Browse Forums Building A New House 1 May 09, 2020 5:34 pm Hello All, I have been following the discussions on this forum for sometime now and its great to have such a wonderful community. We have started working on our home plan and after going through various volume builders have decided to work with custom builder. Still deciding on the builder though. Meanwhile I have conceptualised the floor plan for our double storey house and it would be great if the community members can provide some feedback. The block is 16x32m and is North Facing. To be precise it is 23Deg NE facing. Things we would prefer is big Kitchen and butlers, Living with Void ( Understand the cooling/heating challenges) and some sort of courtyard. I am attaching the plans and it would be great to get some feedback. As Mentioned these are just concept plans. Thanks ! Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Re: Custom Floor Plan Feedback 2May 09, 2020 6:45 pm Since your frontage is facing north. I reckon this is as good as it gets. Perhaps make your laundry to be larger to incorporate a mud room as part of it for kids to dump their sports and school stuff. Ie. Pushing your media, office to the left by 0.5 to 1 metre to the left? Or your garage to the right. Re: Custom Floor Plan Feedback 3May 09, 2020 7:17 pm Ground Floor 1. Your block orientation is certainly far from being perfect and having void on the south is certainly not improving your passive solar gains and heating/cooling. 2. Your suncourt, stair case as well as guest bedroom will be always blazingly hot in the afternoons due to western sun. On the other side, your sun court will be also partially shaded out from the northern side by your house, so your kitchen window will not be gaining much of passive solar and won't be providing a lot of light. 3. I would have certainly considered swapping media room and laundry with the guest bedroom/ensuite. 4. Consider removing western windows from your alfresco and kitchen/butler area (you have enough light) as well as from the formal lounge. 5. What about door outside from the laundry? 6. Your kitchen layout is hard to read but looks a bit controversial. Try to draw a rectangular between fridge, sink and stove to see how you would be moving in order to understand if your layout will be supporting it. 7. Not sure why do you even need this slider door between media and family. 8. You have a huge hallway and a lot of space there which is not furnished and could be used for storage or extending your garage or other rooms, etc. First Floor 1. Massive window from the void area into master bedroom... Not sure if it is a good idea at all. 2. Entering into your Master WIR will be much handier from the bedroom itself rather than from the ensuite. 3. With so much space in your ensuite you could certainly made something better out of it. E.g. there is enough space for a big shower or for shower + sauna cabin, but certainly needs more work. 4. Bedroom 4 - probably Eastern window will be better than Northern one. Overall, looks like you have a lot of space, what you need is to work out the details dictated by not so perfect orientation as well as give a bit more thinking on how to make smarter use of all this extra space you have when it gets to actual layouts. Re: Custom Floor Plan Feedback 4May 09, 2020 7:30 pm I really like your floor plan. Personally, I would bring the garage forward in line with the sitting and also bring along the laundry and study forward with it. I would then make the dining room adjacent to the living room. I just feel like it's a bit tight where it is at the moment. Do you have any windows that open in your master for ventilation? Also, I notice there are no linen closets. That's the issue we are having at the moment too. But I feel with all the wardrobes in the bedrooms there may be no need for linen closets? Re: Custom Floor Plan Feedback 5May 09, 2020 7:54 pm MyFirst Since your frontage is facing north. I reckon this is as good as it gets. Perhaps make your laundry to be larger to incorporate a mud room as part of it for kids to dump their sports and school stuff. Ie. Pushing your media, office to the left by 0.5 to 1 metre to the left? Or your garage to the right. Thanks for the feedback. Certainly we were thinking of the Mudroom incorporated into the Laundry room. However may be we can shorten the laundry length and then have the mud room just outside it. Just a thought. Re: Custom Floor Plan Feedback 6May 09, 2020 8:20 pm alexp79 Ground Floor 1. Your block orientation is certainly far from being perfect and having void on the south is certainly not improving your passive solar gains and heating/cooling. 