Kitchen: For such a large kitchen, this is inefficient. For example, as it is placed, the wall will prevent the refrigerator door from opening all the way. And is that a prep sink . . . within reach of the main sink? In a kitchen this size, especially since it faces the front of the house, I would expect a larger window over the sink. Also, I'd elminate that corner-to-nowhere in the lower right-hand side; at best, corners are expensive and inefficient -- you'd be better off just ending that spot with a straight cabinet to the wall. I would consider flipping the casual dining / kitchen areas. If the kitchen were placed to the back, you could have a pass-through window that'd allow you to easily send plates of burgers or steaks out to the grill. It'd be a nice, functional feature. It'd also allow you a good view of the children in the back yard as they're playing. I like the garage-to-pantry entrance. I'm planning something similar myself. It means that the groceries are put away IMMEDIATELY, and they never make it to the kitchen 'til they're ready to be used. I'm including a 4' workspace in mine. This'll be a place for the grocery bags to be set down and unloaded, it'll be a spot to hide dessert 'til the right moment, and it'll be a spot to let bread rise or a crockpot stew. However, I would remove the short wall of your pantry and let all traffic enter through what is now your "middle door". You could have pantry shelves on both sides, and people with groceries to drop off could walk through that more "open" pantry. This'd elminate the corner in the pantry, which can be difficult to deal with. If that's a cubby-set-up on the back wall that I'm suggesting elminating, you could put that on the wall that now houses the garage-to-pantry door. You'd keep the same function, but you'd eliminate one door. What I would not do, however, is have THREE entrances from the garage to the house. Three doors to lock every night? Why? I'd reconfigure the pantry so that all garage traffic funnels through the pantry; as such, I'd allot some of that large garage entry hallway space into the pantry itself. And the door straight into the staircase is just a mess; partially, it's a parenting problem because -- as someone else said -- it keeps the children out of your life; partially, it's an accident waiting to happen (really, stepping down into a doorway -- someone's going to fall). NINE exterior entrances? First, that's very expensive -- exterior doors and door locks are not cheap; a basic exterior door and lock set can easily cost $1000 -- 2-3Xs more if you're thinking of French doors or doors with pier glasses to the side. Second, these multiple entrances are a cleaning nightmare -- because we bring dirt in on our shoes, entrances are always in need of vaccuming, and they often are littered with bookbags, shoes, etc. Instead of having all the mess in 1-2 places, you're going to have nine little messes to clean up all around the house. A switchback staircase costs MUCH more than a simple, straight stair (think, almost double; likewise, it takes up double the square footage). I might be willing to pay for such an item, if it were a showcase item in my foyer, and I'd look forward to decking it with greenery and lights at Christmas. I would not pay for it in the back of the house next to the garage. Your guest suite bathroom is accessible from the hallway. Why then pay for a separate half-bath? If you're trying to provide easy access for the backyard, I'd consider moving the guest suite to the back door area. A bathroom costs about as much as a car; a simple half-bath would cost about as much as, perhaps, a little Toyota. A large, fancy bathroom would be as much as an Escalade or other luxury car. If you're financing this, every dollar borrowed tends to be paid back three times. So, it makes sense to me to minimize the bathrooms -- and using the guest bath as a backdoor bath is efficient. I agree with those who say that the garage(s) and porte cochere are overdone. Your lot isn't all that big, and you're using much of your space to house vehicles and toys. That would be a big turn-off to me, if I were looking to buy your house. A future buyer who's interestesd in a house of this size will be able to build another detached garage -- what matters more is that the space is available. You say you want this because you never get to park in the garage. I assume that's because you're using the garage as storage -- so build a three-car garage, which is what you really need, instead of this ill-conceived monstrosity. I wouldn't be worried about your family room being dark. You have ample windows to the back of the house, and you will get some light from the foyer. This tends to be a "hot spot" on this board, but I have a covered porch in a position similar to what you're planning, and although my family room is DARKER than it would be without the porch, it is not DARK. Not so dark that it's uncomfortable, and we do not need to use the lights all day long. If you're nervous about it, you could include skylights in the porch roof. 42" for the master bedroom hallway is fine. It is neither small nor large. Just average. I do not like anything about the master bathroom. It's very large, but