Congratulations on making such great progress with your plan. Very nice elevations! I too love the stacked screened porches in back! And the study off the guest room is a great idea. If you ever have elderly parents come to live with you, that study gives them a little "living area" of their own which can make things so much easier for the entire family. I disagree completely with Vhehn about the laundry room placement. As the wife who does all the laundry in our home (and who spent 25 years in a two story house with a laundry downstairs by the kitchen and just recently moved into a new two story house with my laundry upstairs) I can assure you that whoever does your laundry is going to love having it upstairs where all the dirty clothes are. Trust me, it takes a whole lot less effort to run upstairs (with one's hands empty) to move loads of clothing from washer to dryer than it does to CARRY tons of dirty laundry downstairs and then, when it is all clean, carry those same tons of clean laundry back upstairs! You make the same number of trips up/down stairs - the difference is in whether or not you have to do it with your arms full of clothing. And your architect has done a great job of moving the laundry away from bed rooms so that the noise won't ever keep anyone from sleeping. Just be sure that your architect also clearly specifies how the floor below the laundry is to be built (including the floor supports) so that the laundry floor can be sloped to a floor drain. My concerns with your new design are relatively minor ones: 1) in your kitchen, do you have enough room between breakfast bar and cabinets for easy passage when someone is sitting in the bar stools? Mock it up with boxes and stools and make SURE. If not, you can probably gain a few inches by making your bar a little narrower or making the "microwave" wall just deep enough for your microwave. 2) Same question with regard to the space around the dining area especially on the side next to the sofa. Since you don't have a breakfast nook, I'm assuming your dining area will get daily use so you want to make sure it is not going to be too crowded. 3) Also, pick out your refrigerator (exact model) before you start to build. The outer dimensions of refrigerators tend to be much larger than they used to be. (My guess is that they're putting more insulation into the shells to make them more energy efficient so to keep the insides a reasonable size, manufacturers have to make the outsides bigger.) Except for the very expensive "counter depth" models, new fridges tend to stick out beyond 24 inch counters as much as 12 to 14 inches. If you know ahead of time exactly what the dimensions of your fridge will be, it may be possible to recess it into the wall a little bit if need be so that it doesn't have to stick out so far into aisleways. 4) In the guest bath/powder room area, I would suggest moving the powder room toilet to the wall where the little shelves are now and then angling off the corner between the two bathrooms.( i.e., basically, cut off the corner where the shelves are in the guest bath are. An angled wall there in the guest bath would make that shower much more easily accessible to someone in a wheelchair... and it's always wise to have at least one wheelchair accessible bath in every home. Plus, angling the wall off and moving the powderoom toilet would allow you to have a longer vanity in the powderroom and give you room for a linen cupboard there. You could still put shelves on the angled wall in the guest bath until such time as you need wheelchair access. Upstairs: 5) I am not a fan of Jack & Jill bathrooms - especially not if they are going to be used by children. (Too much "accidentally" locking siblings out! Do a search on "jack and jill" or "J and J baths" here on GW for a several discussions on the pros and cons of such bathrooms.) I would move the bathroom toward the hall (where the closet for bedroom 1 is now) and make it open only to the hallway. Then, I'd split the available closet space more evenly between the two bedrooms because, right now, the closet for bedroom 2 has a lot of wasted floor space. (I can understand having a slightly wider aisle to get into and out of the attic space but since you're limited in what you can store there by the width of the closet doors anyway, having a huge aisle is a waste.) Making the bathroom open to the hallway would also reduce the number of doors in the bedrooms making them seem more spacious. 6) But, if having a J&J suits you, do notice that getting from Bedroom #1 to the toilet is a bit awkward due to the swing of the door. Consider either using another pocket door there or making the door between bedroom 1 and the bath swing outward into bedroom 1. 7) And, since you have so much open floor space in the closet for bedroom 2, turning that closet door so that it swings into the closet will help make bedroom 2 seem a little less cramped. 8) I'm also not crazy about your masterbath layout. Overall, it has way too much empty floorspace as you first enter the bathroom and then the vanities seem too small for the overall size of the room and the tub seems squished over against the wall. Plus, having the shower and in the toilet room kind of defeats the purpose of a separate toilet room. Invariably, the exact time one spouse needs to use the toilet is when the other one is taking a nice long shower. I would ask my architect to incorporate more of the "attic space" that is behind the MBR closet into the closet/bath area and redesign that entire area. Maybe turn the little closet off the bath foyer into a little toilet room area with its own tiny corner sink for washing hands. Then move the shower out into the main portion of the master bath and put both closets into the area currently occupied by the shower/toilet, big closet, and attic area. Just a thought. In the meantime, I'm pretty sure the space alloted for your master bath tub is too shallow. I'm assuming that you plan to have either a 5.5 ft or a 6 ft tub because that tub is drawn longer than the tub in the other bathroom. 5.5 ft and 6 ft tubs are almost always at least 32 inches wide. Most are even wider. Be sure to pick out the tub you want NOW and make sure it will fit in the alloted space before you begin building. With the exception of the masterbath area tho, I do think you've got a really nice plan. Assuming you've got enough aisleway space in the kitchen and dining area, all the rest of my suggestions are really just very minor tweaks. So, congrats on finalizing your plan(or maybe NEARLY finalizing it. LOL.) Now you get to move into the really "fun" phase of watching it all come together in real life!

