Ultimate Single Story House - update

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The goal is to have a house with the best design for the money, not necessarily the cheapest. But you could easily add or subtract from this design to hit almost any budget.

If you aren’t interested in house plan designs, and most of you aren’t, I hope you are interested in the process of “open design,” where hordes of people essentially guide the design. I started with a basic idea, and your comments have guided it.

Many of you complained about my two-story house plan. Having recently injured my knee playing tennis (not badly), I have a new level of sympathy for that view. What follows is a single-level design, with an optional basement, based on your comments.

Click to enlarge.

Based on your comments, I put the laundry room near the center of the action part of the house, so you can watch the kids and prepare meals without traveling to laundry Siberia and back. I even designed a rolltop window in the laundry room where you can do the ironing while facing out to the big screen TV. Noise wouldn’t be that big of a deal if you soundproofed the walls and only opened the rolltop window when others weren’t around. I retained the closets that open to bedrooms and to the laundry room. This house makes doing laundry almost fun. (And realistically, the person who does the laundry usually decides what house you live in.)

I moved the guest/kid bathroom to the end of the house. No one wanted it anywhere near the kitchen or living area.

I added a front porch because those are relatively inexpensive, energy friendly, and provide lots of outdoor enjoyment. This is the large and useful kind of porch, not the purely cosmetic type you see on new houses these days. And it faces the primary sun direction to keep the home cool.

I kept the storage room concept adjacent to the main living area, and added a door from storage to the garage, based on comments. This is the room that keeps all your party stuff, exercise equipment, holiday decorations, extra chairs and tables, and anything else you need to change the function of the living area on the fly.

If you aren’t sold on the storage room concept yet, and you have kids, imagine that it also contains what I call Toy Jail. Anything that isn’t picked up by the kids gets thrown in a big box (the Toy Jail) in the storage room.

There is one dining area, casual enough for every day, but imagine it designed with a restaurant ambiance, so you wouldn’t be embarrassed entertaining friends there either. And after dinner, the big screen comes down from the ceiling for a movie. A home theater seems like an excess, but prices are dropping fast, and if it is included in the original design of the house, and you plan to use it a lot, it makes sense.

The front entrance is off the family room, with a mud room, and a small foyer that is business only. Every inch of the home that gets heated or cooled is useful.

The Cat's bathroom is in the master bathroom. If you have allergic house guests, just lock the cat in the master bedroom and it has all it needs.

The home office is moved off toward the garage and kitchen side, and is on its own heating/cooling zone. It's close to the kitchen for convenience.

The optional basement steps are moved to near the entrance from the garage.

The game room is moved next to the family room, separated by a two-way fireplace.

All bedrooms have windows now.

Bathrooms reduced from five to two. You could always add them back to bedrooms without changing the overall design too much.

The master bedroom got a retreat/sitting area just to square things off.

So there it is, the ultimate house, designed by you. How’s it look now?

Comments

[Tony]

So - with the laundry in the middle of the house I would have to assume that you are using a (expensive) clothes dryer (ecologically bad - 2 demerits) instead of the sun and wind to dry your clothes - and therefore are not walking/carrying the laundry basket to the clothes line - hanging out, taking in (cardiovascularly sound - another 2 demerits) etc before moving to the ironing, folding and storing?

[Ogen garnet]

Global House Plans.com is great store....

[tsb]

If it don't have uninals in every bathroom, it will never be the perfect house because of the overhanging spectre of the lid up-down controversy.

[@Rob]

Is the room where the large TV is in accoustically designed to allow maximum benefits to a 5+ speaker surround sound setup.

[caviar]

Maybe we should bring together our collective genius to arrive at the perfect layout for a city too! The market is too far away from my house!

[Rick]

Sorry this comment is a bit late.

There are two major problems with the design at present, both of which are things I check out first when looking at a home.

1) The dining room is not adjacent to the kitchen so you have to trapse through the lounge to serve food. When you are entertaining you may want your guests to relax whilst you do the last minute stuff out of sight. (OK, I know you said do your formal entertaining at a resturant but that is expensive in the UK).

2) To get from the bedrooms to the kitchen you have to go through the lounge. Again, when entertaining adults you don't want your kids marching through every five minutes 'to get a glass of water'. The same is true when your 17-year-old is having a slumber-party and you need a drink at midnight.

To Summerise - you need to be able to get from the dining room and the bedrooms to the kitchen without going through the lounge.

[Brooks Ballard]

"The goal is to have a house with the best design for the money..." I call that crafted simplicity.

It should also not be butt ugly, and what you have going there is ugly and not cost efficient. Unless you're going with a flat roof, your roof framing costs are going to be outrageous. Check out the older bungalows on narrow lots. Many of these are single stories and they are very efficient. Make things not too wide, and keep your bump outs to a minimum. I come from an affordable housing background and now design updated bungalows everyday. 4' increments work well, too, to keep costs down. Check out some of our designs for some inspiration - http://www.homepatterns.com/
Hope it helps.

[Mike]

There are a couple personal preferences I have that are of no consequence to most people; like having the master bed on the opposite side of the house from the other bedrooms, so I would probably switch things a little for that (I like to have as much privacy for the master as possible and I feel having the MB as far from the kids rooms as possible means they are less likely to bother me at night for minor things... only those things worth walking all the way through the house in the dark).

