That's a nice house plan. I know you think you will be here for life but you never know --- so, you might want to consider resale issues while building.

Gardner plans are pretty well thought out for the moost part but in your case a few things to consider. If you dont want the dining room I would make the dinette deeper as well as the porch. The porch would work better if it were 12-14 feet deep. I prefer to see it stay a porch or screen porch although I hate looking out a house rear view through a screen porch personally. Can you finish basement for play area ? Its too public and open for play rroom for me. Utility room is a bit small and have to be walked through from garage. Also it is lacking a pantry. Kitchen is adequete but not large by any means. If your budet would allow it I would try to modify the right side of the home to address those issues listed above.

Bigkahuna- Thanks for the suggestions. That's a good thought regarding extending the dinette and porch. I was thinking the porch would be more of a sunroom. I agree that looking out a screen is not the prettiest of views. As far as a basement playroom, we are determined to live on just 1 level, so that wouldn't work. I agree the playroom would be quite public- it's one of the reasons I like it- to keep an eye on the kids. I know it will probably make the living area look more "messy", but I'm willing to take that for a few years. Thanks so much for the advice!

rrs626- Thanks! We'll probably avoid many built-ins in the study for just that reason.

I like your plan! Square footage is adequate the way it is, but would be much improved if you add 2' in a line along the breakfast/kitchen/utility/garage, and 2' across the breakfast/porch. It would make the breakfast room true DR size, give room for an island in the kitchen & improve the corner by the fridge, give you more much needed space in the utility room, and provide more storage space for older kids sports stuff, etc. in the garage. My utility room was exactly like yours--not big enough, so I moved the laundry to the basement.

Anne

If you wanted to keep the screened porch, you could extend the roof line on the upper right corner of the house and make that new corner (extending to the right of the breakfast room) a play room. You would have to move the bedroom windows from the back of the house to the side.

Gardner gets a lot out of a given floor area. That's a good thing unless you have furniture and cars that are full-sized.

Thanks everyone!

jimandanne- I love your idea of adding the 2 feet. I can see how each of those rooms being a little bigger could make a big difference.

Thats what I was getting at. add 2-3 feet along that line including the garage. The depth is not good. Too many garages are too small. No room for longer vehicles or to get in front or behind them or have anything in front. I also prefer 9 ft wide and 18 ft wide doors if possible to allow doors to open with less chance of banging doors. As MacV said garderns plans are usually nice but very tight on spare room. Of course he probably has 4 other versionas on this plan with 100-200 SF more in each version! Also the other thing missing for many parts of the country is a basement /stairs down. I wouldnt do one without it in the midwest at least.

Its a pretty house but I think you're going to find it a bit "tight".

The previous poster's comments about the garage not being deep enough or wide enough for two full-size cars is spot on. With three kids under six, you probably drive an SUV -- or at least something big enough to fit 3 child car seats into! Go out and measure your cars (length and width). Then consider that you need a couple of feet (at least) on each side and a couple of feet between the two cars when they are parked in the garage to get doors open. You also need a couple of feet (at least) at the front to manuver around the car and at least 6 inches of clearance at the back to close the garage doors. And those are minimums. If you're lugging an infant and all his/her stuff while shepherding the other two little ones and getting them buckled into seat belts, you're going to want more than the minimum clearance.

Most people "solve" their tight garage issues by loading and unloading passengers out in the drive way so that only the driver has to squeeze into/out of the car while it is in the garage. With three small children, you are NOT going to want to do that. And, if you plan on storing the kids' bicycles, a lawn mower, and/or any garden or yard tools in the garage, that 2 ft deep "storage" bumpout is totally inadequate.

I also don't like the 6ft wide utility room that also must serve as the family's entrance area from the garage. With 3 small kids, I would bet you do several loads of laundry every single day. You need space to sort dirty laundry and to fold clean laundry that is NOT in a high traffic area. You NEED a separate laundry room even if it is very tiny. And, having a "mud room" area with cubbies to collect coats/hats/books/etc would make your life so much easier. If you read this forum very long, you'll find that most posters absolutely love their mudrooms and cubbies.