2. Your suncourt, stair case as well as guest bedroom will be always blazingly hot in the afternoons due to western sun. On the other side, your sun court will be also partially shaded out from the northern side by your house, so your kitchen window will not be gaining much of passive solar and won't be providing a lot of light. 3. I would have certainly considered swapping media room and laundry with the guest bedroom/ensuite. 4. Consider removing western windows from your alfresco and kitchen/butler area (you have enough light) as well as from the formal lounge. 5. What about door outside from the laundry? 6. Your kitchen layout is hard to read but looks a bit controversial. Try to draw a rectangular between fridge, sink and stove to see how you would be moving in order to understand if your layout will be supporting it. 7. Not sure why do you even need this slider door between media and family. 8. You have a huge hallway and a lot of space there which is not furnished and could be used for storage or extending your garage or other rooms, etc. First Floor 1. Massive window from the void area into master bedroom... Not sure if it is a good idea at all. 2. Entering into your Master WIR will be much handier from the bedroom itself rather than from the ensuite. 3. With so much space in your ensuite you could certainly made something better out of it. E.g. there is enough space for a big shower or for shower + sauna cabin, but certainly needs more work. 4. Bedroom 4 - probably Eastern window will be better than Northern one. Overall, looks like you have a lot of space, what you need is to work out the details dictated by not so perfect orientation as well as give a bit more thinking on how to make smarter use of all this extra space you have when it gets to actual layouts. Thanks alexp79. Certainly very valid points. Ground Floor 2. Certainly I agree they would be getting the western sun and would be hot. For Bedroom 2 there is a slider door opening in the suncourt. I was thinking may be we can delete the western window in it. Would it help with the sun. 3. The reason for putting media in that location was to open the slider doors and then may be use Living + Media as one space for functions etc. But as you suggested will explore the option of moving the Guest bedroom there. 4. Yes we can look into removing the western window in Butlers. Was worried about lighting in that space but if required can add sunlight for butlers as its outside of first floor line. The window opening in Alfresco would be a servery. 5. Yes we will have a door opening to outside form Laundry. 6. Kitchen area was one space which took a lot of time and exhausted the hell out of me. Missus wanted to incorporate the butlers and kitchen in a way that she doesn't get isolated while working in butlers. We do a lot of cooking so she wanted something open plan there. I saw a display where the Main kitchen bench top gets wrapped around partition wall and then continues to the bench top in Butlers. Tried to do something similar. 7. As mentioned would like to keep it close when using the Media but then open it to make one big area with combining it with Living. 8. Thats what I also felt but was running out of ideas as we wanted a wide entry like 2/ 2.5m wide but then happy to reduce it to around 1.8m or something down the foyer. But was not sure when to start reducing it - from laundry wall or start of guest bedroom wall. First Floor 1. Thanks. Sounds like we can remove it. 2. I was planning to use that WIR side to mount the TV. But can look into having an entry door instead. 3. Would certainly love to have the spa and will explore it. As you mentioned it would be great to have the feedback on how to either squeeze the house or how to utilise the space more inside. Thanks again and as this is a start for me so any suggestions are welcome. Cheers ! Re: Custom Floor Plan Feedback 7May 09, 2020 8:24 pm build2020 I really like your floor plan. Personally, I would bring the garage forward in line with the sitting and also bring along the laundry and study forward with it. I would then make the dining room adjacent to the living room. I just feel like it's a bit tight where it is at the moment. Do you have any windows that open in your master for ventilation? Also, I notice there are no linen closets. That's the issue we are having at the moment too. But I feel with all the wardrobes in the bedrooms there may be no need for linen closets? Thanks build2020. Sounds good. Will move Garage bit front and see how it goes. For the Master there would be couple of AW windows facing south. As its in SW corner so I am not sure having a Window on the western wall would be a good idea. So tried to avoid it and went with South facing windows. Cheers ! Re: Custom Floor Plan Feedback 8May 10, 2020 2:32 pm I can now see the