I like it alot! Your idea of closing up the 2 story Great Room is good. We had a house like that previously and the sound really echos upstairs. We closed up ours on this house and made a bonus room above it. We still kept the ceiling high at 12 feet but made a step up for the Bonus room. It worked out great. You could make an extra room up there. Or if you don't need the space, attic storage is good too.

I like the plan alot! Good Luck

I like it a lot too. Two quick thoughts:

First, get some graph paper and do a scaled drawing of your Family Room. Measure your furniture and try to arrange it, to scale, in that room. How wide do you like your circulation/walking paths? Three' is minimum in a public space. Although the measurements look adequate, because of where you enter from the Foyer, you're going to lose a good bit of furniture space to circulation. (Good tip I got was to so a scaled drawing of each room, then measure off and highlight the entire circulation spaces. Then placed scaled "furniture" in the room. Can you still access the furniture? Arrange it where you want?) You have that rear porch to take in if you find you need part of it.

Second: Upstairs, for later years, you can have a more private guest suite by adding a door so that the bath and adjacent BR can become a private suite with ensuite bath. Or add lots of doors there (some pocket, due to space limitations) and have a somewhat private/partial ensuite, with general access to the sink area for the other room (which might become an office or whatever later). Just a thought.

Oh, the garage. Measure some garages and measure your vehicles and space between, in front and behind them. Consider future vehicles. I never know/trust where designers are measuring from with their printed dimensions. Find that out. Does it include the little juts and storage areas? Sometimes it does, when it shouldn't.

And how wide is the garage door opening? Does that leave enough space between the vehicles? Mine never have. More is better, always. What else do you want to put in your garage and how does that affect walking around space?

I vote for definitely using that space above the Great Room as living space. Tall spaces cost you with little return, and I hear they're on the way out with energy concerns coming to the fore now. (And old people have a really hard time removing cobwebs from real high ceilings! Lol)

Wow, you guys are AWESOME!!

I hadn't even thought of these things.

We were also concerned that the Great Room may be a little too small. I will have to get out some graph paper and check on that. Like you said, We can always pull from the screen porch area footage. Also, LOVE the idea about adding a pocket door into the upstairs bath area to make a private suite later.

Thanks so much for all the advice. Please keep it coming. ;)

You don't say what part of the country you live in -- do you need a coat/gloves/boots in the wintertime? If you do, when you park your car in the garage and come into the house, where are you going to put all that gear? Carry it all the way through the kitchen and great room, or kitchen and dining room, to put it in one of the tiny closets by the foyer?

It really irks me when the laundry room serves as a hallway between the garage and the house. Why would you want your clean clothes fresh from the dryer coming in contact with someone entering the house from the outside? I'd remove the laundry facilities from its current place and leave that all for storage/closet space. Then find a different place for the laundry.

If the main level bedroom/den will not be a bedroom, I would remove the shower from the bathroom, making it a powder room (nicer for guest to use than one with a shower). The door can open only into the hallway (not the den/office) and take out the closet.

I would also make the two small coat closets only one larger coat closet. Those tiny ones are hard to get anything in/out of.

Don't skimp on the garage. Make sure you have room between the cars too! I would do two separate garage doors instead of one large one.

This looks like the kitchen plan someone else posted on the kitchen forum and the suggested rearrangement was really great.

Oh...Just found it. It's not exactly the same, but you might want to see it anyway. Then if you want input more specific to you, your house, and kitchen, the kitchen forum is a great place to ask for it.

I agree wholeheartedly with littlebug5. I don't like my laundry room to be a walk-through. I would work hard to change that.

Here is a link that might be useful: kitchen forum input on similar kitchen plan

The Derbyville is a really attractive home. I remember it from my ( cross eyed) months of home plan searching.

Having said that - it has my number one pet peeve..... and you have small boys and will now have 2 acres - I do not like having to walk through the "whole house" to get to a bathroom. If I come in with muddy/wet/snowy shoes how far do I have to go to get to a bathroom? Actually the master bath is closest - but of course you don't want that type use of your private bath.

I also would have concerns about not having any type of a mudroom with lockers/benches etc. Where are you going to put the "crap" that comes in the door everyday? Where will you plug in cell phones, drop the mail etc? I know the laundry room has a counter but can it have all these functions? As littlebug mentioned, I am not enamored of my laundry room being a hallway- and the washer and dryer are going to collect everything in a plan like this.

I think closing in the open space above the great room is smart and timely.

I also recommend enlarging the garage.

Have fun - just let all the suggestions bump around in your mind and you will be amazed at what you come up with!

PD

The laundry room thing has also been a little irk of mine. The house we live in now has the laundry room as you walk in...this is one of the things I do not like about our house. No matter how hard I try, I can't ever seem to keep it tidy enough. ;)

So...I have been thinking. Maybe we could make a small powder room as you walk in the door from the garage with a pocket door. It would only be big enough for a sink & toilet, but that would get the job done. On the other side of the room (where cabinet space is now), we could make a little mudroom section with a bench/lockers/storage area.

