Which sides are the south and north sides?
I am worried you don't have enough headroom infront of your toilet in the Master Bath, for example (but you would if you turned it around--that is how our current upstairs is.).

Do you plan to have children? I forget, and you say "right now" it is just you and your DH... An open to the LR FP is nice on paper, but with kids, it will be loud. All sound travels up. The bedrooms will be loud if you are downstairs watching TV/having a late night snack in the kitchen, etc.

Glad you turned your bathroom around downstairs.

Upstairs, I'm not crazy about walking into a bedroom into the closet wall. I have that in one bedroom in my house, and it is annoying--makes the room feel small. Could you put them at the other ends of the room, and perhaps a desk under the windows tucked between closet and interior (bathroom) wall? Then, you'd walk into a large room, with closet at opposite corner.

I can't tell where the door will be for the minor master closet...but if it is from within the bath hall way, I think I'd switch the direction of bathroom door swing.

Need to attend to my littles. Will look back at others' feedback.

My quick personal opinions are:

1) I don't think I would like walking to the front door to go upstairs to my bedroom every night. And/or having those stairs empty right at the front door. Seems like that may be a code violation, but I could be wrong. Could you have the stairs reoriented somehow?
2) I don't think that little laundry closet is a good idea. You don't have kids yet, but hope to, which means, if you keep the small closet, someday you're going to have laundry strewn all over your loft area. TRUST ME! :)
3) Are you hoping to have the rustic exposed timber look in your great room? If not, I would seriously reconsider the open-to-below thing.
4) And one last thing, make sure those knee walled rooms are well insulated! We have a couple of "bonus rooms" and they are so hard to heat and cool, because we didn't pay close attention to insulation. Lesson learned!

Have you considered SIPS for your timber frame?

I'm sure it will be a beautiful home! I'm excited to see the end result!

You mentioned adding solar panels to the garage roof. Have you had (or done for yourself) a shade analysis of the potential panel site as you have drawn it? The adjacent, much higher, main building will curtail the amount of available sun for the panels by shortening, perhaps very significantly, the number of hours the panels are in full sun.

We are in the process of installing a PV system now, and it's surprising how much that matters. Since my DH is in the business I showed your drawing to him. He suggested that it would be very important to select panels and inverters that functioned independently of each other so shade on some panels doesn't shut the whole array down prematurely.

If this is an important component of your plans, the time to consider this is now.

HTH,

L.

kirkhall
the north side/wall is at the top of the drawing, the south at the bottom. (the north arrow is shown to the right of the first floor). The wall facing south is the one with the front door, so its where the sun comes from most of the day.

just fyi, there is about 7.5 ft ceiling height 5 ft from the south wall in the master bathroom, and there is a dormer in the center, which adds extra ceiling height (although not where the toilet is shown) (Also the dormers are not very clearly drawn...sorry about that....these are my drawings, so you know...drafting standards are lax, or rather non existent....)

having the master suite upstairs in these cape style houses is tricky, in my opinion. the layouts in these houses are really constrained with the reduced ceiling height at those walls. however, the overall style has a lot of appeal for many reasons for us (appearance, energy efficiency, cost to build, etc.) the ridge runs east to west, and there is a lot of height there (entrance to master bedroom, loft overlooking below, and guest bath)

I was originally advocating for the master suite on the first floor, for one floor living if necessary. DH has successfully argued for keeping all of the "public" areas downstairs, and "private areas" upstairs. Upstairs will have a cozy feel. He says we can always put an elevator in where the closet by the stairs is (1st floor) if we have too (I bet that's not cheap!).

I'm with you on walking into the master bedroom facing the closet. it doesn't seem ideal for sure. I'm open to ideas. just keep in mind, that big window in the dormer on the north wall in the master bedroom looks out over the property and has views of the mountains. I don't want to block it with a closet.

kelhuck
re point 1) - i didn't even think about that. We toured a house with the stairs arranged just like it, and thought it was great. That's a good point though. I've thought about the stairs quite a bit, but never from that angle (odd in retrospect). They also had a little more space between the stairs and front door than I'm showing.
2)laundry - yeah, this is a big one for me. I go round and round on this:) The trade-off is to just have a laundry closet, but have the laundry upstairs, or put it in the mud-room, have more space, but have to haul laundry up and down stairs all the time. right now, i'm leaning towards not caring if the laundry clutters up the loft a bit, but there is not much room there at all, its only barely works. currently, my washer and dryer are in our garage, which is not conditioned. I bring baskets of laundry back into our bedroom, and process everything there. S, its not far fetched to have a small closet, but the appeal of a little room I can close off is strong. I swear I want a new house just for a space conditioned laundry room:)
3) pretty much, yes. the appeal of timber homes is showing off the structure, those gorgeous timbers. all timber homes I've seen have a least some two story view inside. however, there is strong sentiment on this board against it, that its loud. since I've never lived in a house like this, I'm inclined to listen. its a valid point, especially when its more than just the two of us (guests and/or kids). even just making the open to below over the foyer instead of the tv/family/living room may solve that. I dunno yet. I'll have a chat w/ dh about it later.
4) dont' worry about insulation, the entire house is going to be wrapped in SIPS. initial calcs for the efficiency we are looking for are calling for 10" SIPS, whereas almost everyone uses 6". No worries, this house will be tight (and require mechanical ventilation). we are focusing heavily on the envelope, so our budget is focused on SIPS and windows. I may even hae to sacrifice my nice kitchen initially (blasphemy!) in order to pay for it up front, but we'll see.

