Oops, house plan and elevations!

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Humph, I'm new to the site, and maybe I'm just being impatient!

But,

Anyone care to share their thoughts. We are just getting ready to go to bid and we'd love to get some feedback on our plans.

Thanks again everyone, what a great resource this site is!

Don't worry....you'll get plenty of opinions :)

A few things I noticed -

1) The path to the master is through the dining room. Not sure that will be very convenient. Can you switch the kitchen and dining area? Then you could have the kitchen right off a porch/deck. And, maybe a better flow from living to kitchen to master?

2) I would want the master bath with a water closet for the toilet rather than open. Also, its a long walk if you are in the kitchen and then have to grab something from the master closet before you walk out the door. It looks like you have to get around your DR table, through the Master Bedroom, to the Master Bath and then FINALLY you have whatever you need :)

3) I'd try to get one set of stairs that can take you upstairs or to the room above the garage. Maybe it's a split half way up so you can keep the spaces separate on the 2nd level (if you want), but they don't take up as much floor space?

Andi, thanks for your thoughts. We also worried about accessing the master through the dining room. That said, I'm not sure we'd like it right off the kitchen either, and the opening to the master would take valuable wall space from the kitchen.

As far as the water closet goes, it would be nice but just sure we can fit it in.

As far as grabbing something from the closet, I don't think the plan is very clear. The bottom stairs go to the bonus room over the garage. The top stairs go down to the basement. We will have a hall to go from the laundry directly to the master closet that goes between the up and down stairs.

Thanks so much for your thoughts!

I'm not going to go point by point because I think there must be many plans without so many jogs -- inside and out -- and so many roof lines. It would seem to me that you can get three BR's and two baths into a nice rectangle under a single roof. You are building anew, right, not adding on (dealing with existing rooms)?

I also think the fact that you have to walk through the dining room to get to the master could be a problem. Also, by putting the kid's bedrooms right off of the only living room, you may create a situation where kids are bothered by noise from the living room when trying to sleep. You also have to walk through the entire house to get from your bedroom to the kids- could be a bother when you've got little ones there.

chisue,

Thank you for your thoughts, i guess! ;-)

You are correct, we are building new.

We understand that there are more cost effective ways to get 3 beds and 2 baths, but I guess we feel like the changes in roofline and elevation provide interest to the home.

If you had any point by point thoughts we'd certainly be interested in hearing them.

Thanks again!

beagles, thanks for your thoughts. Like I said before we agree that our biggest concern is accessing the master bedroom through the dining room. I don't see alot of ways to change it, other than switching the dining room and kitchen as Andi suggested, but I wouldn't like accessing the master off the kitchen any more than the dining room.

The noise issue is certainly a good point and may be an issue until the bonus room and basement are finished. Once they get finished I expect that more entertaining will be done there and that will reduce that issue.

My wife dealt with coming downstairs with our little girl, and preferred to have the master and kiddos areas on either side. I'll certainly have to defer to her on that one!

Thanks again for the thoughts!

My first reaction is, why two staircases???? Obviously, one goes up and one goes down so why not stack them? Having them separated is a huge waste of floor space. If your home were 4500+ square feet, it probably wouldn't matter but with a small house, most people want to use space as efficiently as possible. If you stacked the two staircases, your laundry room could be almost twice as big. Or, you could have a larger master closet, or a larger mudroom, etc.

Other than the two staircases, the layout is pretty standard for a 2 bedroom home with all bedrooms on the main floor. Kids bedrooms on one side. Masterbedroom and garage on the other. Kitchen, dining room, and living area in the middle.

I can't see your dimensions but the mudroom looks like it might be a bit tight, especially right before you enter the kitchen. How wide are your doorways and hallways? In aisleway areas where you're likely to be carrying bags of groceries or hampers of laundry, you should use a MINIMUM 32" wide doors and have 36" wide hallways. 36" wide doors and 42" wide hallways are even better.

Your laundry room also looks a bit tight. If you have a front-loading washer or dryer, are you going to have to close the door to the laundry room behind you to open the washing machine door?

What are the dimensions of the two kid's bedrooms? I like that you've put the bedrooms in the corners of the house and then put windows on two walls in each bedroom. That'll really give you some nice natural light! Since you haven't said which directions your best "views" are, I'm just gonna ask if you have taken them into account in placing your windows.

I'm a bit concerned that your living room might not be large enough, mainly because with it located in the center of the house, it must also serve as a pass-thru area to get from one part of the house to another. So, your furniture is going to have to be arranged with that function in mind. Before you settle on this floor plan, make some "to scale" cut outs of the furniture you plan to put in the room and make sure you can find an arrange that you like that leaves plenty of aisle space for walking thru the living room.

Do you use your dining room regularly? It is quite large in comparison to some of the other rooms - which is great if you and your family actually sit down to formal meals regularly. But if you mostly eat in front of the TV in the living room or while sitting on kitchen barstools, you might want to get rid of the dividing columns between living room and dining area. That would allow the living room "area" to be larger most of the time but you could push the living room furniture closer together for holiday meals and other occasions when you want/need to open up the dining room table completely.

Hope this helps.

BTW, Don't get impatient if no one posts a response for you right away. Mid-week, most of us are busy working so we can pay for the homes we've built or are dreaming of building...so it can take a couple of days before anyone has time to write. The forum tends to get busier on the weekends and then you can get inundated with opinions faster than you can possibly absorb them! LOL.

O-kay...

I see a lot of 'roof' but no second floor living space. (You say you will only have living area above the garage.) Simple can be lovely. Adding gables in gables, etc. can detract. Building all that roof and 'interesting exterior' will be expensive, and you can't live in it.

I don't 'get' the two sets of stairs either. They take up a lot of your first floor living area.

