I've just had the first draft of my new house from the architect, and I hate it.

[TimTamTerrier]

I dislike it so much that I don't even know where to start fixing it. Please tell me this is normal for a first draft and there's no need to panic.

I think it's ok on total size. I was expecting a total of 400 sqm and on the current plan the downstairs is 194 sqm and the upstairs is 99 sqm. Anyway I've told him it's a good start and I have quite a few changes, he says he's looking forward to seeing them.

Hmm, I wonder how well you are communicating with each other if you;ve told him that his design is a "good start" when you actually hate it. He is going to expect tweaks rather than a redraw,

Sounds like you are clear about some of the problems. You need to be fairly blunt to make it clear what your must haves are. Some of the stuff you are asking for sounds quite unusual so you probably need to be even clearer. Most people don't want two equal masters and want to maximise natural light. If you are just building for yourself then it doesn't matter but he may be trying to think about resale too.

I'm very impressed you can visualise this so well from the plans. On the plus side, this means you can articulate clearly to the architect what you hate about the current design - far better for him/her than a vague 'I don't like it but I don't know why'.

Seems a bit sad to be building a dream house with someone you hate. But at least make sure you don't hate the house too, that really would be unfortunate.

God, don't do it if you dislike your husband. It's ridiculously stressful building a house. My friends are devoted to each other and we were still surprised one of them didn't end up under the patio.

We are moving into our dream self-built house tomorrow!!!!
Our first draft was awful, as were the next few.
Then we completely rethought what we really wanted, got a pre-app done to make sure it was viable with Planning, and never looked back.

Biggest advice - walk through your ideal layout in your head. Visualise the doors and spaces. Draw it out roughly, never mind sizes and proportions, so the architect has an idea of the 'flow' of the house. Then think about how big each room needs to be, or minimum size, and mark those on your sketch. Then he at least has a visual starting point rather than a list of requirements. My kids have identically sized and aspect bedrooms - it's important that the architect understood the importance of that so make sure he knows you're being serious about 2 master beds. I found that if I was able to get some major things I wanted, it was easier to compromise on the things which actually turned out not to be that important.

BTW if you're tight on space and don't want too much open plan area, consider solid internal bifold doors. I wanted separate dining room but we couldn't afford any more house so it's a kitchen/diner/sunroom L-shaped room but with oak bifolds separating kitchen/diner from sunroom. They look stunning too

Good luck!

meet architect, present your list of requirements and ask him to explain why the design doesn't meet them.

sounds like a case of fashion-fartiness over function. As frequently seen on TV.

if still not listening, sack for being a twerp.

I do think that to get decent sized 3 baths and 5 beds (2 masters) plus decent sized laundry room, corridors and stairwell in 99 sqm could be tight?

The upstairs should be easiest to plan as no really flow required really.

Sounds like you have a big busy active family - and I totally get the boot room/sports kit entrance - this is the biggest bottleneck in my home too.

I don't think it's fashion-fartiness particularly, if anything it's that my wants are too far away from mainstream.

I'm a lot less panicked now. I'll send him my complete redraft changes and see what comes back.

Upstairs is a bit tricky, because it's in two parts with a connecting walkway over the double height hall. There are only four bedrooms upstairs though, which helps. I wanted one bedroom downstairs with a wet room style shower in case my Mum needs her other knee replaced or one of us can't managed the stairs for some reason. Until there is some sort of medical need the downstairs bedroom will be the au pair's room, but once both DC are in secondary school we won't need an au pair anymore.

When l saw the first architects drawing for our house l burst into tears. I thought we had to build that. Then we changed and changed. We wanted a downstairs bedroom to have in our old age. He said it was unnecessary. We insisted. We knew exactly what worked for us as had lived in a few houses. Eventually our house was perfect. So don't panic.

We've built all of the homes we've lived in and the best way I found to do it was to draw it out myself then give to to the architect and engineer to make it work.

The last one I did needed no changes at all. It just had to be drawn up technically so it could be submitted to planning etc

Fingers crossed for you - I love the 'his and hers' bedroom and ensuites idea - can't get my DH to agree though !

I think your explanation to us was very clear, and you should just send it to your architects, too.

(What distinguishes a master bed from any other bedroom? An en-suite?)

I think it's mainly size, isn't it? Plus, yes, an en suite or somewhat dedicated bathroom. It is unusual to want the largest bedrooms to be of equal size, but not so unusual that the architect could fail to connect requirement to plans and put that in.

The downstairs bedroom/wet room is a good idea. We're in the process of considering adapting our upstairs bedroom for DH's disabilities, and I'm wondering if we wouldn't be better off putting a new accessible bathroom in downstairs instead.

What distinguishes a master bed from any other bedroom? An en-suite?

I would say size. Our master bedroom is about 45 mts square, dressing room is about 12mts square, bathrooms about 26 mts square. All of the other bedroom are between 30 and 35 mts sq with dressing rooms about 10 mts square and bathrooms about 14 - 16 mts square.

Draw what you want yourself. Make sure the soil pipes and bathrooms line up. Then send it to him.

When we had our house built our architect thought it should be reverse plan and called ours a 'tick box house'. Well yes. It ticked all the boxes for us!

May sure you specify that the two masters are on opposite sides of the bridge.....!

Can upstair be a mirror image of each other - with the family bathroom off the connecting hall in the middle?

The essential thing about a relationship with an architect is there should be great communication. Same goes for builders for that matter.
If you don't understand each other there's no chance of a good result.
We interviewed about 5 architects and ended up with the most expensive. Then we debated/discussed with them a lot about what we wanted! I'm not kidding, the architect even said we're more demanding than their usual clients. But in the end we're getting what we want based on their excellent expertise and our hopes and dreams.
Being honest, we had some ideas, they had some ideas, and the final result doesn't resemble either. We basically tore up their first draft (metaphorically) and then they came up with 3 more proposals with estimated cost and pros and cons, then we refined from there.
Ours is only an extension, so for a house expect to get to know your architect extremely well!

And the other advice is sometimes you'll wonder why you even started, but when the scaffolding comes down (our came down today) and you see the result, you'll know why!

I've emailed him my ground floor corrections. So we'll see what comes back.

Any updates @TImTamTerrrier?

He was taking a break over Christmas, but he said that all my changes were do-able, and he's going to have a think about my issues with the outside. I'll email him again on Monday when the DC go back to school, things are more normal and I'm (hopefully) less ill with the after effects of the virus that DS gave me for Christmas (I would have been happy with socks instead tbh).