Question: have you played around with furniture placement? where will you put your bed in the master? Not the wall with the sitting. Will it be against the windows? or the wall opposite the windows. Do you watch Tv in bed? is there room for tv across from your bed. This just kind of popped out to me. The jack and jill bath seems a little tight where the toilet is. I am doing a jack and jill too and a lot of the feedback I got was you don't want to have to shut two doors to use the toilet. The way mine is designed you only have to shut one. the vanities are in the front and are shared then behind a door is tub/toilet. Just a suggestion. I like how the laundry is attached to the master :)

Nice plan!
A couple of tweaks: I'm not loving the swing of the pantry door blocking the way back and forth to the kitchen. You could make it swing in along the other wall and flip the shelves. Possibly even a swinging door would be a good touch.
In the master bath you've got a big space but it's cut up by the large toilet area and too deep closet with shelves. Have you considered shortening the toilet area by making the entrance on the narrow end. Bring the wall across in line with your arch wall. Then turn the storage closet and make it more of a cabinet style with shelves and cabinet doors facing the toilet room. This might open up the space a bit.
I've got big kids and guests so the 36x36 shower might be a little tight in the guest room. Could you steal space from that closet to make it a little longer?
Looks nice! Good luck!

-Kitchen and Great room will be dark. Maybe you want to consider sky lights at the back porch roof.

-This is the kind of home that you will hate once you start placing the furniture in the bedrooms. The only one that is ok (but not great) is the guest bedroom. The left dining wall is ideal to place a hutch/buffet but I doubt it that you could do that, then your option is to place it at the pantry wall and everything will look off.

-What is it with the 2'-0 wide doors/arches in bath #3? is that standard in Dallas? Ditto to what Ginger said. It will be a bit easier to place room furniture if the bath3 doors are closer to the family room wall. You can have a double sink vanity and a door to the toilet/shower.

-A window in the Mbath toilet enclosure would be nice. That is a nice walk in shower in the Mbath, by the way. I'd consider a full shower or bathtub for your guests.

-It is nice that you connected the master closet to the laundry room but I find the laundry has some wasted space and is not too practical. Sink is far from washer and that bench is kind of small for a home with 4 bedrooms. It is nicer to enter a home thru a mudroom/back hall (specially a +3000 s.f) and not thru the laundry but there is nothing wrong combining laundry and mudroom. I suggest to rework that area.

Congratulations on your upcoming build! This is a nice plan overall. I really like the master bath and the office off the master bedroom! The things that stood out to me that I would recommend taking another look at were:

-Do you really want a giant window in the master bedroom (opposite the bed wall I'm assuming) that looks out onto the back porch where your kids, relatives & friends might be hanging out? Also, what is the view potential for such a large window--a wall, a door and an angled fireplace. Now the fireplace you're planning may be a beauty, but I don't think the trade-offs are worth it.

-The door onto the back porch from the breakfast room will be useless unless you 1)enlarge the breakfast room or 2)use a table for 2. Any table larger than a 2-seater with chairs around it will block the access pathway to the door--especially if someone is sitting in the chair on that end of the table. I would eliminate the door or eliminate the breakfast room.

-While we're talking about the breakfast room--I know they are the "in" thing and you see them in just about every plan out there, but do you really need 3 places to eat? You have the island that will seat 4 comfortable on the side facing the family room and maybe another 1-2 on the end. You always hear people complain that they don't use their dining room--take this as an opportunity--delete the breakfast area, pulling that wall back even with the family room wall and use the dining room. If you do this, you can gain 5 things: 1)more $$$ as you are saving square footage, 2)elimination of an additional jog in the foundation (another money saver), 3)more back porch space, 4)more light in the actual kitchen (even though it is under the porch roof) & 5)you can gain more storage by adding another cabinet run along that end of the kitchen.

-While we're talking about porch roofs--I know everyone says the porch will make your rooms dark. I would not say dark, just more shaded--you will get more ambient light than direct sunlight. With the rear of the house facing SW, I think the porch is an excellent idea. You are more likely to be sitting in the family room in the afternoon/evening hours and the porch will eliminate the late afternoon direct sunlight glare in your eyes & on the TV.You have plenty of windows in there, so you will have plenty of natural light (just make sure those windows are long to maximize the amount of light that enters).

-I'd move the porch access door in the back hallway closer to the family room wall--it will give you more options with furniture placement & give the door a 'place to rest' when open.

-I think the entries into the J&J baths are fine--we have that exact set up in DS1's room on the door location where there is a short wall with the vanity on the other side, then the door then a longer wall. It works great as he has a nightstand that goes in that space. To give you an idea using your plan--his bed is on the wall that backs up to the family room with the nightstand on the bathroom side--when he gets out of bed, the bathroom door is directly in front of him. If you plan to put the bed on that wall as well & you slide the door toward the family room door, whoever is getting out of bed will have to skirt their nightstand to get to the bathroom door. If you plan to put the bed on the wall where the closet is or on the bathroom wall, that little area makes a great place for a dresser.

-More on the J&J bath--what if you eliminated some jogs in the foundation (saving money again) and pushed the J&J bath wall out to be even with the window seat bumpouts in the bedrooms & pushed the back of the house out 1-2' using that space in the J&J? Then you could give each bedroom it's own bath. With all the plumbing you've got going in there already it really shouldn't cost that much more. Besides you saved money on the foundation at that point, so it will likely be a wash.