Where will your children play? Little ones want to be close to Mom, and Mom needs to keep an eye on them! Your living room will be awash in toys.

I don't understand the kitchen plan. Is that a fridge/freezer isolated in the upper left corner with no place to set anything down? Opens into 'traffic'?

You'll have a bathtub in the children's bath. Would you be content with one large shower in the master bath? You'll want mirrors, not windows, over the vanities.

The plan fails my first 'test' of a family home. There is no powder room near the family entrance (door from garage). The 'back hall' is pretty tight; this is always a busy part of the house. Laundry tight too. (Where does the dryer vent?)

Will you want a screened porch? I'd put money into that over a merely decorative open front porch.

If you will need a larger garage, think about building it now. That's one of the least expensive parts of a house.

I'd put more living area on your first floor. Skip the over-the-garage living space and its expensive (dollars and space) stairway.

We lived well for 30+ years in under 2000 sq ft, all on one floor. Three BR's + a small office; 3 baths; LR, DR, FR, Kitchen, Laundry/Utility Rm. It was one rectangle + a FR and garage rectangle. There are hundreds of similar plans. Current home is a third larger, but still all one floor. I Hate Stairs! lol

With all the jogs and roof lines you should be able to build a much larger home for the same money if you went with a simpler shape.

That said you can do things like porches/dormers etc. to make a simpler shape have character.

We do have the entry to our master very similar to yours except it is our breakfast area which we are using for dining space even when having guests as the dining room is the play room in our house. It never has bothered me, due to the little hallway that is there and we have a little dip down like above the door frame there making it seem more separated too. We do close the door to the master when we entertain though.

We also have a very similar set-up with the other 2 bedrooms. The closets pretty much muffles all the noises. Only time the separation would have been an issue was before our daughter slept through the night, but she was in our room until then for ease of me feeding etc. Now we have a monitor and we hear her if need be. Not a big deal with the walk as no matter what we have to get up. Not sure how it will be when she actually starts getting out of bed herself. She is in a toddler bed, but waits until we come in to get up so we can stretch and wake up before heading over.

The one thing I'm not liking and wish I had done differently in ours and I see it on your plan is the lining up of the entry to the 2nd/3rd bedroom with the bath door. If you leave the door open to the bath you can see into it from so many places in our house. We are currently lucky that our daughter is OCD at the moment about closing doors, but doubt that will continue. It looks like you can move the door if you remove one of the linen closets in that area. We still could do that if we didn't want ours wheelchair accessible, or cut into the length of our TV wall which is the one that backs up to a bedroom.

Chisue, thanks for your thoughts. I have certainly come to see the light with regard to two stairwells. We want to access that space over the garage, but stacked staircases would be much better. To be honest, I cant beleive that neither the builder nor architect really said anything about it. Strange.

Great point about the fridge. That is where it is drawn right now. Would be much better to switch locations with the pantry I think.

Neither my wife nor I really care about the stand alone shower in the master bath, so that may get the ax and just have a nice combo shower/tub. That would give us a bit of extra space in the bathroom. Mirrors as planned for above the vanity, an approximately 12 inch tall window the length of the vanity will go above the window for natural light in the bathroom.

Not sure where the dryer vents. Small laundry room is fine. We are used to having it in the basement, and wont fold or iron clothes there. Just wash and dry!

We probably will want a screen porch, but the front porch is important to us as well.

bevangel,

Thanks for all the thoughts! Thanks to this post, we are now better understanding the benefits of having those two staircases stacked!

There is alot going into the mudroom, it seems! Builder says the entry into the kitchen is 36. He is using some 32 and even 30 inch doors (not sure why the 30, will ask to go larger). Stairs are 36 inch.

Awesome point about the doors in the laundry. We will change that door to a pocket door.

The kids rooms certainly arent that large, about 12 by 10.5 or so. To us, it just isn't that important to have these be really large rooms. Bed, desk, chest of drawers. They're set. Our thinking anyway.

Agreed on the living room space. It is also a concern of ours. We do want a nice dining room space, as we have no breakfast area that is where the family will eat every night. Piano may also go in that room.

Thanks again!

Thank you for your thoughts lyfia!

We really like the front elevation of the house, but other than the dormer, don't really care about the jogs/gables on the back. May talk to the builder to see if the space can be done more cheaply.

Good to hear about your entrance to the master. We weren't too sure, but were thinking the same thing that with the little hall "setback" we wouldn't mind.

Good thought about the bathroom door lined up with the hall. May have to give that some thought!

Thanks for your thoughts.

I agree about stacking the staircases. Staircases are a necessary evil but having two separate staircases in a small house makes no sense to me.

I would also not like my master bedroom off the dining room, at all. I wouldn't like it off the stairs either. Your children are little but trust me when they get a little bigger they will come barreling down the stairs full tilt. I wouldn't want them doing that by my door, nor barreling into the dining room.

I would consider switching the dining room and kitchen. I think there is a great benefit to a kitchen opened up to a family room, particularly with little ones. It is also much more conducive to entertaining. A dining room logically belongs on the front of the house to me - and is often one of the prettiest (and neatest) room in a home so it would be nice if your guests saw it when they came in. It also would make sense to me to open up the foyer wall to the dining room, giving a feeling of openness and space when you come in, rather than a tight feeling hallway.

I would rework the left side of your house and I feel sure you can get much more usable space for important utility areas (mudroom and laundry) by doing so. We have 3 children and they are older but I must say that what works for a family with a toddler is going to be very cramped with a family of 4 when the children grow older. Utility space is what many homes lack and the reason why many people end up building or moving. If we had a larger laundry room, a mudroom and a pantry larger than our 18" wide one we have now, we would likely be staying and not building.