Shop Products
Houzz Logo Print
houseinms

House plans for new home

houseinms
3 years ago

Hello!


I'm in the process of building a new home for my family. I'd love your input as to the floor plans. This is the first time I've designed / built a house before so open to feedback.


The lot is heavily sloped so there's a walk out basement in the back of the house.













Comments (19)

  • millworkman
    3 years ago

    Blurry, can't make out any of the room dimensions or verbiage. But definitely will be dark and a monstrous roof for framing and roofing costs.

  • bpath
    3 years ago

    The house will be in Mississippi, and on water? Or will it be a pool? Will there be yard, lawn, besides?

    How many children, ages?

  • jslazart
    3 years ago

    Ignoring that the roof scares me, I went to the floor plan. Then I couldn't find the front door, so I looked at the garage and tried to figure out the path to getting groceries into the kitchen pantry. And then I gave up. Who put this together for you? Is that a toilet at a 45 degree angle in the master bath? I'm so confused.

  • anj_p
    3 years ago

    Can't really read it, but first impressions:

    Huge dark house with a lot of roof. If you can afford to build this, why not consult an architect?What's with the inaccessible porch off the garage? Your foyer is the second biggest room in your house. Do you plan on spending a lot of time there? Personally not a fan of 2 story anything. Covered porch off the back will steal a lot of light (not sure which way this faces). Do you have to go through a mud room to get to your bedroom? Rooms on corners don't take advantage of windows on two walls. I would hate to be the person sleeping in between the exercise room and the game room. If you have enough kids to fill those bedrooms, the kid in BR 4 is going to feel like the unwanted stepchild.

  • Emily L
    3 years ago

    I know you're getting some hard feedback, but honestly, people are really trying to be helpful. Maybe start with this article, and then others on that site. Lots of this type of house were built in the 90s and now have a hard time selling. These complicated roofs tend to leak.

    https://mcmansionhell.com/post/148605513816/mcmansions-101-what-makes-a-mcmansion-bad

  • bpath
    3 years ago
    last modified: 3 years ago

    If you have children, are you sure you want to walk out of your room every morning and brush past their backpacks and trip on the shoes that fell out of the cubbies? Yes, you could walk out through the closet and laundry room, but you are not Hazel the housekeeper, you are the lord of the manor. And when you all come in from the garage, will there be a bottleneck of people trying to get to the cubbies and then back out of the hall to go to the kitchen or upstairs?

    Will you use the formal living room/office tucked away at the front of the house? Perhaps for practicing music lessons? Or will you use it for the heirloom furniture, like a parlor?

    I don’t see a door drawn for the master bathroom toilet. It has a nice view of the closet, but also vice versa.

    The walkout basement, the cabana area is open to the outdoors, but the bedroom has sliders? That’s pretty cool! (Do guests get a key to the upstairs slider so they can come up for breakfast in the morning?)

  • cpartist
    3 years ago

    Who actually designed this?

    Why would you want a house with very dark interiors and no flow to it?

  • PRO
    Mark Bischak, Architect
    3 years ago

    There seems to spaces larger than they need to be and narrow hallways and a lot of space allocated for "HVAC".

  • houseinms
    Original Author
    3 years ago

    Yikes. I hired an architect to design it. Wasn't expecting such negative feedback. We've actually made quite a few changes so it's less of a mcmansion, but I'm definitely hearing not enough.


    The consistent dark interior comments are surprising to me. Considering the two story windows on both sides of the house, I wouldn't have thought it would be dark at all.


    Two kids in bedrooms 2 and 3. Two home offices (formal / office in the front of the house and office / bedroom 6) as my wife and I both work from home. Exercise room because we use it almost every day. The sad bedroom 4 is an infrequently used guest room.


    The house is on a bayou and will have a pool off the lower level space.


    I agree the mud room on the way to the master is less than ideal....


    All the roof comments are concerning! I'll definitely work to get a better idea of the roof cost.


    I guess overall I'm at a bit of a loss on how to make the next steps. Seems like the verdict so far is to toss it out and start over with a new architect.


    This is taken from above the front door, looking to the back of the house


    This is taken from the living room, looking to the front door.

  • Jennifer K
    3 years ago

    What is the purpose of the enormous 2-story foyer? Think about where you want to spend time: that's where your space should be. A "lawyer foyer" was built only to impress visitors with your cash. And these days people know that a grand foyer indicates a stock plan not a custom one.

  • mainenell
    3 years ago

    That grand central area with balcony all around reminds me of the Kelvingrove Art Museum in Glasgow. (Even for this non artsy person a fascinating place, btw.)

    You are going to need lights on all the time in order to light the gallery. The window light is not going to reach into the interior nearly as well as the computer model shows. And sound is going to travel from one area to another. You’ll also probably need to turn the TV up louder because the sound is going to get lost. Another thought, anyone will be able to see what is going on in the living room from the balcony. No cozy snuggles with hubby or adult movies for you in that room.