We will not be using the 2nd bedroom downstairs. This will be an office. So...I could make that bathroom into the utility room.

I am not sure how this would work, space wise. This is something I would have to talk over with the contractor.

Rhome410~I haven't had a chance to look at the link yet. Thanks so much. I do know that I want double ovens in my kitchen. I have got to find a way to work all that in.

Keep those tips coming. We are tweaking with the plan little by little and I am liking it better and better.

If this is your forever home, make sure your aisles are at least 4' wide, and all doorways a full 3' wide. There is nothing worse than having to move out of your "dream" home because of disabilities!

Borrow a walker from someone and try to maneuver around an average bathroom - you'll quickly understand what I mean.

I would look at all the other Gardner plans that you can find. I'm sure you likely have but I'd print them all out and really study them all. You may be able to put elements of one into your home. Friends of ours are building a Gardner home, sorry can't remember which one, and thier downstairs is very similar to yours except the mater bedroom is on the right rather than the left. But this allows for thier laundry room to not be the entry into the house. But is basically from the above w&d to the outside wall. If this is a pet peve of yours now that's not going to change as your boys get older and thier socks even more smelly than they are now! :)

It's a very nice home with a great floor plan. The first thing I see is there's no linen closet for the MB. I'm in the process of just starting my build, and I noticed I didn't have one either. I had another bedroom on the side where the tub and shower were, and had them push that bedroom closet back a bit to put a 2' closet between the shower and tub. It might be possible to have one at the end of your tub if they took 2' out of the MB and moved the window to the right just slightly.

IMO, the breakfast bar/counter sticks out too much and could become a problem when there's a group of people congregating in the kitchen~I would make it wider.

Is it a pantry or butler's pantry between the kitchen and DR? If it's a pantry, I would make it a butler's pantry, and make the storage area the pantry. Gives you a separate area to store fine china/glassware.

You'll drive yourself crazy thinking about everything you could do. I should know, i'm already blabbering to myself. LOL

You have a very nice plan.

I agree by trying to scale your furniture arrangement to the great room. If you're going to use the seating bar at the kitchen, look at how far out into the great room that extends.

With windows on one wall, fireplace on another, kitchen on another, entry on another...you have very little wall space...does that work for you? Our original plan had the fireplace to the inside like that. We moved ours to the back wall flanked by windows instead of bookcases. The fireplace box extends outside the house instead of taking up interior space (also with a porch like yours, you could do a two-sided indoor/outdoor fireplace). Then, we bought a flat screen TV to go on a console against a wall -- takes up less room.

If you want to sit on your front porch, make sure it's at least 8 feet deep.

We live on 4.5 acres and we have a Toyota Tundra crew cab, standard bed truck and it is 19 ft long as an example of a large vehicle. I agree about having two doors and more space between the vehicles.

Are you going to have outside storage anywhere? If not, where will you put lawn mowers, tools, bikes, etc.?

As others have said...if you already know you don't want to walk through the laundry room, then look at a similar floor plan with a better configuration for that space. If a similar plan has a front load garage, your builder can turn that into a side load with some extra space added.

Cameron

I totally agree with jkom51 about the wider halls and doorways. I broke my ankle, and was in a wheel chair for 3+ months, plus used a walker. The master bathroom toilet would be hard to access from a wheel chair/ walker. Also, make sure that you have some grab bars in the shower. What a pain to try to take a shower without them. Now, remember, if you plan for these things, they will never happen, so think of it as an insurance policy LOL!!!

Building 09,
This is the plan that DH & I have picked out. It is the only one we both agreed upon from the very beginning. Although we are still thinking about building, it was nice to see a picture. The ones on the DG website show combinations of brick/siding. If we do build I think we will do all brick. What are you planning for the exterior? There was also someone else building this house, "Twitchy" was the user name and they posted pictures. Congrats, keep us posted, it's a great house!

First I read that you have two acres. Then I saw your plans and stopped dead. Why are you building a two-story 'retirement' home?

Some perspective: I'm just home from hip replacement surgery. (Average age for this is mid-50's, much to my surprise!) I am thrilled to be in a single-floor home with 36" doorways, wood floors with no thresholds, large shower, etc.

Now, maybe you aren't really building a retirement home, but one that will serve your young family for a number of years. In that case...nevermind. (I have a lot of problems with this plan even if that is the case, but let's first find out how long you want this home to serve.)

I really like your plan and you have gotten some great advice from folks! We have one child, 8 and are building on 7 acres. We looked at two stories at first but since we had so much land we ended up with a one story. To be honest I am really glad we did. One of my sisters built a two story and wished she had done a one. Her one daughter hurt her leg once and had to sleep on the sofa because she could not go up to her room. Not saying you should not build a two story but since you do have land I would really think about the pro's and con's between a one and two story house. We also plan on this house for 'retirement', another reason we went with a one story. Just my two cents though! You know more then anyone what you want/need :-)

Good luck with your build when y'all do start! I can't wait to see how thing progress.