You’re going to build your dream home and you’ve thought it all through – or so you’ve thought. You know exactly what you need and want to have in your home, but have you thought about what you don’t want and what you don’t need? Have you really thought the whole thing through? You have given much thought and consideration to what will work for you, but have you taken the time to think about what won’t work?
When you plan on building a new home, you must look at the home from many angles. You must consider your current and future lifestyles. You need to take family planning into consideration – Will your family be expanding? Or will your children be leaving the nest? Do you entertain often and host overnight guests regularly?
1.Plan Ahead
When designing your own home you should take your lifestyle and habits into consideration. How long do you plan on staying in this home? Will you need to accommodate safety features for new or young children? Or might you need to think of your needs later in life as you reach retirement age and beyond, such things as wider doors for walking frames, grab rails to showers and toilets? Think ahead, long term, to see where you will be and what you will need from your home.
2. Lighting
Light fixtures and outlets should be plentiful. As should windows. Windows should be present in every room and as large as possible. Natural light, when possible, should be the main source of light. Think about adding skylights as well.
3.Use of space
The addition of a playroom, game room or multipurpose room sounds enticing, but only plan to build a room that will actually get used. What good is a wasted home gym where the treadmill is used to hold clothes from last season? Often an unused room becomes a dumping ground to place those things that never get used. If you plan on adding a spare room, make sure that it is a room that can transition well from one type to the next. A sewing room may never get used, but a sewing room or office that also doubles as a guest room could indeed get used often.
4.Bedroom position
The bedroom ideally should be as far away from the noise and traffic as possible. The master bedroom should not be near or above the garage if members of your family are likely to be coming and going while you are asleep or resting. But in saying that I have had two opinions about a master bedroom being at the front of the house. One it is close to the street, so you get traffic noise and people walking past and car lights. Two some people prefer the front of the house for security if someone tries to break in through the front door they are going to hear it. It would be advisable to keep the master bedroom away from the central living areas as well. The bedrooms, ideally, should not share a wall with the central living area, showers, toilets or washing machines if possible.
5, Kitchen position
When it comes time to bring in groceries do you want to walk through the house in order to deposit the groceries into the kitchen. Keeping the kitchen near a garage or back entrance ensures you are not lugging heavy groceries far. The kitchen tends to get a lot of through traffic and it would therefore be best to divert the foot traffic from constantly traipsing through the main living areas. I built my house with two sinks in the kitchen, one small one at the end of the kitchen next to the fridge so when everyone comes into the kitchen looking for a drink while I was cooking they were concentrated to only a small section of the kitchen away from my main work area.