Floor Plan - Advice for Square Block

what is the width and length of the block and the setbacks for front, side and back...can you have the driveway on either side and would you use a zero boundary for the garage? and you say that north is left but have an arrow pointing right?? what direction is the street looking out from the front door and please describe your local climate..

Hi Oklouise

Thanks so much your your response.
Wooops! North is directly Right not left.

Our block is 404M2 with a fairly wide 12.68M frontage and shallow 22.18M Depth (16.17M on the short side of the corner).

Council Restrictions require a 6M set back from the garage (otherwise 3M elsewhere), As a corner block, we're allowed to build to within 1M of the side and rear boundary. We already have to apply for relaxation on site coverage as we're building over 50% of the lot (52% at the moment), so can adjust floor space slightly without additional penalty.
Our covenant requires our driveway to stay in this location.

We live in Brisbane, so it hot is the summer and mosquitos will likely be a season pest in our area (fly screens are a must) We're building in a quiet suburban neighbourhood so noise won't be a problem.

See below the build placed on the block relative to the surrounding streets.



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How tall do they think the retaining wall at the back of the house will be?
And, do you need 2 powder rooms that are the same distance from the living areas?

I have made a couple of changes.
I have swapped the media room and bedroom 3. That way the bedrooms are together and you get a nicer view through the media room window into the garden.
Switched the bathroom and toilet around and made the opening from the living areas smaller so you aren't looking straight into the bathroom and toilet.
I also changed the powder room near the master bedroom into a walk in linen / storage and moved the master bedroom door to the right a little so it doesn't take up as much space into the bedroom.
I would also think about a cavity slider on the ensuite.
I would also extend the concrete in the patio area to the line of the gutter. It gives you an extra 450mm of concrete where grass won't grow anyway.

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That floorplan works so much better, plenty of storage throughout, and all living areas look onto the alfresco.
Additional changes I would make are to the windows in bedrooms 2 and 3, change to very wide hi lite windows, they let in a lot of light and more versatile as furniture can be located under them.

bestspecials - Thank you so much the time and effort you've put in to this! It is so good to get an external perspective.


We loved the idea of a guest powder room that was easily accessible and seperate from the kids bathroom, but hadn't considered whether that would hold value for other people if we one day go to sell. I'm definitely getting the sense that it's not worth it...

We also plan to turn the media room into a 4th bedroom/guest room down the line as our family grows, but I do love the idea of the media room getting a view of something other than a fence, so this could work well.

Possibly a dumb question - Is there a reason that people usually place bedrooms next to each other? I know it's the thing that people do, but i've never figured out why.

Cheers!

to keep all the quiet rooms and noisy kids together and usually the similar size of the rooms makes it easier to group them together..as you can see by my suggested floorplan that the two bedrooms are almost the same size bu the new media room is much bigger and BTW how do you feel about my suggestion for moving the external wall along the laundry to increase the size of the living, dining and kitchen?...with such limited outside area i would lose the external laundry door and create a drying and utility area in the corner of yard near the new media room and screen it from the street with planting along the fence

Huge improvement to the floorplan, the house actually makes sense now.

Would definitely extend out the kitchen/laundry and bedroom wall to increase room sizes unless there’s a really good reason not to.

Only change I would make is to reduce the width of the toilet as it has an excessively large vanity built to one side, and I doubt you would need storage cupboards in the toilet, just a wall mounted hand basin with small cupboard underneath is sufficient. The space saved could be incorporated into the adjoining bedroom.