1) I think it is a very nice 1st floor plan and, yes, the kitchen/greatroom ought to be beautifully spacious - plenty large enough even for a family of five!

2) If you want to ADD something to the exterior to give it more pizazz, I'm afraid I can't help you. I personally think the problem is that you already have too many different finishes/textures. Between the stonework, two different siding textures (one on the gables and one on the rest of the house), the roofing shingles, the unnecessary porch column that partially hides your front door, and the rather complex textured garage doors, NOTHING predominates. The exterior is a broken up jumble of textures with nowhere for the eye to rest.

If it were me, I'd get rid of the stone entirely and I would use the same siding in the gables as on the rest of the house. I think these changes would allow the eye to flow across the front of the house and notice the rhythms of the repeating pairs of gables and the three paired sets of windows.

I'd also get rid of the porch column. Your porch is short enough that you don't need the support for the roof. Without the column, your front door would become the focal point instead of being hidden.

I did a little playing around using "paint" to see how the elevation would look with fewer textures and this is the result...

3) Have you considered swapping the location of the screened porch with the deck? My concern with the screened porch attaching to the great room is that the porch will block natural light from reaching your great room. If the screened porch attached to the dining room - with sliding doors where you currently have three windows, you could add additional windows to the north wall of the dining room for extra light there. Just a thought.

4) Like you, I also don't like having my closet open into the masterbath so this would be a BIG deal to me. Do you really need that separate little linen closet that is outside your master bedroom door? If not, then how about pushing the masterbedroom entry door down the hallway a couple of feet (creating a little entry hall in the masterbedroom). Then you would have the room to put a door into the closet that wouldn't be blocked by the master bedroom door. The little linen closet could either be turned into a built-in bookcase/display unit just inside your masterbedroom or added to the linen closet in the bathroom. Maybe something like this...

Now, a couple of questions... Where do the stairs go? With a family of five, you must have more bedrooms but I don't see any windows on the front elevation for upstairs rooms so I'm guessing the stair go down to a basement and you have bedrooms down there?

Basement rooms, especially bedrooms, can be problematic if not well designed for PLENTY of light so do post that plan too so we Gardenwebber self-styled experts can pick it apart too. Just in case your architect missed anything... ;-)

The only other thing I notice is that, with a family of 5, I would want my larger laundry room to be quite a bit bigger. I'd probably make that closet off the mud room smaller and my laundry room area bigger - but that is just me.

Bev thanks so much for your thoughts! I love the master bath door idea! I will definitely be passing that on.

To answer your question....yes the stairs go downstairs where there will be 3 bedrooms and a big family room.

The porch location is really bothering me. My dh and our architect think it should be right where it is. I did not want it blocking the family room light. Do you think it will be too dark in that room?

My first thought when I saw the plan was the screened porch blocking light. My next thought was the gables seem tacked on - but I never know what to do about elevations....

Refrigerator in a little bit of a traffic lane but probably wide enough to not be a problem.

Our neighbors have the same layout of the kitchen/dining/great room. What the result was not enough upper cabs and in general not enough cabinet space. They wound up adding cabinets to the dining area in that long windowless wall. It looks a little tacked on and unnatural. Not to mention, probably not the most convenient to put food items or regularly used dishes. I'm not sure what they put there as the family that built isn't who lives there now. Maybe you hate uppers and you have a plan but I just wanted to point it out.

I really like your plan. Very nice family home. I'm not a designer. But here are my thoughts.

I personally don't like a kitchen that open. But I'm a messy cook, and I don't like all the noise from the kitchen throughout the great room. Most people love this openess, so I know I'm in the minority. It seems shy on cabinets, but only you can decide if it's enough.

I love your mudroom area. That will be nice with children. There are alot of doors. Can some be pocket doors, or can you eliminate some of them?

Again this is a very personal thing, but I dislike closets right off the master bath. We currently have this setup. My husband is a powder user, and all the clothes in the closet get white dust on the shoulders from his cloud of powder. I like the idea of the door coming into the bedroom. Much more effecient when putting clothes away, too.

I like the exterior alot. Perhaps one too many gables? And I like the stone, too. If you choose appropriate colors of siding, shingles, and stone, it will be very pretty.

Our original house plans had a covered screen porch like yours. I asked that question on this forum, and the consensus was that it can make the great room dark if there aren't other light sources. I also didn't want to look through the big great room windows and have the view obstructed with outdoor furniture and screening. Those screen porches seem to catch alot of leaves and dust, too. The dining room wall facing the great room is windowless. Can you put another window there?

Good luck, Steph. It's going to be beautiful!!!

North is a good place for a screened porch if you have hot summers.

Our screened porch faces SE. It's in the right angle formed by our breakfast room and our dining room. It has a peaked roof, as does yours, I think. We have two skylights in the east roof angle. The breakfast room and the DR have French doors to the porch. Neither room lacks light, summer or winter.

Will you use all of that deck? (Decks are a constant maintenance problem in our climate, and we need screening against bugs.)

I prefer Bev's solution to the master closet, but it's still something of an 'end run' through the MBR to bathe and dress. Maybe the door to the bathroom could be closer to the closet opening?

I greatly prefer Bev's simplified exterior! Remember, you will have *landscaping*. Who would see the stonework on the the house?