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Two stories are definitely cheaper to build, cheaper to heat and cool, etc. The cost of the stairs is dwarfed by the savings of cutting the foundation and roof structure costs in half for the same floor area. The first floor bedroom is a great idea for future lifestyle changes.
The primary laundry room should be on the second floor. Once you have an upstairs laundry you can't do without it. My current house has two laundry rooms, one on the second floor and one on the first floor where we come in from the deck and pool.
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Since the master was on the first floor I don't think it would be good to have the laundry room on the second floor since at some point that floor will not be as heavily used. If the master was on the second floor so should the laundry. I forgot to mention, that it would be a good idea to have a laundry chute from the second floor to the first.
I disagree that two stories are
definitely cheaper to build.
I think that two stories
can be cheaper to build,
if one compromises on the house design and room size.
I think one reason the OP's house has so many cut outs is trying to fit the top and bottom floor together. It is VERY hard, if not impossible, to build a two story house and not have to compromise on room sizes. If one is trying to minimize the cost of the house, that means the rooms sizes will have to shrink. I have done hundreds of house designs over the years, not built them mind you, but just designed them, and getting a first and second floor to match, with just the right room sizes, is impossible. You end up shrinking the rooms sizes to lower the price or you have to build larger than you want. It is just the way it works. Even on a single floor house this is true but for a two story house the problem is worse.
Here is an example. We have a walk in closet. It would be real nice if we had an extra 12 inches of space in two directions in that closet. Pushing the closet out one foot in two directions would require us to move two outside walls one foot. One of those walls is 32 feet long and the other is 55 feet. So to add a few feet in the closet we would add 87 SF to the house which would be $8,700 at $100/SF. If we had a two story house that extra space in the closet just cost $17,400. In our case, I was not willing to spend $8,700 for a few drawers in the closet since I can buy lots of very expensive furniture for that much money. :laughing: When designing a house you end up making these kind of decisions if you are paying attention. Unless you have Bill Gate's money.
In the OP's design he has two stairs. Only one is needed but even the needed stair is expensive. It looks to be taking up about 100 sf on both floors. At $100 a sf that is $10,000 for a stair. He also has a huge landing that is going to exist regardless of the second stair way which is costing another $7K. The very expensive roof design is because of the two story aspect of the house. The roof would be much simpler and cheaper on a single story house. I would bet that some of the smaller room sizes on the first floor are a result of not wanting/needing larger room sizes on the second floor. The bed rooms on the second floor are decent sized. Not too big and not too small. If the OP starts enlarging the rooms on the first floor then the rooms on the second floor are going to get larger. But the rooms are already about the right size so any additional space is wasted. It is also more money to build and maintain.
A second story house is also more expensive to put on the exterior siding whether it is brick, wood, vinyl, etc. If the siding requires painting that is a bigger expense over time due to the extra time it take to paint off the ground.
Our house does not have a basement and we did not want a crawl space. We have a finished colored concrete floor in the house which was pretty danged cheap. Our finished floor cost between $3-4 a SF including the concrete, concrete coloring, and gravel. I don't think we could build a finished second floor for $3-4 a SF.
A two story house
can be cheaper but it can also be more expensive. It depends on land prices, materials, house design and how much one will compromise on the design.
To the OP, I would suggest pushing aside the CAD program for now. Get 1/4 grid paper and start designing a new house from what you have learned. Maybe wait a week or so to forget what you have done so you can get a somewhat new start. Not that what you did was "bad" but to see if you can work out something better, something different. With the grid paper have each square scale to 2 or 4 feet. Build on the grid, meaning no odd number of feet in the floor plan. This requires you to go a bit bigger but you are not drawing in wall thicknesses so in the end it kinda balances out. Working with grid paper and pencil is much faster than a CAD program. This allows one to prototype a design real quick which means you can toss the design if it is scat. Or say, hey, I like this in the design but not that, lets try a part of Design A with Design M.
We had dozens and dozens and dozens of designs on graph paper before I started on blueprints. I forget the number of versions I did on the blueprints but it was quite a few before we had The One.
Later,
Dan