concept of turning Family + Media into larger Family space, but in that case furniture/TV locations layout is not fitting this concept well as you know you have 2 sofas and 2 TVs next to each other, not sure how practical is that. The way I would have approached that is let's say to have a media room with two narrow and tall windows to the either side from TV/screen in the middle and to turn around sofa to now it faces the windows and provides passage. On the southern wall, I don't think there is not enough wall space for glazed sliders to efficiently operate, hence, you would rather need to have a bit smaller opening there with ability to put two cavity sliders in it. Those sliders will be sliding in opposite directions (although I am really not a big fan of cavity sliders, this looks like a suitable solution just for this case). Then your family room can extended to cater for both extended dining (your dining table can be larger) as well as a small library/chilling out space with the fireplace and may be smaller TV. This is a perfect space for the fireplace as this is the southern side of your house. So now, you just open up your sliders and have a great living + family space and then close the sliders and have your media room. In that case, for guest bedroom you can consider putting double glazed Low E window on the Western side (south facing alfresco-side window will not be providing enough light, you can even remove it altogether) as well as some blinds or curtains or consider planting a tree outside. By the way, if you have space, just instead of moving rooms, extend your garage to align with the porch and use the back of it for the workshop or advanced storage space - looks like you would definitely need some with the house that big. You can also park your bike there if you have one. On top, you can add another full scale bedroom over that space, too. Re: Custom Floor Plan Feedback 9May 10, 2020 6:11 pm alexp79 I can now see the concept of turning Family + Media into larger Family space, but in that case furniture/TV locations layout is not fitting this concept well as you know you have 2 sofas and 2 TVs next to each other, not sure how practical is that. The way I would have approached that is let's say to have a media room with two narrow and tall windows to the either side from TV/screen in the middle and to turn around sofa to now it faces the windows and provides passage. On the southern wall, I don't think there is not enough wall space for glazed sliders to efficiently operate, hence, you would rather need to have a bit smaller opening there with ability to put two cavity sliders in it. Those sliders will be sliding in opposite directions (although I am really not a big fan of cavity sliders, this looks like a suitable solution just for this case). Then your family room can extended to cater for both extended dining (your dining table can be larger) as well as a small library/chilling out space with the fireplace and may be smaller TV. This is a perfect space for the fireplace as this is the southern side of your house. So now, you just open up your sliders and have a great living + family space and then close the sliders and have your media room. In that case, for guest bedroom you can consider putting double glazed Low E window on the Western side (south facing alfresco-side window will not be providing enough light, you can even remove it altogether) as well as some blinds or curtains or consider planting a tree outside. By the way, if you have space, just instead of moving rooms, extend your garage to align with the porch and use the back of it for the workshop or advanced storage space - looks like you would definitely need some with the house that big. You can also park your bike there if you have one. On top, you can add another full scale bedroom over that space, too. Thanks alexp79. Great feedback about the Media room. I have reorganised the setting as suggested and certainly looks more organised. The only thing I need to check is the dimension of the screen from the couch as I was planing to have big TV there. Sorry but I was not clear about your comment for the more space for dining. Dining Space is bit small and thats one of my concern. Any suggestions ? I have redesigned it and please see the updated photos. I hope it makes sense. Also with the Guest I was thinking of having a slider door or door into the suncourt so that the occupants can use it to go out. Just a thought. I can have the Windows Low E as suggested. We have a setback of 5M for garage and current its sitting at 5.2M so I can move .2m towards front and create some space. Like ⋅ Add a comment ⋅ Pin to Ideaboard ⋅ Re: Custom Floor Plan Feedback 10May 10, 2020 11:15 pm With regards to the