Tsilanko, I would always recommend professional installation where needed. But what I am doing here is suggesting that WHEN you are planning to build or renovate, to consider how your plans will affect you in 20 or 30 years time. Split levels are very hep when you are young. A kitchen 3 steps down at 30 is rarely a problem, but might be a hazard at 60, or, as Marjie1059 suggested, if you break a leg. ... All my parents' homes were terrible for old people. They were forced to move to a bungalow in extreme old sge because the location and design of their home was more suitable for an active young couple with a large family than for an elderly couple with stroke disabilities. I would not want to move again, so my present home has features built in that make ageing in place simpler. Mostly small changes, like grab rails, and lever handles on doors and faucets. A major disability suddenly suffered requires major changes if permanent. I did look at this because it came up in the discussion, but if you look at the heading, Planning for Disability, it means just that. Plan ahead so you don't have to make expensive changes later on. But thank you for your advice, yes, major changes are not in the DIY domain.

Hi! I'm so glad I came across your floor plan, got pretty excited and ideas started flooding. Firstly, I'm uploading a draft of a floor plan I made as a rough copy (with a pencil and a paper), so kindly excuse the imperfections. (please refer to the picture I've posted along with this.) Secondly, as you mentioned, you would want to include the balcony in your seating area, I recommend you to break the wall and instead use French windows to allow the light within and it'll also feel very open. Then, about the kitchen, as you said you wouldn't want a large dining area, you could take that space for an open kitchen, where the counter also serves as the dining space from the outside. And since, the kitchen would be made towards the direction of the arrow pointed (refer to the pic) we get ample space to make a Pooja room. And to give an enclosed feel to the living room I chose and L shaped couch for it. I would suggest you to go for a mounted TV on a rotatable stand on the wall so that its accessible from anywhere across the room. Having done that, we are still left with some space (marked with a circle in the pic ) which could be used to put some more seats for the living room OR... (THIS IS MY FAV PART IN A HOUSE!) you could also use that space to mount a swing from the top. There were few more probabilities to do this house, but I genuinely found this one to be the best, coz I'm a huge fan of open spaces, and it's a good layout a lot of things could be done with it. All the best.

Suvarchala, I am presuming that you do not want the doors to face each other due to privacy concerns. If that's right you wouldn't also want the guest/visitors to go to a bath in one of your rooms. Have you considered that before dropping off a common bath from the plan. If your neighbour has a door facing yours then you can also think about doing a mirror image of what respected member suggested above. I.e. door on the pooja room corner instead of the guest room corner. Thanks, Nitin CORNERSTONE DESIGNS Bangalore

The kitchen sink should go towards the corner next to the stove area since the plumbing would be easier due to the bathroom pipeline on that wall. The stove should be moved from there to the basin area but more central. I couldn't zoom in but what is loft above. Anyway, I think you could get rid of that wall and make it a half wall, and include a counter with 2 -3 bar chairs like for quick meals. Puja area, I think would be better elsewhere since there is non-veg food and sometimes alcohol consumption. You could have more like a partition shelf wall between dining and living, need to think more on moving the puja area somewhere else. Also, since the common bathroom is right there, you would not need another basin next to the dining area, its just not a good sight . You could mail me the floor plan and we could work on it more elaborately, but this is simply a skimmed review of the layout. Hope I was helpful .