amberm, we faced the same rules regarding facing our home to a side street-must face it to the address street. fortunately our plan was equally suited to facing to the address street. we live about as far south as you can get in southeast texas, so facing the house at an angle to the street which also happened to be due north was a good thing. the house has 12 ft wide back porch which faces south and southeast, garage is to the west, shading the west side of the house. 10 ft wide front porch extends almost the width of the house facing a lake the great room is almost all windows towards the south, but covered by the screened porch so heat gain is not bad (solar screens were installed on the wrap porch today and i was so happy to see they hardly cut down on the light in the house at all) porch overlooks 25 large live oaks and looking under them - while seated on the back porch, you see only rolling fields as far as you can see master bedroom and bath have windows to the south and east so we have nice morning sunlight also one of my favorite things prevailing southeasterly breezes so sitting on the back porch is wonderful we chose our plans almost 18 years ago and were so happy to find a site so suited to them (didn't purchase them until after we bought the land)

A few more ideas: 1) consider flipping the kitchen and the dining room, this would enable you to better coordinate pantry, laundry, and utility spaces (what is that space next to the washer/dryer)? And would also help concentrate plumbing. In addition, it would give you a "clean" wall in your dining area, where I would put a bench (against the wall), w/ a rectangle farm table. This would give you enough seating for company, but leave you with plenty of space everyday. 2) I would also improve the layout of the master bath and closet, I think a better use of space is to have one well planned closet (versus 2), and, if possible, include a pass thru to the laundry area. 3) since space is tight, I would use pocket doors throughout the interior (except for bedroom entrances) 4) that back bedroom is really small ,,, I would consider having the front and back bedrooms the same size and (without knowing your ceiling height), I would include built in storage on top of the closets, which I'd keep at minimum depth. I'd also widen that section a bit and shoot for slightly bigger rooms. I'd re-work that hall area, seems like there is wasted space and I'd consider angled doorways (be sure it's not so tight that you can't move in furniture). 5) The second bath can be laid out more efficiently to give some space to the bedrooms. I'd just have a bath/shower combo, a stool, and vanity/sink. I would omit a linen closet and instead include built-in's ,,, both in the shower (for shampoo etc.) and around the room e.g. medicine cabinets and storage cubbies. In terms of layout, I'd have the door open up across from the sink/vanity, with the tub turned, and the stool on the outside wall (that's a classic bath layout, and it's classic for a reason). 6) With cement floors, I'd consider radiant floor heating. 7) I would have the left and right sides of the house 13.5 feet wide and then the middle section would be 18 ft. I'd also consider lining up the entrances to the bedroom areas on each side of the house across from one another. I'd also consider a built-in opposite the bar where one side is a book shelf (opening to the living area) and the other side is a buffet/server/china cabinet opening to the dining area. I like symmetry. 8) although I like the front door in the middle from an exterior perspective, it would not work for me from an interior perspective. Slide it down off-set to the french doors in the back of the house. I would then add two windows to the living room. Along with symmetry, I like windows. I strongly recommend that you finalize a detailed house plan, BEFORE you start building AND to include in your written contract with the builder. Good luck.

Ron, I can't see the need to get hostile toward anybody on this topic. You and I and many others have lots of experience with cabling. I agree with your statements as my comment stated. In our power plants we brought the Belden twisted pairs into the cabinets with the jacket stopped at times a foot and a half or more from the device, (RTD monitors, recorder or PLC, or what ever), and untwisted the pairs because they went to different locations. This never caused a problem. As you know what does cause a problem or can cause one is grounding the shield at both ends of the cable. We usually had a 5 or 6 ft long copper ground buss that we made up( drilled and tapped) and mounted it in the cabinet. There we terminated the bare shielding wires from the many cables. Soldered Burndy lugs on all ground and signal carrying conductors. Clamp or pressure terminated wires were used on some equipment that had those kinds of terminations, however they were avoided as much as possible. One problem with them was it made it harder to lift and lay back down the wires during troubleshooting or testing as the wires fray and are difficult to get back under the screw, especially when energized. And we had one guy that always made the strands of wire look like a worn out paint brush when he laid down those wires. At least 1/4 of the strands were sticking out. Terrible! One time we got a new pre-wired cabinet in from a manufacture and when we were putting the equipment into service it was not working. So naturally we looked at our own wiring and found no wires laid down wrong. After much troubleshooting we found where the manufacture had stripped the wire correctly but got the insulation under the screw where the conductor did not make contact. Boy that drove us crazy! Anyway, from one old sparky to another, good luck.

So unfortunately she can't just move at a whim, the company she works for provides a very secure workstation requiring a wired connection at all times, and all hardwired proprietary equipment. This is because of sensitive data being accessed. There is absolutely no alternative to the office. I guess pamgatten has the best answer here, we will need to stage the office as best we can and just have people peek in.