Maybe they need a better designer.

Lmao, pro antagonizer. Don’t you have anything better to do Pacman?

Reviewing with client today. First design is very budget oriented and puts the living room back into the front of the house, which is not as desirable. This is schematic design only, for place-marking, No finishes were considered.

Exterior wall is reframed, doorway from kitchen to living room is framed and cased

Second Schematic design is more expensive yet leaves all bearing and exterior walls intact. Smaller kitchen but brings living into kitchen area.

Second Schematic design is more expensive yet leaves all bearing and exterior walls intact. Smaller kitchen but brings living into kitchen area.

Wow! “Designer PRO” is asking for help on an amateur, anonymous website. Is this a joke? Oh, wait! Do we all submit a bill?

@remodeling1840 Houzz is a resource, and as a professional in any capacity, I am always happy to explore all resources for the sake of my client.

I have more contracts than I can handle at the moment. So, this project is on hold for a number of months. As a fun and creative way of cultivating ideas, I offered to post this house for my client in several different communities in order to start a think-pool. This is exactly the purpose of this portion of the site, so I do not understand the hostility. I personally have donated thousands of hours over the years to various design forums, and there are certainly others like me. It's also an opportunity to get in touch with new resources.

For some background, @User is a colleague of mine. We were poking a bit of fun at each other, but all-in-all we are both very easygoing people.

If you had an idea and you wanted me to sign a contract for that idea if it were used and you submitted an estimate for my review, than yes you could potentially submit a bill. I'm not looking to steal ideas from anyone. I'm not really sure why me being a professional has any more bearing than the home owners and contractors that post here. This site is also not anonymous for me as my public design name and contact info is linked to this account(Not sure why this is noteworthy). I have no shame in asking peers for help.

Design 2 really does not flow for me. If I were in the Study in a high level meeting, I would not want my family noisily coming in. If I just came back from grocery shopping, i would not want to carry groceries, through a Study, through the Living room before getting to the kitchen. By moving the hallway up, the shortest path from the Living Room to the bedrooms is through the workspace of the kitchen. Also, for a house the size for a family of 5 or 6, it would be weird not to have a dedicated dining area. I think spending the $10k to remove/move the fireplace would greatly help the design of this project.

@Andrea C I agree with you on all of your points. The original post has a design where access is not through the study. I agree...it is not great.

Dining Area would be to the left of the foyer:

The client insists on keeping the fireplace.

I know many of the reasons that these designs are not great, unfortunately I do not see a clear path forward to a great design without really sitting down and grinding this out.

Taking all comers for this :)

@cawaps All ideas considered and appreciated. I shifted a few things around, I definitely the direction this is going. Thank you!

I like that much better. I'm a bit sad to lose the light from big window from the old dining room, but it was a bit of an obstacle to a good layout ("a layout fraught with unfortunate fenestration"). If it were me, and it didn't wreck the budget, I would lose the remaining uppers and put in windows flanking the cooktop to get back some of that light. It seems like with the additional pantry space in the new layout there should be plenty of storage without them.

I reread my earlier post and realized it sounded much harsher than I intended. I should have led with, "I prefer Design 1 generally, but..."