This is a very interesting plan. Your architect has done a fine job of dealing with the contraints imposed by your wedge shaped lot. If it were mine tho, there are still some tweaks I would try to have made. First off, you mention a MIL who might someday need to move into the main floor guest room. If she is in a wheel chair, how is she going to get up the stairs to reach that room? And, since you say you have have teenagers, you're probably somewhere in you late 30s to early 50's now and you say you want the house to be functional for you for at least 30 years. That means you could still be living there into your 70's or early 80's. There is a good chance that either you or your spouse will develop knee or back problems or arthritis by age 70-80 making navigating stairways difficult. Even with the 1st floor guest-room, this house just isn't "handicap accessible" because reaching first-floor level requires navigating a set of stairs. While you may not want to put an elevator into the house just on the possibility that someone MIGHT need one someday, you should think now about how you could modify your home to make it handicap accessible if need be. Keep in mind that a wheelchair ramp must have a rise-to-run ratio of no more than 1 in 12. This means that for every one inch above grade level that your front door is elevated, a wheelchair ramp to reach it needs to be one foot long. Installing a wheelchair ramp is usually doable when the front door is only elevated above the street or sidewalk level by a foot of two. But, it looks like your front door is 6 or 8 feet or even more above sidewalk/street level. That means you would need a ramp 72 to 96 FEET long... possibly longer. Even with lots of switchbacks, that just really is not going to work! You also don't really have any other doors (side or back) to which you could build a wheelchair ramp. So you need to think about other options. Without a place to easily install an elevator or wheelchair lift if you ever need one, your only options are going to be either major remodeling, selling and moving, or installing a chair lift on your beautiful curved staircase. Since that staircase appears to be a major focal point of the design, I rather suspect you won't want to ruin it by installing a chair lift. I know I sure wouldn't! While those things look better than they used to, they still aren't exactly pretty. If you want to see what they look like, do an google image search on: chair lift for curving staircase. So, I would think seriously about moving the first floor P.R. and the basement P.R.& mech room to other locations and replacing them both with stacked closets that can be easily converted to an elevator shaft. A pair of 5' x 5' stacked closets will easily accomodate a home elevator big enough for a wheelchair. If you made the Theater/gameroom a bit shorter, you could probably fit both the powderroom and the guest-room bath room into the space between the guest room and theater. (The broom closet and W/D could go into the first floor's stacked closet for now because you COULD live without both of those things if you ever needed to install an elevator.) As for moving the mech closet in the basement, I don't particularly like the way the basement is designed anyway. I'm assuming general daily access by the family will be in thru thru the garage and up the stairs. I'm further assuming that those double doors into the 8x9 basement storage area won't get much use and that they are there to mainly to allow access to things like the lawn mower and bicycles. If my assumptions are correct, the basement bench area beside the stairs is okay b/c it is not too far off the main path into/out of the house. It will probably get appropriate use as a place to hang jackets and drop shoes and bookbags. But the basement powder room is a LOOOONG walk thru a windowless hallway clear around the staircase. The P.R. is simply not easily accessible to someone who comes in from a drive or from working in the yard and needs to go RIGHT NOW. Nor is it convenient to someone who heads downstairs and then decides they should probably make a pit stop before heading out on that errand. Given the current location, I suspect it will get little or no use. And, while you have a huge amount of basement storage, it is all broken up into rather small separate rooms. And reaching each one requires requires navigating thru that basement hallway and then thru a separate doorway. That means putting away things like sports equipment, bicycles, tools, and christmas decorations is always going to be a bit of a PITA. I suspect all your basement storage would get more use if it were a bit more open to the garage. So, Consider moving the powderroom so that it is tucked partway under the staircase (in that tiny closet with the sloping roof that you have now). This is still not a great position but it is close enough to the benches and the entry door that someone might occasionlly remember it is there and use it. Then, I'd basically cut the basement space in half so that only the wineroom, powderroom and entry area are in the "house" portion of the basement and all the rest is left open to the garage. This is very rough sketch but might give you a better idea of what I'm talking about... On the first floor, I've already mentioned revising the area where the powderroom is in order to set up stacked closets that can be converted to an elevator shaft if you ever need one. Other than that, I mostly