Browse Forums Building A New House 1 Mar 21, 2011 10:13 pm Hello, after initial discussions with the architect - he came up with a first draft sketch of the house. However he has split the house into different half levels, what i mean: Imagine the house is rectangle, but is split in the middle to right and left. - bottom right - basement. - then you need to go half floor up to go to kitchen/family room (left) - then you need to go half floor up to go main living room (right) - then you need to go half floor up to go to bedrooms (left) - then you need to go half floor up to go to main bedroom (right) My question to all of you daily users of your houses Would it be very tiring to split kitchen/family room with formal dining and formal living by 10 steps stair? Also would it be not comfortable at all to have again 10 stairs between bedrooms and main bedroom? I dont have kids and if at any day i would have, i dont want the house to be very uncomfortable for us. Thanks for any help, Haris! Re: Different floors of new home 2Mar 22, 2011 10:37 am If you'll have kids later, think about where any child gates will go. Or whatever other methods you will use to restrict them to a certain area. I'm having a hard time imagining what this house looks like. Is it split into 5 half-levels in total, with steps running to the left and to the right between each half-level? Metricon Riva 33 - http://herlihy-riva.blogspot.com Site start 15/03/2010 - Handover 23/12/2010 9 months and 8 days (284 calendar days) from site start to handover Re: Different floors of new home 3Mar 22, 2011 10:40 am 10 steps might be a bit much , but its obviously dependent on the slope of your land as to what you can build(I assume this is the reason for the split level?) I guess so long as the Kitchen & meals areas are together it wouldn't be too bad. It will just have an impact on what rooms you use most. As for kids stair are a danger and you'd need to have baby gates at both ends of of each stair case, this may change the type of stairs you have as open sided type balustrades may not be suitable. Re: Different floors of new home 4Mar 22, 2011 11:58 am Your house sounds interesting. Can you double check that it's 10 stairs between levels. I would imagine it's more like 8 stairs assuming 3 metres between levels. You will probably spnd most of your time on the kitchen/family room level, with occasional trips to living room level (excpet at bed time) Kids like stairs, it one more intersting thign to play with. Of copurse, when they are very youog you will need gates, but this is also the case for a double (or triple) storey house. If the left portion is larger than the right portion, then I think it will be a nice plan. May cost a bit more though. Demolition August 2009, Construction Started September 2009, Completed December 2010 Re: Different floors of new home 5Mar 22, 2011 5:20 pm Thanks both for your time in giving me help! Yes my land has a kind of slope that is why the design. We talked on the phone with the architect yesterday, we stressed that we dont mind if there are more stairs to go from Formal Living Room to the room. By this way, the stairs from Kitchen to Formal areas are just 5 steps and from Bedrooms to Master Bedroom another 5. Of course this increases the stairs also from Basement to Kitchen but this doesnt bother us so much. He indicated that the stairs would have plenty of stairs and would not be a pain at all... The daily used areas we are assuming that would be the kitchen/ family room, which are in a big open plan room. Then Formal areas would be used when we have lots of friends for dinner, thus not used that often. Our only concern is that if we have children it might be a bit tiring to go up and down the stairs from Master to childrens' bedrooms... Yes left portion is larger than the righ portion. Thanks again for the help! Re: Different floors of new home 6Mar 22, 2011 6:28 pm I think split level homes are really quite a good layout, whereas in normal two story homes you have the segregation of upper and lower levels, often a split level home will flow more freely. The main thing, as others have mentioned, is kids. If you happen to have carpet covered stairs (and carpet at the bottom) and each flight is 5-6 or less, you could argue it is safer and in fact a good "training ground" for regular stairs! However there is still a time where kids are mobile but not old enough for stairs, so you have to put the gates in. You may want to make sure that you can "cut off" areas as required. The other area is to make sure children can get from their own room to your room in the middle of the night (we often have our 1.5yo come and hop into bed with us). These are all things we never considered when we designed our current home (in 2001, 6 years before we had kids!) Built 3br house in Glenorchy, Tas in 2001 * * * Built 5br courtyard house in Lenah Valley, Tas in 2011 - Homeone thread / Blog Re: Different floors of new home 7Mar 22, 2011 6:37 pm Chuq I think split level homes are really quite a good layout, whereas in normal two story homes you have the segregation of upper and lower levels, often a split level home will flow more freely. The main thing, as others have mentioned, is kids. If you happen to have carpet covered stairs (and carpet at the bottom) and each flight is 5-6 or less, you could argue it is safer and in fact a good "training ground" for regular stairs! However there is still a time where kids are mobile but not old enough for stairs, so you have to put the gates in. You may want to make sure that you can "cut off" areas as required. The other area is to make sure children can get from their own room to your room in the middle of the night (we often have our 1.5yo come and hop into bed with us). These are all things we never considered when we designed our current home (in 2001, 6 years before we had kids!) Ok thanks This is the fact that we are also thinking that might be a problem... Would you say that 5 steps from kids room to master bedroom be an obstacle? And i dont mean normal steps, these can be done with a bit of more space than usual between them, and thus can be also not so tall... yep you need a joint, foam is easiest, will look fine once rendered with a joint. 2 5236 Hi, have purchased a house with 2 single garage doors. The Centre pillar one side sits proud to the other. Can I change 2 doors into one. Please see picture. 0 6350 Hi All, This is our second home build and first time with a custom builder. They are small builder and have built some houses with good quality. They tender and color… 0 174 |