

If you want separate dining and think you would use it, then I'd switch dining and living room and have pocket doors or double doors from kitchen to dining. But then I'm not sure you need large kitchen table too? Really depends on how your family likes to eat and live.

Position snug where it will provide best sound proofing if that's where you imagine kids will be hanging out And think about extra soundproofing.

Formal lounge - lovely to have separate adult space.

I've seen the walk through cloakroom work in another house. Just make sure it's a room rather than a cupboard! It's a bit of an odd one and your architect might have better idea.

Outside hot/cold tap next to back door with a hose and trough/bath is alternative to inside shower. Quick hose down of dogs and the towel down in boot room.

my home is 1790sq ft
3 double bedrooms
2 bathrooms

open plan kitchen and family room
utility room
lounge
WC
small coat room by the front door
study

and for 200-700Sq ft more you are going to squeeze in

another two bedrooms
a drawing room
a boot room
a plant room
a snug

Not a great idea

Definitely have bifolds. Those saying they are problematic in terms of draughts/leaks probably bought cheaply or didn’t have them correctly installed. Ours are good, solid German engineering and were installed by the firm we bought them from. No draughts or leaks. We have recommended the firm to friends who are similarly very satisfied with their purchases.

If you were keen on the proportions of the house you saw, you’d probably want to retain the symmetry by keeping the room on the side (labelled study on your plan).

I’d think about putting a warm water dog shower outside the utility door.

I would include a shower in the downstairs wc.

A dining room miles from the kitchen is pointless. It would be better to have a kitchen diner, with pocket doors leading into the sitting room. You might be better having a kitchen diner all across the back with a small sitting area, then the main drawing room where current dining room and half drawing room is.

Study on the side.

Snug becomes a room for the teenagers, with sofa beds so it can double up as an extra guest room .

I'm not keen on walking past coats to get to the loo. Coats and shoes should be by the front door. Though you have a boot room - does that mean you'd keep your coats and shoes there, and use it for entrance and exit, so you wouldn't really use the front door?

I would stretch the utility/boot room side section (front to back) to incorporate the plant room. I'd then use the plant room space to extend the downstairs WC to an accessible wet room. This would future proof your home if you want to stay in it forever. If possible have an entrance to this bathroom off the snug.

I would switch the dining and drawing room and change the wall position so the sizes were similar to this layout. New drawing room accessed from hallway still but with pocket doors in the centre of the drawing room. Then fireplace on outer side wall.

I'd put a double sided cassette type fireplace at the end of the kitchen area backing onto the new dining room, then have two open archways either side. If you can close this space up, you wont use it.

Bigger than just French doors onto the garden from the kitchen area with windows round them for extra light. Don't go bifold, they are already dated and wont suit a house with the Edwardian bow window features.

Do you not need a office space?

I'd reiterate this isn't a 3000sq ft property at those dimensions though...

If you want to browse some floorplans I'd recommend Homes Design portfolio - Welsh Oak Frame and Traditional | Timber Framed Home Designs | Scandia-Hus

OP…. please update with what the architect said?!

i’m guessing reality has hit the OP hard and realised that best not to use a floor plan as the basis for a property that is going to be very considerably smaller than floor plan property

and i’m guessing the £2500 sq foot has also been squashed?

I think it looks perfect! But I would keep the study if it is possible so that you can use it as your office. As it isn't in the main part of the house it would be easier to shut the door at the end of the working day and forget about it.
My only change would be to have the door to the study from the dining room, and to make it a single door not a double.

We have drastically changed the floor plan. I’ve tried uploading but the format is not supported. So we will keep the front of the house pretty much the same. Central hallway with a snug/office (will be my office during work hours) and drawing room either side. We have now changed the floorplan to an L shape. We will have a double height kitchen at right angles to the main house - w/ utiliy and boot room (one space).

This way we can keep my dream of having a cute, cottage-esque/double fronted house a la Image 1. Then the kitchen/diner will have a very open modern feel (image 2) which will lead onto a courtyard.

Will be 3000sq ft in total.

and i’m guessing the £2500 sq foot has also been squashed?

Square metre, surely? At that price the house would be costing around £7.5million to build. Sq m = a slightly more palatable £850k-ish.

I would want a toilet/wet room off the boot room , so when coming in from the garden you don’t need to walk through the kitchen for wee and then upstairs if you are muddy.

how much is the estimate?

just take a screen shot of the plan and you can post the pic?

Latest plan. More changes made.

Total is sitting at 3300sq ft.

Hi, looking back through the old posts, I guess what's called a dining room on the new plan will be your snug/office? Do you really need double doors into that?

Also given the amount of chat there was about the three dogs, the mud and mess etc. I think your utility looks small. Plus without the separation of utility and boot room, you have your clean laundry in with the dog mud. Can you extend the "dining room" out the front to match the window level of the drawing room, and use the space to increase the utility room size.

Clicked send too soon! Your kitchen family room looks lovely and I think that makes a lot of sense,

I would have to have a walk in pantry somewhere. It's my dream...

Have you thought about putting the fireplace in the wall between the family and drawing room.

The breakfast area is in the way of the flow to the rear double doors. That said, no idea if you’re into fengshui but a big no no is to have the front door directly inline with rear doors…..all the good flows straight out ( just basic explanation there, it’s much more in-depth than that )

Id redesign the wc. If someone walks out of the outward opening door they’ll hit someone walking from you main family space. Open the door in and put the whb opposite it. Also, no one wants to see a wc in front of the door. So the door should open in and face the whb, not out and face the wc.

Stairs. Winding treads are difficult for kids to use and a nightmare to get furniture up. Why are there 16 risers?, do you have have a particularly high ground floor to ceiling height.