most of the space is just wasted space in the middle of the room /in front of the tub -- this isn't useful space. Have you priced tile? By moving things a bit, you could have one large, long vanity rather than one good sink and one cramped sink. Also, I'm sure I wouldn't enjoy walking by the toilet to get to the shower. You're going to hate those double-doors into the bath; where's the light switch going to go? The answer is either outside the door in the bedroom, or behind one of those doors. You have no linen storage in this bathroom; I assume that's going in the master closet? I'd be more efficient to have towels stored nearer the shower. I agree that the laundry room is too far from the master bedroom. You have an over-sized closet; you should have no problem putting a washer/dryer into this area. You'll already have plumbing in the master bath; putting in a laundry area here would cost almost nothing -- in contrast, lines from the kitchen over to the far edge of the house, as your laundry is drawn now, will cost more AND will provide one more set of pipes that will eventually break down and cost you money. I'd do away with the downstairs utility room altogether and put a second laundry room upstairs for the children's clothes; this'll save lots of trips up and down the stairs. In fact, thinking of doing away with that back utility room, looking at the garage entrance area, I think you could easily do away with 50% of this square footage -- a big savings, and you could come away with MORE usable space rather than this mis-match of oddities. This back area has numerous little aggravations -- like doors opening across doors, which'll always be banging against one another. I have no problem with the children's bedrooms being upstairs. They'll find their way to you, if they need you during the night. These are good, big bedrooms. I personally would build one jack-and-jill bathroom rather than two separate baths for two children; square foot for square foot, bathrooms are the most expensive rooms in a house. You could decrease this cost by moving the two bathrooms so that they "back up" to one another. My honest thoughts? I do not like this floorplan. It's a big house, and I'm sure it'll be impressive, but I don't think it'd be a comfortable house in which to live. It's all about space and show, but little thought has gone into function. It's going to be outrageously expensive to build: So many jogs and switches around the perimeter, so many ceiling features, plumbing strung literally from one end of the house to the other. Lots of things like the curved wall in the bedroom are going to end up costing MUCH more than you expect; builders say that there's a reason a curve is shaped like a dollar sign. Furthermore, it's going to be an expensive-to-maintain house: The air conditioning'll cost you as much as sending a kid to college. For this much money, you should be able to have a house that's beautiful AND efficient.

As I wrote above, I had to guess about clearances because you didn't provide enough measurements for me to know for sure. I assumed that if I were to draw a straight line from the front edge of the sink wall counter run straight across the kitchen table area, it would run into the great room column (assuming that's what those big square things are), which is 92" from the far right nook wall. To that I added 48", which is the aisle width I recommended in my Plan A to get a total of 140" for table and chairs. If you do a 36" aisle between the right wall and the narrow end of a 42 x 60" oval table with the table turned so it's 60" side to side (not top to bottom), you should have 44" between table and island. You actually might have more than that if the table and island are diagonally across from each other as they appear to be on my drawing (didn't know if the drawing was to scale). However, I didn't have enough information to do the math for that dimension. I missed the part where you shared that your great room is a step down from the kitchen area. For this reason, I'm recommending a 42" x 60" table instead of a 48" round table with a 12" leaf. That will give you slightly wider aisles at the top and bottom sides of the table, which will give a little bit more safety buffer by the step down, which would be good thing for all ages (my MIL stepped off a curb the wrong way and broke her foot!). IMO, extending the island edge to be even with the counter edge of the upper butler's pantry will look quite nice. I don't think it's a problem that it extends past the right wall. In fact, I like that it brings the island seating closer to the table and great room areas instead of having them smack in the middle of the working part of the kitchen. I'm not sure what you mean by "blocky," sorry. Do you mean bulky? Well, it will be a large island but the whole space is large as is the pantry and range so I think it's all in scale. I hope I made sense and that I helped you through this process. Oh, you asked ages ago about removing the wall around the lower butler's pantry area. If you do corbels on the upper butler's pantry, I think it would look very nice if you removed the wall around the lower butler's pantry and added corbels to that cab as well.