liriodendron - that's awesome that you are using PV. the price is coming down, so its actually starting to make sense to pay for it, instead of just being for people like dh and me, who just have non-mainstream tastes and interest (energy nuts, sort of:) the property was logged 5 years before we bought it, so it doesn't have many trees (no trees anywhere near the home site) (and its an ugly mess, we've just now started re-planting). the south facing garage roof will have full sun all day. if it weren't for that, we would angle the house more, so the back faces the mountains a bit better, but we didn't want to sacrifice the front/south wall of the house with respect to facing the sun too much. we like PV just cause we think its neat, and we're trying hard to justify it, but it may be a few years down the road before we consider actually paying for it.

@am.e- Good to hear you're using SIPS! We will, too.

re: the 2 story room. IMO, they only serve one purpose- to impress your visitors. Kind of like having a house with a brick front. When you think about it, they only detract from the "livability" of the house. Sure, people ooh and aah when they come in. But after the party's over and everyone's gone home, all you have is a room with cobwebs in the corners that you can't reach, a room that's hard to heat/cool, and the noise from the kids upstairs. And if you ever want to repaint it, you'll have to hire someone with scaffolding to do it. For some people, the wow factor is important. For others, it's not. You just have to decide which camp you live in. (FWIW, We have a vaulted living room in our current house......and we will not in our new build.)

If you got rid of the two story room, can you raise the ceilings on the main to 10 ft and use wood beams for the rustic effect? You could then put your master over the great room with a nice bank of windows for an even better view and give yourself a nice laundry room upstairs.

Just some thoughts!!

I would rethink where the toilet is in the Master Bath. You really have a way to go if you have to get up in the middle of the night or if you are ill. As one ages, it is nice to have it closer to the bedroom.

Well, this is my experience. We live in a Cape.

In our cape, 6 feet from the outside wall is a 5' kneewall (and the toilet is against it). And about 3 feet later, it is to 7.5'. I am still worried that you don't actually have enough headroom to be to code in front of your Master toilet. (trust me, I know all about "these capes". We are adding on to our cape and the addition give us about 100 more square feet just because we get rid of some of the wasted space lost in eaves). With the toilet outside of the dormer space, you will need to make sure it actually does have 6'8" of space 2 feet in front of the front of your toilet. I am pretty sure that is the code (someone like renovator or brickeye can verify that). Because the requirement for headroom is in front of the toilet, turning the toilet to the short wall/knee wall works. But, it would require,probably, that you change your layout in the bathroom.

Also, regarding the location of the closets...
I wasn't talking about the master bedroom closet. I was talking about walking into the other bedrooms right to a closet wall. And, the solution I proposed above is still what I would propose--move the closet to the East walls (instead of West walls) and opposite the door. Tuck a desk or the like under the East windows between closet and bathroom wall. Then, you walk into the room, and not into the closet wall. Closets shouldn't have to change their size, or the location of the windows to fit, by my approximation.

I think the hallway area in the master that you walk into is wide enough to avoid this issue in the master. (But, not in the minor bedrooms)

kirkhall...thanks for clarifying, failed reading comprehension on my part. I've added this to the list of changes to look at.

That second floor layout absolutely not work with a Cape. You need a full second story for it. And the full height living space will be very difficult to heat and cool. The only warm spot in it will be 3 feet from the wood stove or the ceiling above it. I would reverse the kitchen and dining space. If you want to have a cookout, walking raw meat through the dining room doesn't work so well. Plus the DR is too big and the kitchen is too small. Swapping them works much better.

@GreenDesigns,

Why won't the second floor work? (I'm not trying to be defensive, I'd really like to understand what you mean). There is a 4 ft kneewall, and with a 8/12 roof pitch, there is plenty of ceiling clearance. We've toured homes with no kneewall that still work (with 12/12 pitches though), just with less usable floor space.

I am actually working on revising my plan, just haven't had to time to get it all done and post it here. I'm making the master bath a little bigger by shrinking the master closet by just a bit, to make sure there is enough ceiling height. (or possibly playing with a whole new layout) (I think your concerns are spot on kirkhall, and I'm having second thoughts about the current set-up. I don't want any question about enough headroom:)

Also, as far as being able to heat and cool, I'm not sure how much of a problem that will be in this house given how well insulated it will be. The house will use high r-value SIPS, and the envelope will be much tighter than conventionally framed houses. We're focusing the budget on the envelope, to pay for insulation and really good windows.

I agree that the dining space is not well used. rather than flipping locations, i'm thinking of redesigning the mudroom so the door comes in on the other side of the post (north side, instead of south). That will give the larger space to the kitchen.

as a side note, this guy:http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/build/msg0121562727019.html?1061 is doing a very similar build, (doesn't appear to be a cape though).

If anyone wants to provide their 2 cents on the upstairs bathroom, I'd appreciate it...

http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/bath/msg011650482990.html?1694