Additionally, the master closets each appear to be barely 6 ft wide and yet are drawn showing hanging shelves along both sides. Once you have clothing hanging on both sides, the remaining aisle way is going to be barely 2 ft wide. A walk-in closet with hanging rods on both sides needs to be at least 7 ft wide.

The lack of a pantry may not bother you as you will have a fairly decent amount of kitchen cabinet space. But, where do you plan to store brooms, mops, and the vacuum cleaner?

I also don't see any provision for the HVAC unit or hot water heaters. Since there are no stairs going down to a basement, will these be in the attic? I strongly recommend against putting your hot water heater in the attic. Those things do have a tendency to burst when they get old. And besides, getting a new water heater into the attic when you need to replace it is a real chore!!! If you're planning to use tankless water heaters, that won't be a problem. Otherwise the water heater is going to take up part of your utility room.

You said you've been settled on this house plan for a several months so I rather doubt you want to start over fresh looking for something else. But I think you can modify the plan without significantly altering the overall floor plan or the elevation to solve most of issues above.

I hope the Gardner people won't mind but I've taken the liberty of using my paint program to sketch out some possible revisions. The red lines indicate where the exterior walls have been pulled out.

You'll note the right hand wall is pulled out by about 2 or 3 feet and the front of the garage is pulled forward by a few feet. The two bedrooms are about the same size they started out as. This gives you room for a separate laundry room - albeit a very tiny one so I'd recommend that you to look into getting a stackable washer and dryer - and a shallow broom closet. I also think this gives you room for mud-room cubbies in your back entrance hall. And, it would solve the tight garage issue.

To gain useable storage space in the garage, the storage bumpout portion of the garage is pulled foward an additional foot or so. If the bumpout is 3 or 4 feet deep, it will be much more useful than if it is only 2 ft deep.

Finally, to increase the master closet sizes, I pulled the masterbath and the room labeled bedroom/study forward by about a foot. (Whatever amount is necessary to make the closets a full 7 ft wide.) You'll need to move the bathtub down a little bit to make room for the closet but the bathroom will be a little bit larger overall. Again, the bedroom is kept the same size as it was initially.

Sorry but I couldn't figure out a good place to add in a pantry without totally revising your plan. Maybe someone else on this forum can come up with an idea.

Like Big mentioned, Gardner will have 3 or 4 of pretty much the same layout, just in varying sizes. You might find one with the square footage already added, so you can at least get a feel for it, then you can start moving stuff around to fit your specific needs.

If you cant find them, I am sure they would be happy to guide you if you email them.

Wow, I had to register just so I could respond to your thread, aangel. This is such a great plan you have here. After studying home plans for many years now (looking forward to the day when I can build), I find myself drawn again and again to Donald Gardner's plans. I love the floorplans because they seem to be more fully conceived in terms of both indoor and outdoor spaces than some others. The plan above, the Satchwell, is one of his most popular plans for a reason, which to me is that it is a well-rounded starter plan that can be tweaked here and there to become a truly livable plan to suit many people. Plus it is modestly-sized (a bit too much so, which is why it needs tweaking, lol). But by the time you tweak it to add a few things, it will come to between 2300-2700 sq ft, heated, which is to me the ideal range for a livable home. If you are willing to delete some rooms and loose some square footage, then you probably need another of his plans that are just under 2,000 sq ft, of which there are many nice ones.

In my fixation on this plan, it has become obvious that several other Don Garnder plans are based on it, specifically, The Walnut Creek http://www.dongardner.com/plan_details.aspx?pid=3093, the East Haven http://www.dongardner.com/plan_details.aspx?pid=2846, and most recently, the Thatcher http://www.dongardner.com/plan_details.aspx?pid=4097.