Honestly, I find little to like in this house plan. I'm 100% sure you can do better. My thoughts: - The exterior has so many little jigs and jogs -- so many that it'll make for an odd-looking exterior, and it'll drive up the cost. All for no purpose. - Still on the house's exterior, I agree that you don't want to have the pool equipment outside your bedroom window. I think you do want it nearer the pool. If you don't have your children yet, I suggest you hold off on the pool a while; toddlers + pool will mean terror every day. - Have you considered guest parking? Since your driveway will pull up to the right side of the house and your entrance is on the other side, this could potentially be confusing. - The rooms are large and out of proportion. For example, using the kitchen cabinets as a guide, I'm looking at the dining room and estimate that you have 5' on one side of the table and 7' on the other side. This is very wide, and a 3-3 1/2' table will look puny. Other rooms are also over sized: You have more sf in the downstairs hallways than in your kitchen or your dining room. At approximately 7' wide, the pantry will have a 5' aisle in which to walk. The mudroom is approximately 10x20. You're talking about a 6000 sf house; to put that into perspective, an average house in America today is 2000-2400. You're keeping resale in the back of your mind; an average family can't afford to buy the house you're buying, so you're slashing your field of potential buyers. - My best advice on right-sizing rooms: Start carrying around a tape measure. Measure other people's rooms. Measure hotel rooms. Measure showers. Measure closets. Keep notes. Bigger is not better. Right-sized is bettter. - Still on the subject of over-sized, but a different topic: When you build houses with large rooms, it's expensive to change anything. We have this problem (to a lesser extent), and we call our house the $4000 house. No matter what we want to do, it seems to cost $4000. For example, changing the carpet in our great room was $4000 -- and it wasn't top quality. Same thing when we replaced our countertops. Same thing when we had a leak in the bathroom and ended up replacing the floor. We are going to have more moderate sized rooms in our new house. With oversized rooms, the reality is that you usually end up with builder-basic materials because of price. - Don't worry about the kitchen being dark. With two window-filled adjacent rooms, you won't need to keep the lights on all day long. No, you won't have lovely sunbeams filling the room in the morning, but neither will it be a dark cave. - The great room is the best room in the house. With windows on three sides, it'll be bright and airy. - In the large powder room (over 8' wide -- why?), you want the toilet and sink on the same wall. Why? Because it allows you to have water in only one wall: A water wall must be slightly deeper than a standard wall. The more walls that hold water, the more places you could potentially have a leak. - The mother-in-law's master suite is in a lovely spot and will have great windows, but the bathroom is ridiculously large and spread out. Instead of being luxurious, this bathroom's just going to be inconvenient. Yet in spite of all this space, the tub is causing a pinch point. It's also going to cost a fortune to tile, even if you stick to the most basic builder-quality. - The upstairs bathrooms are also poorly designed. The master bathroom has so much empty floor space in the middle of the room, yet your two sinks are crammed into little "hallways" that'll feel cramped -- I'm thinking you'll end up pulling your elbows "in" while you're using those sinks. I also don't like the idea of walking through the closet to reach the bathroom. - The bedrooms could be cut down significantly without any loss of quality. - Where you're not oversized is the garage. 28' wide is not a three-car garage. Most people on this board will tell you that 24' is a nice, comfortable two-car garage -- enough space to open the car doors, have a bit of storage. You'll be able to drive three cars into a 28' garage ... but it'll be like my friend's garage: She has to stop in the driveway and let her kids get out of the car, then she drives in, scooting all the way over to one side so she'll have enough space to open her car door. Honestly, I suggest going back to the drawing board.

Re: MrsPete - Plenty of room for a nice kitchen, but this one could stand some polishing. We have another thread going in the Kitchen forum with recommendations to improve it. Link - I'd lose some of the many exterior doors -- replace them with banks of windows. Windows are cheaper to buy, more energy efficient, and easier/cheaper in terms of window treatments. They're also safer; that is, more difficult for a burglar to break through. And losing adjacent doors in favor of windows doesn't affect your function at all -- do you really need multiple doors so close together that you can touch them at the same time? We were aiming for indoor/outdoor flow. I agree that the current configuration is not working. We seem to be stuck at this point without first planning the outdoor areas, which would then aide in identifying the type of doors/windows to connect everything together. All of your reasons for windows are completely selling me toward that solution. Lately, I have been ooo'ing over the sliding doors (and pergola) used in a Farmhouse on show at http://truexcullins.com/ I don't love the staircase tower. That staircase will be a showstopper -- no question -- but why tuck it away in a corner? I'd flip it with the office so it could be visible /appreciated from the main living area. Imagine it decorated with Christmas lights and greenery -- it'd be a shame to have that over in a corner. I like your vision here. After spending a few hours at the site over the weekend, I believe the large magnolia in front of the main elevation may hide a bit of the tower as well. Switching it with the office would give the eastern (right on the drawing) elevation some interest. Our Kitchen table is full of plans and cutouts with all of the creative ideas from this forum at the moment... - Will your front door be your main point of entrance? If so, where are you leaving your wallet, keys, sunglasses? We will likely enter through the rear of the house 80% of the time. - With two opposite doors in the office "eaten up" by large doors, do you have space for appropriate furniture? Offices are used in so many ways, so only you know this answer. We're intending some hidden closet space for files and tech items (printer, router, etc.) in the room. The remainder should be a traditional desk with some color on the walls for a creative environment. - I don't love the fireplace's location. Will you have a TV? Where? Agreed. The fireplace is not working at the moment. We like the exterior contrast of a grey concrete fireplace against the white farmhouse hardy-board. It's not a must have. On the interior of the fireplace (it's a 2-way), we planned to have the TV directly over the mantle. TV is not too important to us, we're prioritizing the indoor/outdoor flow over it.