The Plan - Think thrice before you start constructing

This is one of the most important decision you will be making, How do you want your house to be.
Our approach to plan was we needed 2 master bedroom and one kids bedroom. there was plenty of mistakes we made hope you avoid it.

Our entire decision on Floor Plan was based on reducing the construction cost by minimising the total build-up area. So let me show how the plan drastically changed .

 What we planned -ground floor

What we built - ground floor

 What we planned -first floor

 What we built - first floor

so what happened and why we changed?

That is the important learning you can have. lets us explain. Builders have a great concept of  swindling us of money. They say portico and rooms have same construction cost. We argued with our builder saying you don't need to build walls on 3 sides , so bricks and cement is saved, no electrical conduit is needed on walls and painting 3 surfaces is eliminated so reduce the rate for portico. He was adamant that he cant reduce and the margin he gets from portico is his profit. So that is no1 reason for eliminating portico. We might have saved some costs in portico, but we lost a lot in changing the stairs from living room to dining room.

Stairs design:

So we went for designing a stair, we wanted to reduce the space utilized by stair and increase the area of lounge. Enter the builders with their brilliant ideas, and our first mistake.

What we wanted

 What we built

  So how it changed like this, The mason who built was a lazy ass, he did not want extra work, so he convinced us it is difficult to build. When we showed some pictures enter the builder who said it would cost more and made us back track.

What we lost nearly 50 Sqft of floor area was lost. Because we were convinced by the people that it was not worth extra 10000 rs for the stairs we decided.

Lesson : Never compromise on your initial idea and always ask how much each design will impact your building area