-Definitely make some to-scale furniture cutouts & place them in the plan where you see them fitting just to make absolutely sure everything fits. Make sure you consider bed upgrades in the future if you plan to stay in the home any length of time (i.e. kids have twin beds now & they fit, but later on you want to upgrade to queen beds, which are wider & longer, in those rooms). It's no fun once the house is framed to realize a room doesn't work the way you wanted it to.

-I don't care for the walk-thru laundry room entry from the garage into the house. I know the W/D are set back, but it is still in a position to be an eyesore. I would add a wall separating the mudroom area from the actual laundry area and put in a door.

-2'0" doorways are something to reconsider. 2'6" would be my absolute minimum with 3'0" being ideal. How long do you plan to stay in the home? Any possibility of older parents who may need crutches, walker or wheelchair coming to live with you in the future for any length of time? What about resale especially with 1/3 of the US population being obese? Doorway clearances are increasing becoming a very big deal. I would steer clear of smaller doors (less than 2'6") unless they are providing access to a small reach-in closet.

-The shower stall in the guest bathroom is very tight, I would definitely consider stealing some space from the closet to make it larger. It looks like that would make the two walk-in closets in the secondary bedrooms the same size.

-I would change the pantry door to an inswing vs. an outswing. You don't have any shelves on the wall that backs up to the family room so this shouldn't be an issue.

That's all I have. Hope it helps!

I would move the island so that you have at least 4-ft between the island and the counters. You're also showing a full size fridge - you might want to consider a counter-top depth fridge, and enclose it with a side panel for a more finished look.

You could narrow the hall by the master closet to 4'-0".

Consider pushing the J&J bath out so that you can move the living room fireplace to the center of that wall (backing up to the J&J sinks). It would be much easier to furnish this room that way.

It looks OK sorta at the first glance, but when you start delving into the details, you'll find that none of the furniture will really fit into the rooms and the inhabitants movement through the space isn't really accounted for. This isn't a minor "tweaking" issue. It will live very awkwardly and uncomfortably without some major redesign of the elements.

Thank you all for your comments! This was a big help to us. Like everyone else we are building a home that we want to a great home not just a house. Your comments have already helped so much. We spent 6 months looking through multitudes of plans and to get to this point. Now we have looked at this plan for about 1 month now and we knew we weren't seeing it critically anymore so we decided to put it on the forum for comments. We are glad we did.

I will send a revised drawing when the architect has it done. But in the meantime here are a few responses to your comments.

1. 2''-0" walkways have been changed to 3'-0" where possible and no less than 2'-6" anywhere.

2. We no longer enter from the garage into the laundry. It opens into the hallway area and will have a larger mud bench in the hallway. The door to the laundry will be a pocket door. The laundry still has room for the washer/dryer and spare refrigerator and counter space. Sink moves to garage.

3. The big window in the master bedroom is only a high window and meant to bring in light only 8x1 size. Our thought is that the back windows in the sitting room will end up being closed a lot since the wall faces southwest and the Texas summer heat of 105 degrees is brutal. We will put shutters on the outside to leave closed in the summer and open in winter. But if they are closed in the summer we still want some natural light coming in...hence the big 8x1 window.

4. Patio is big and the Family room may be dark but it was a compromise to either have less direct light or sweat all summer. We picked ambient light and other artificial lights. North Texas summer is brutal.

5. Pantry door swing has been changed

6. Master toilet area has been reconfigured exactly as GBSIM suggested in his/her post

7. Guest bath 36x36 shower has been changed back to a normal tub/shower, this should be a little cheaper as well

8. The comments about the jack and Jill bath a spot on, but we will have a boy and girl sharing this area. We were ting to find out how to give them as much privacy as possible (not that they care much at 6&8) without building more sf and giving them a sepearate bathroom.

9. The breakfast area is tight but we need a door near the kitchen. I cook out enough that I need quick access to the kitchen. But without adding SF I don't know how to fix the issue of the tight fit.

We feel fortunate to be barely under budget at this point. I realize building costs vary but our last budget revision came in at $310,000 all included except architectural fees.

We are doing a French country/ English Tudor exterior elevation. Full sod, full sprinkler, and per the HOA a 5' wrought iron fence all the way around the property.

I will send more comments as I get them together.

Re: green designs

You are probably right about the movement and livability of the plan....but we have had a heck of a time fitting 4br, 3 ba, game room, study, formal living, breakfast nook, and decent size kitchen into 3000 SF. Also our lot is an odd shape and limits us to about a 74' wide house. We also wanted a 3 car garage. Moving the size up to 3130sf is a concessions had to make to get everything to fit. We know things may not flow as well as we would like. We are not willing to give up spaces and we can not afford to build bigger. We also don't want a 2 story.

This is not our dream house, but it is a home we will finish raising our kids in.

However, if you have an idea for a better plan that you could forward us I would love to see it. Even it it meant scrapping the current design to get better we would be willing to do it.

But when comparing this to other local custom and tract homes in the 3000 sf range we have not seen much better. If we were to give up a game room or added 300 sf now we might have some options.

Thanks for your input.