However, one thing I feel EVERY house needs is a half bath accessible from the outside entrances without having to walk on the carpet. This is so people who are working outside or are in a major hurry can access them without removing their shoes. This also helps because invariably you have guests who are able to completely ignore the huge pile of shoes when they go inside to use the facilities. So if they have a straight shot from the garage or the back patio to a restroom it can cut wear-and-tear on your carpet way down. I would probably say put a half-bath in the upper right corner of the storage room where you could access it form the kitchen through that small wall space.

[Simon]

I live in a 1 floor house because I'm getting older. I'd add a music/library room by extenting the kitchen and moving the garage and office up.... the adding the music/library at about equal size to the storage.... this gives kids a place to practice using the garage as a sound buffer from the office. It also makes the library part convenient to the office.... otherwise, I'd buy this if a contractor would build it somewhere

[Rand]

I have just one critically important question that isn't clear from the diagram: can you see the TV from the kitchen (while cooking or doing dishes)? If not, then this cannot be called the Ultimate House.

[Rand]

I have just one critically important question that isn't clear from the diagram: can you see the TV from the kitchen (while cooking or doing dishes)? If not, then this cannot be called the Ultimate House.

[Marc]

The doors through the closet into the laundry are a neat idea, but, in practice, probably not all that useful. Stuff tends to pile up in closets, and that would block that door. And you can't but a closet rod in front of that door. I'd rather have the space than the doors.

If it's really that far to walk to the laundry, use a little red wagon to tow the clothes around the corner.

[Anfauglir]

Probably too late for anyone to read this....but good grief Scott, what is your obsession with laundry? Do you really soil THAT many clothes?

[Tim]

Switch Bedroom 2 and Guest Bathroom. This makes plumbing layout easier as the 2 bathrooms are next to each other. It also creates more lighting options for bedroom 2.

[Free William]

Looks OK to me... for someine else to live in. I have had a quick look at the comments again. I think that you have proven that it is impossible to design the ultimate universal house which should came as no surprise but the excercise was interesting, thanks.

[Ami]

What is the "retreat" off the master bedroom? And you need a half bathroom somewhere near the kitchen/office area. You're not going to want to make guests go all the way through your house and use your kids bathroom. And you're going to want something closer to your office. Maybe put it in part of that storage room space. And if you do the optional basement you won't need the storage room up top. Just a thought.

In the family room- is there really no window or is the tv going to block it? Windows GOOD.

[Ami]

What is the "retreat" off the master bedroom. And you need a half bathroom somewhere near the kitchen/office area. You're not going to want to make guests go all the way through your house and use your kids bathroom. And you're going to want something closer to your office. Maybe put it in part of that storage room space. And if you do the optional basement you won't need the storage room up top. Just a thought.

In the family room- is there really no window or is the tv going to block it? Windows GOOD.

[TomB]

Three thoughts:

1. Have a hatch/door from the garage to the pantry via the North (assuming North is up on the paper) wall of the pantry. Someplace that you can offload directly from your SUV tailgate or hatchback into the pantry. Usually garages are a foot or two down from the main house level, so this would be a pretty much straight lift across. Handy, not a lot of work to frame in an insulated hatch.

2. Where's your LAN/Power closet? Furnace? AC unit? Water purifier, etc? If I was putting up a house today, I wouldn't be doing it without some thought to home automation and I would then require a LAN patch panel, hooks to the main electrical service, and a dry and conditioned place that has adequate ventilation to store several servers computers (or at least one) and I'd be wiring the rooms for Ethernet as well as (or perhaps in place of) conventional phone. X10 or similar home automation might enter the picture.

Now, perhaps all this stuff would go in the unseen basement... (except for the wiring).

3. Soundproof the bathroom walls. Or find some other mechanism of keeping what happens there a mystery to the rest of the household, sound-wise.

Otherwise, I quite like the design. You are short about 1 study/library (office won't cut it) from what I'd want in my house, but otherwise it looks pretty good.

[Annie]

The garage is inconveniently far away from the front door/coat closet/mudroom. If you go into the house through the garage are you going to:

a) carry your shoes and coat through the house to the front door/mudroom? (inconvenient and a little silly).
b)leave your shoes/coat in the garage (what if you want to go out through the front door next time you go out).
c)walk through the house wearing your shoes and coat? (results dirty floors).

This is particularly relevant for people with kids. Often the garage will store things like kids' bikes, skateboards etc, so when they're coming in through the garage after riding around and getting themselves dirty you'll want to have them as close to the mudroom as possible.

[Tom Spencer]

I also have the pull down giant tv screen the only problem is day time you have to have a way to make the room darker. If you have skylights or lots of glass the picture is washed out.
Laundry should be where the clothes come off. Make the closet and laundry one clothes processing room. We did that in our new place and it is great. The new washers are quiet.
What are you going to do with all that basement? We put the guest down there. With a sloped lot you can make it a walk out basement and the guest have a different level where they do not have to worry about running into you if they are insomniacs.
Tom

[Seth Goldin]

I just found this, and thought that it might be useful for people interested in this here. It's a program that basically lets you design a house, complete with furniture placement, and even has a three-dimensional preview. It looks pretty cool. You folks might enjoy it.

Scott, you should actually use it to build this thing, and then take pictures and post them.

http://www.freemacware.com/sweet-home-3d/

[The Lazy Organizer]

The back patio needs to go across the back of the kitchen so you can access it from the kitchen, for taking food out, or the dining room, for guests.

[Grainschway]

What the hell is a mud room? If there's room for a jacuzzi outside, I'll take 2.

[LA Clay]

It's still sideways.

[stefani]

wheres the waterslide?