dining, I thought that you can make Family Room smaller and cosier due to its limited function after combining with Media Room, hence you can use left half of the current Family Room to combine with dining. It makes total sense to have a separate entrance for Guest Bedroom to the sun court as in that case you can easily turn into full blown AirBnb when/if needed. Re: Custom Floor Plan Feedback 11May 12, 2020 8:51 am What software have these images been generated from? Re: Custom Floor Plan Feedback 14May 19, 2020 11:32 am In general it looks okay, but it seems quite hard to differentiate between windows and doors. If let's say you move you entrance door a bit up, you will be able to extend the WIR bottom robe all the way to the wall. Same applies to the other other 2 WIR robes - you can have a shoe rack under the window and I really don't think you would need this extra door from bathroom to WIR. You might also want to place huge full height mirror on the wall opposite the WIR window (this is where you have a door now to bathroom currently). Also, not sure why your sofa in your Master is placed this way, I would say it might be more logical if you put TV on the bottom wall and orient sofa same way as your bed is oriented, so you could watch it. This will also leave out some space near the windows for a nice study nook. Bathroom layout is more or less okay, also I prefer wall hung toilets as it is much easier to clean under them + they look so much nicer (plus you can use pedestal as a full blown shelf). What type of bath tub is that? Is it back-to-wall standalone bath? What is the size of it? If you are removing door to WIR from the bathroom, you can consider extending your vanity all the way to the wall, too. I am also feeling that entrances to WC and shower are a bit on a tight side (less than 50 cm)? They should be at least 60 cm to be comfortable, best if 70 cm. Just my 2 cents. Re: Custom Floor Plan Feedback 15May 19, 2020 3:26 pm Are you in Syd or Melb? If Melb.. I would rearrange my ensuite to have a larger window if its facing west... it will dry up you bathroom nicely and prevent mould and makes your ensuite warmer and more pleasant during cooler seasons. Also you need a door between your bathroom and WIR or Master Bedroom. I made mistake of not having any... In display homes it look so nice open plan. large opening between Master and ensuite.. Not something you want in real life espcially if you are in Melb! Losing too much heat into the cold ensuite. Re: Custom Floor Plan Feedback 16May 19, 2020 5:21 pm I think the ensuite is to narrow, borrow some from the master bed and WIR, you will need 700 minimum opening which only leaves you 1600 for a bathtub, best to have 1800. You can afford to lose some from the WIR, you need 550 each side to comfortably fit hanging (think ikea pax depth), so will still give 1400 between hanging, maybe lose 200 from WIR and 100mm from bedroom and that should give you close to the correct width for the bath. In regards to wall hung toilets, be aware they are only rated to 120kg, when you don’t know who may use it, I wouldn’t risk it, personally I think they look stubby., Re: Custom Floor Plan Feedback 17May 19, 2020 5:24 pm Ooh and the whole double door in bedroom, we had that in our last house (rental) and it was a pain, we had two 500 doors, always had to open both up when I was walking in with washing baskets etc, the bolt to open the second door, was up high as they were 2.4 doors, had to get the step ladder out, or squash in, if you didn’t leave one door bolted, they rattled constantly in the wind, hated with a passion! If your going to do it, have a minimum 1440 opening, so you can fit two 720 doors. Re: Custom Floor Plan Feedback 18May 19, 2020 5:28 pm Average limit weight for wall hung toilet is 230+ kg. Otherwise, how would they sell in US? You don't really need 1800 bath unless you are really really tall. 1700 is a perfect length for a bath tub, I would rather focus on the right design to make sure you can lie down comfortably in it. But openings need to be wider, agree. Re: Custom Floor Plan Feedback 19May 19, 2020 5:59 pm Hmmm...we literally bought two in wall cistern toilets on the weekend and the recommendation was less than 120kg, although we didn’t buy wall hung, Kohler Australia say max 136kg, just something to consider, obviously different limits for different toilets. 6 55354 Hi there! Absolutely agree on the wasted space. We have no desire for the master to be that oversized, but it occurred when we increased the depth of the garage. We have… 4 12507 Hi, Seeking volume or semi-custom builder in victoria(east), which have existing double story wide floor plans. Seeking 18-20m wide homes with depth of 12-15m long. Or… 0 25169 |