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.

I'm having trouble reading the details on the plan, so I can't comment on everything, but here are my thoughts on what I can see: - The first thing that jumps out at me is that I hate the kitchen island. It's like the island is escaping from the kitchen! You have an important walkway running horizontally through the middle of the house, and the island is interrupting it. This will be a constant irritation. I'd make the kitchen into an L and turn the island the other direction. You can still have island seating. This'll echo the direction of the walkway and enhance it rather than being a problem. - I'd add an extra foot to the width of the pantry. You have storage on only one side of the long, narrow pantry, which means you have essentially the storage of a reach-in . . . but you're using the square footage of a walk-in. One extra foot would literally double the storage space in your pantry. I'd also consider adding a pass-through door to the kitchen. - I vote absolutely NO sunken anything. It's an accident waiting to happen. - You say you're looking for square footage to cut. I would cut off the sitting room behind the master bedroom and some of the master bedroom closet. You have an office and another room I can't identify right there by the master, so I think you have a spot for one adult to sit and do something while the other is sleeping -- this is space that you will never miss. And the closet, even with TV/accessories, is larger than some NY City studio apartments! The other thing I'd cut is the kids' playroom upstairs. They each have their own generous-sized rooms, and they have space a-plenty to hang out and play. - Having addressed your concerns about cutting square footage, I've gotta say that I'd consider adding some space to your great room. You have a large kitchen and dining area . . . and beside them, this great room looks like a pretty good room. - I lived in a house once that had a jack-and-jill closet, and it worked well. In our case, it was a walk-through closet with hanging space on each side. One room was a child's bedroom, while the other bedroom was a guest room. This arrangement allowed the child to have an extra-sized closet . . . yet if the guest room had ever become "someone's", a closet would've been available. And, of course, we kids loved to use it as a pass-through. - I'd consider losing your son's bathrooms' exterior door. The only people who would be upstairs would be the kids' friends, and they'd walk through the bedroom of their friend to reach the bathroom. It's not that large a bathroom, and two doors take up too much space. This post was edited by MrsPete on Sat, May 17, 14 at 7:40

Yes, I've researched the codes here. CA does have the same restriction - a legal bedroom cannot have a door to the garage. However, half the houses in this neighborhood have this same floor plan, and half of those families use this room as a bedroom - even though it's not legally a bedroom. However, we are planning to wall up that door and cut a new door to the garage somewhere else, so it will be a legal bedroom. The setback over here is 20 feet from the sidewalk. The front of our garage is 26 feet from the sidewalk, so we could extend the house up to 6 feet past the front of the garage. The house was built in 1962, and most of the houses in the neighborhood are very similar to this one. We haven't really considered a complete teardown due to cost. I think even if we did do a complete teardown, because the lot is so small, we would still end up with the same footprint - and face the same challenge of arranging all the rooms in the house. We did consider a second story, but aside from the fact that the foundation currently won't support a second story, a two story isn't really suitable for my elderly parents.

Wow, definitely some things I hadn't thought of. I'm a little relieved that you all think it's a challenging space, as I have been struggling with it for months and i am glad to know it's not just me! We can definitely move the door to the guest bath to near the front door. The alcove there is designed to fit a specific piece of antique furniture (card catalog), but at this point I am willing to sacrifice that space for a better kitchen layout. I do like mamagoose's idea of pushing back the kitchen wall (if the bathroom door gets moved and the alcove is gone.)...I'll have to play with that a little... I don't need double wall ovens, 48" range will take care of that. If it's at all workable, I'd like to keep the island. The windows/french doors along the top of the plan in the master and great room lead out to a deck and look out to the Chesapeake Bay, and if I'm prepping at the island that's the way to be facing :) The bar area needs to stay, or at least somewhere in/near the great room. Husband wanted a full stand behind, pull up a stool bar, so this was a compromise. Karneseb, I'm not sure we can alter the angles at this point. We are less than a foot from our max allowable lot coverage! And the pilings are already going in as foundation. The windows on the left side of the plan are high up, and smallish (maybe even frosted). So no worries about placing the bed under them. That side of the home is 5 feet from the property line, as is the neighbor on thier side, so not much to see, we just wanted to add in a little light, but I agree, it's funky! I do like your bathroom layout better, as it was bothering me that the closet was so far away. I just REALLY want a soaker tub! I don't mind losing space from the master bedroom.