like the new design tho it does seem a little bit odd to me that guests in the living room must travel thru the "breakfast area" - which is plenty large enough to accomodate a full-sized dining room table - to actually reach the formal dining room. I suspect you'll wind up using your breakfast table for dinner parties more often than not. Especially since the "bar" is right there. So, I have to wonder just how much use your formal dining room will ever get. Me, I'd probably get a couple of table leaves so that I could turn my big round breakfast table into a long oval dining table when needed and then repurpose the formal dining room into as library or music room. But then, I've got about 6000 books and DH has about 6000 music CDs that have to go somewhere. LOL! No doubt, if you find you don't ever use your formal dining room, you'll find some other purpose for it so I don't see any reason to alter the design. On the second floor: Although I'm not a big fan of "open to below" areas because of noise issues and the problems they create with keeping the temperature of both floor comfortable, I do have to admit, your design will be dramatic and beautiful! I can just picture a huge chandelier in your entry and that dramatic staircase sweeping up to the "bridge" area. It should be gorgeous! Talk about the WOW! factor. Your home should definitely have it! One thing that you might want to reconsider about the second floor though is having the washer and dryer up against the wall of the master bedroom. Teenagers (whom I assume you're training to do their own laundry) have a habit of deciding to run the washer/dryer at odd hours. They may suddenly decide at midnight - or 4AM - that they just HAVE to have a particular item of clothing clean to wear to school the next morning. When that happens, you don't want noise from the washer and dryer disturbing your sleep. Depending on your need for quiet in the office, perhaps you could at least move the washer and dryer so that they back up against the office wall instead of being against the bedroom wall. That would help. I'd personally rather figure out some way to switch the office and laundry room but, given the odd shaped angles necessitted by your wedge shaped property, I don't really see any way to do that without completely revising the plan. I'm also a bit concerned with the gym being right next to a bedroom and right over the theater. Who exercises in your house and when do they do it? If you or your spouse tend to exercise in the mornings, remember that teenagers tend to like to sleep late whenever they can. So, will whomever is exercising be likely to wake up someone who is sleeping in the bedroom next to the gym? Or if someone is lifting weights in the evenings, will the noise when they drop them back down bother someone else who is trying to watch a movie downstairs. I do understand the concept that having the gym up near the bedrooms might be an incentive to exercise a bit more often. But I wonder if having the gym in the basement might not make more sense "noise-wise"? If the gym were moved downstairs, that basement powder room would probably get a whole lot more use. You would probably even want to enlarge it to include a shower and start keeping a bunch of one-size fits all bathrobes down there. With the gym in the basement, the laundry room could go where the gym is (with the washer and dryer backed up against the bathroom wall) AND you could enlarge the office next to the masterbedroom.

I guess I don't understand why your cleanup area is in the island? Cleanup sinks will be subject to the most splashing as you rinse and clean dishes that might night make it in to the DW. And as a mom of 2 kids the same age, we still have plenty of plastic type items that come out of the DW and need some air drying, so I have a dish rack on the counter. Are you going to put that on the island? And if people are sitting at the island enjoying lunch or a casual dinner, they'll be staring at a sink full of dishes? I'd put the DW to the left of the wall sink and make that your cleanup area. Then you could turn the prep sink to face the fridge, but you could put the faucet in a spot that would allow people on the long OR short side to use. Then you have a water source near the fridge (which many here suggest). And where is your MW? You could put it over in that area, too, so it also has easy access to a water source. This post was edited by KathyNY76 on Mon, Jan 13, 14 at 16:25

bpathome - good idea, but that bathroom is so small - I don't think it could have a door on an end (instead of the long side) and still house a sink and toilet. sena01 - I'm not sure we could find another furniture layout for that living room if we put another door in it! And it wouldn't help too much anyhow. Kitchen wouldn't be larger, and the bathroom would still be adjacent to--if not open to--the dining room. karen_belle - we actually made the switch to the current layout. The current "library" is the larger room; it houses four big bookshelves, two desks, and a piano. However, we are trying to keep in mind (in kitchen layout) the possibility of us or some future owner switching it back. This is one of the reasons, for example, that we don't want to put the fridge in the closet at top center. A coffee/refreshment station doesn't seem out of place in case it was next to a study instead of a dining room. But that would be a long long way way to the fridge if the dining room was lower right.