What I am looking for (and maybe what you are looking for) takes features from each of these plans to make a truly great home. Great to me means: a) the kitchen needs slightly more space, b) the guest bedrooms need another foot or two added, c) the master br/ba need enlarging a couple of sq feet, d) the garage needs another couple of sq feet added on each side, e) the laundry room should be moved/enlarged and a mudroom added, f) the porches need to be enlarged a bit, g) additional storage (a pantry, linen closets, etc.) are badly needed, and last (but not least) h) I need a second family gathering space in addition to the great room.

If you study the other plans alongside yours (the comparison button on the Donald Gardner website is great!), you will get some great ideas for changes that make for a wonderful, livable house with room for you and all your family and all your things.

Here is a link that might be useful: Satchwell plans on dongardner.com

Wow..thanks everyone! I just re-discovered my own thread today ! :)

I considered all of the suggestions and made several changes based on them. We added 3 feet of space lengthwise which adds 3 more feet to the garage,laundry/mudroom, kitchen, and breakfast area.

Bevangel- I love your idea of a separate laundry room and entrance/mudroom. We're definitely having cubbies there since the room is 2-3 feet wider now. It may be too late to move the walls and stairs- we have already gotten our final building plans in and hope to break ground next week. I'll mention it to our builder to see how big of a change that would be. I do have to say that we never actually sort laundry in the laundry room. We take it straight from the dryer and take it to the living room to sort it then put it away immediately. I still love the idea though! Also, we have a mini-van, so the extra garage space will be nice. We'll probably park my little Corolla outside, eventually in a separate carport/storage area (but that's a few years down the road!) As far as a pantry, when we added the 3 feet across the kitchen, we were able to squeeze one in- not huge- but still a decent pantry. Thank you for taking the liberty to redraw the plan with your changes...very helpful!

Santuary Girl- Thanks! I agree with many of your recommended changes as well. We really didn't want to go much over 2200 sq ft, and we're already up to 2400-2500 heated space, so we really can't add anything more at this point. We did enclose the screen porch to make it more of a sunroom/playroom and I'm excited about that. I have so many hours looking at all the Gardner plans you mentioned! I do love his plans- inside and out. I used their architect who was also very helpful with suggestions about my modifications.

I'm excited about making the home "our own"- the enclosed back porch/sunroom will be our playroom, the formal dining will actually be our library/study area, and all the kids will have their own room.

Can't wait to join the May (or maybe April?!) thread "How is your building progressing?" I've been lurking and you guys are such a wealth of helpful info!

I just came across your postings after researching the Satchwell plan. I have been trying to find photos and ways people customize it, and registered just to respond to your thread in hopes of seeing the plan layout of the changes you made. This is the plan I hope to go with, but I also have the same concerns as you with limited space/storage/size on the right side of the house, especially with children. the changes you made in this area really sound like they solved some of your problems. If there is anyway to share the plan and/or photos of construction thus far I would love to see it! Especially how you added a pantry in, which is something we definitely want. I know I'll be customizing the plan, but am trying to decide how to go about it. Hope your construction is going well so far! Very exciting!

This is going to be a very groovy pad. Good luck with your build :)

One poster put it pretty cleverly "Gardner gets alot out of a given floor area". Given the moderate size of the home, I think the NUMBER of rooms in this plan needs to reduced in favor of a more open layout. It's a fairly common scenario, where a new homeowner will focus more on the "rooms" that are desired, rather than whether there will be sufficient elbow room, an efficient use of space, aesthetics and a "flow". The trend I see is overloading on bathrooms, odd use of stone on the exterior and overuse of odd gables, bump-outs and angles. All these things can be foregone in favor of higher quality construction (at the same budgeted amount) while maintaining simple lines, classic architecture and distinction among most new homes. Simplify, simplify, simplify. Good luck!

OR......you can divide up some of those larger spaces into more rooms, squeeze in another bathroom and add another roof gable.

It depends what is important to you in the end.