  • cpartist
    3 years ago

    Yikes. I hired an architect to design it.

    Are you sure he/she is a licensed architect with registered license with the state you live in? If so, does the person primarily design houses or something else? And if the answer is that, then unfortunately, not everyone graduates in the top half of their class.

    Wasn't expecting such negative feedback. We've actually made quite a few changes so it's less of a mcmansion, but I'm definitely hearing not enough.

    No, unfortunately, it very much is very mcmansion like. I'm sorry to be so blunt.

    The consistent dark interior comments are surprising to me. Considering the two story windows on both sides of the house, I wouldn't have thought it would be dark at all.

    The best houses are actually only one to two rooms deep and have windows on at least two walls in all public rooms and all bedrooms. The best houses usually are designed in an L, T, I, U or H shape to allow for those windows etc I just mentioned.

    And a simple roof is better for now and for when problems start to happen.

    Two kids in bedrooms 2 and 3. Two home offices (formal / office in the front of the house and office / bedroom 6) as my wife and I both work from home. Exercise room because we use it almost every day. The sad bedroom 4 is an infrequently used guest room.

    Can any of the rooms do double duty? For example, my guest room is also my exercise room. For when guests come over, I have a queen sized Murphy bed in the room.

    And my studio (I'm an artist) also has a sleeper/sofa just in case we have spill over guests. (We're in FL and in normal times, it does happen very occasionally.)
    The house is on a bayou and will have a pool off the lower level space.

    I agree the mud room on the way to the master is less than ideal....

    The best houses also separate private spaces from public spaces.
    All the roof comments are concerning! I'll definitely work to get a better idea of the roof cost.

    I guess overall I'm at a bit of a loss on how to make the next steps. Seems like the verdict so far is to toss it out and start over with a new architect.

    Double check this person has an active license with your state. And maybe it's time to find someone more qualified.

  • bpath
    3 years ago

    Someone more qualified, or someone more creative.

  • JJ
    3 years ago

    That roof is...really something. As one wag remarked at a similar roof a while back, it's a roofers retirement plan.


  • PRO
    User
    3 years ago

    That roof will cost 3x as much as my first house did. There’ll also be 3x as much wasted space among the truss forest as that little craftsman cottage had as floor space. There might actually be more cubic footage in that entry complex as was living space in that house too.


    Bigger isn’t better. Bigger in the worst places to be bigger is just expensive burned through money.

  • cpartist
    3 years ago

    If you haven’t read The Not So Big House by Sarah Susanna, I highly recommend you do so. While the title implies small houses, the reality is the book is about designing a house with better use of spaces, no matter what size the house. It helped me tremendously

  • anj_p
    3 years ago

    It sounded from your original post that YOU had designed this. It's surprising that an architect did.

    We don't know how big your lot is and what space you have available to stretch things out, but for the money you'll be spending here you can get much better. Unless you specifically asked for a big cavernous foyer & living room, that should go. It will feel and sound like a gym. Have you taken any artisan home tours in your area? That would give you an idea of how large homes get designed for best use of space and livability.

    Just some food for thought: the square footage of your public areas is very big, but you only have 3 usable public spaces (living, dining, kitchen). Your dining room is actually pretty small considering the size of your house. There's no separate cozy hang out space for a TV (if you watch TV?).

    Do you need a garage embedded in your house? Maybe that's dictated by your lot size, but if you can move it out of your main house, that would be aesthetically better (for example, connected through a breezeway that could actually give you a mudroom that doesn't lead to your bedroom).

    Regarding light - again this all depends on which way your house faces, but the renderings are renderings, not reality. I have south facing front windows, and the light only comes about 10 feet into our living room in the winter. The north side has no direct light, and we typically need lights on in the rooms on that side. You have a large porch off the back of your house, and that roof will shade most if not all of your living room (unless you face west, and then it will be blinding and hot from 2PM until sunset). If your front faces south, you'll get light though there, but that will light your foyer, which will make your foyer very nice - the one spot in your house no one will ever hang out.

    Also - consider giving your guest cabana in the basement (if that's for overnight guests) their own private bathroom that isn't shared with the pool.

    You've gotten some harsh criticism, but it's good to know now - before you spend the money to build - that you can do much better. Probably with a different architect.

  • PRO
    AmyJUW
    3 years ago
    last modified: 3 years ago

    This house plan is enormous. I can't even imagine what is possible to make in every room. Last month I bought the first house in my life, and it is a Lumina Home. This company has different houses all over the United States and they build cheap houses. My house is not very big, but I like that it is comfortable. Most of all I like that it is situated near the forest, so the air is very fresh. Also, it is not situated in the city so the neighbourhood is very quiet. This place is perfect for people that want to start a family.

    ____________________

    https://www.lumina.com.ph