The new site in Lehningen is now officially ready to be built on and we have already seen a couple of foundations and cellars going in earlier this week when we were there, so things are moving quickly. We certainly won't be the first house to get built there.
Our architect visited on Thursday afternoon, he planned in four hours to gather the information required to draw up the final blueprint for the house and to review our requirements and plans for the layout. He is contracted by Allkauf but doesn't work for them which mean he can work with us and advise us independently.
For the ground floor we asked to change around the utility room and guest bathroom as the garage would need to be placed against the wall of the bathroom meaning we couldn't have a window without changing it. By moving the utility room and bathroom we can have a window in both. This was no problem and will be in the final plans. We also removed some doors replacing them with windows and added a door in the kitchen to easily get to the garden without having to go through the living room.
Upstairs we made some big changes to the master bedroom as we would really like to incorporate the whole of the large alcove in to the master bedroom but that means moving a supporting wall. The architect is not sure if this is possible and will need to check with Allkauf. Even if there has to be a supporting pillar in the bedroom we would still like to do this if possible so we are keeping our fingers crossed. Other changes we made upstairs is to move the windows further away from the walls in the bedrooms so a wardrobe would be able to butt up to the wall and the windows still open properly, we also took out the French balcony doors and put in normal windows.
When it came to roof colour the architect jokingly said "grey right?" (as it seems everyone wants to build grey and white houses at the moment) and he was a bit surprised (we think pleasantly) that we wanted to have a red roof, white walls and brown windows with exposed wood under the rafters. I can imagine once all the houses are built that ours will stand out as being a bit different, and I am sure we will be pleased we didn't follow the latest trend in a few years when grey is out of fashion again.
After running over some of the other aspects like house position (there is only one possibility due to the tight building restrictions in Lehningen), placement of the garage, and discussing what each of the different builders is responsible for, we were done.
We were happy with the meeting and he provided us lots of good tips and helpful check-lists to ensure we don't forget anything later on. There is a lot to do and remember, particularly once the groundworkers start digging the cellar.
Our ground floor plan:
Our first floor plan:
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