Any chance of getting a slightly bigger picture?

My first though was that if I was going to build a 4300 sq ft house I would want a bigger utility room or at least have it set up so I could pile laundry on the floor and not have it in a hallway.

Wish I could be more positive but...

1) Your log-on name tells me you have 3 kids and that being a good mom is a top priority for you so I don't think you've noticed what a horribly long distance it is from the master bedroom to bedroom number 4! If a child sleeping in that room cries out for you in the night, would you even be able to hear them? And, if you heard them, how long would it take you to make the dash from your bed to their room? Consider: out of bed and across your room to the door (10 ft?) down first hallway (12-15 ft?), right turn down another short hall and across a large foyer (25-30 ft?), diagonal up thru the kitchen zig-zagging around the kitchen island (20 feet?) then u-turn down another long hallway (25 ft?) then right turn down yet another hall (10 ft) before you FINALLY reach the child's room? Bedrooms 2 and 3 aren't much more convenient. Parental privacy is one thing but with this design, you might just as well put your kids in a separate house entirely.

2) Even if your kids are grown and you are no longer concerned about little ones crying in the night or teenagers trying to sneak out of the house after Mom and Dad have gone to bed (LOL!); do you really want to pay for hundreds of square feet of hallway space when a better design could give you so much more useful living space? A 12'6" x 12'6" secondary bedroom in a 1700 square foot tract home is one thing, in a 4300 square foot home they ought to be more spacious.

3) The master bathroom toilet has no convenient spot for washing one's hands after using the facility... a major no-no in my book.

5) In a 4300 square foot house, I would want a more spacious guest powder-room as well...one that a person in a wheel chair could get in and out of.

6) I don't know why your architect is calling your pantry a "butler's pantry" when it does not open onto an eating area and therefore is useless as a staging area for serving a meal. It really is just a big pantry which is fine BUT it is not located conveniently to the garage or port cochere for ease in unloading groceries. I'd want my pantry in a more convenient location.

7) I don't see a doorway directly from your garage to the gameroom so I'm guessing you anticipate that the family will generally enter the house via the port cochere. If so, the mud-room is much too small to be of any real use and the laundry room is positioned so that anyone entering or exiting will have no choice but to traipse across any laundry that is being sorted (and as che1sea pointed out, you have no place to sort laundry except the hallway floor.)

8) The design manages to locate each of the secondary toilets so that a half-asleep child needing to use one at night is going to have to maneuver a rather long winding hike to the nearest toilet. Draw a line from each bed to the nearest toilet and you'll see what I mean. Would you want to navigate those paths in a half-asleep mode in the middle of the night?

9) The kitchen looks good on paper but strikes me as not being well \-designed for actual use. The whole "work triangle" idea is probably overused but whoever cooks in this kitchen is going to spend an awful lot of time jogging around that kitchen island. A nice big kitchen with room to spread out is nice - but not to the point where you need roller skates to prepare a meal.

Frankly, if it were me, I'd take this back to my architect and tell him start over again fresh.

Agree with everything bevangel said, and also how's the garage suposed to work? There seems to be no door into the house; are you suposed to use the main garage door every time?

What a huge amount of space wasted on hallways! Getting laundry from the bedrooms to the laundry area/main family entry is going to be a pain in the butt.

I do rather like the exercise area in the master suite, though.

There are many things I do like about the plan (and I have 6 kids!), but am I missing something? I see a butler's pantry behind the kitchen? No dining room? Or is that area to be more like a scullery?

To start with, Where is the formal dining room? A house this size needs a formal dining and if you do not need one, is good to think in resale value. A house with more than 1700 s.f. needs a formal dining in general. I hope that your architect at least advised you to have a dining and you were the one who said no. Please rethink this issue. I do not underestand how come you have a very big foyer (that is one of the feng shui concepts that I like) and no laundry.

Are you on the south?
I wonder way you do not have a direct entry from garage to house. My guess is you are in an area with no snow and no storms.

Is the laundry room in the entry from garage hallway? In this size of house the laundry should have its own room.

I have seen a lot of plans and I think this one enters my top ten of houses with too many/long hallways.
just to go to your closet you have to walk about 60' in an almost maze like hallway.

The general concept is ok. The architect just have a work more on the hallways lenght and wasted space, even bathroom 2 has a hallway to go to the bath tub.
Good luck with your build

Our almost 15 year old will have bedroom #4. Our six yr old will have bedroom #3 and 3 yr old will have bedroom #2. We've looked at hundreds of houses and this was the norm for most kids bedrooms. We looked at homes from 3500-5800 square feet. We rarely saw anything bigger than this.

The garage will be turned so that we enter it from the side and will enter through the utility room area. That is an area I will be discussing with the architect. It is too narrow.

I also questioned my husband about the wide halls. He said I was being knit-picky.

The area that says Butler's Pantry is just a regular pantry. That was just a type on the rough draft.

We chose not to have a formal dining because we are not formal dining people. All of our get togethers, whether they are with family or friends, never flow into a formal dining. We chose to have the larger eating area and will also have barstools around the bar area. We normally entertain in the kitchen/eating/outdoor area. We will have a fireplace and outdoor kitchen on the lanai.

We know the foyer is larger than we would like, but don't see any other way to keep our great room the same size. Someone said there are no doors on the front of the house. If you look closely, you will see that it says 2 doors coming from the covered porch area. This is the first round meeting with the architect so this is a rough draft. There are no doors anywhere on it.

Please keep the suggestions coming. I may not agree with all of them, but do appreciate any comments.

I agree with some of the other comments, so some of mine are repetitive.

n general, I think the design is a little heavy on the hallways and nooks and crannies. Some of the baths seem more complicated than necessary. At the very least I would put an en suite bathroom next to the foyer and have the hall dead end into a bedroom, rather than turning a corner.

The utility/laundry room is too small for a home and family this size.

I like the exercise room, but I feel like the layout of the master suite area is also rather convoluted.

I don't think you need an additional formal dining room. But I would eliminate the angle on the kitchen. I think if you square it off it will be a much more elegant space. The angle seems sort of 80's and not high-end. Will there be island seating in the kitchen? I would absolutely want at least two seats so that I didn't have to sweep the dining room (and that's what you have, not a breakfast room) every time a 3 y.o. has a messy snack.

Could you reverse the positions of the study and the fourth bedroom? Then the study could do double duty as a dining room and the hallway space to the secondary bedrooms would be reduced. And you would have a bedroom that could function better as a nursery.

I just re-read all the responses and went back for a second look. I think your home will be absolutely lovely, BUT, maybe your husband should rethink your concerns about excessive hallway space. Wide, long and spacious halls and foyers do give a very "lavish" feel to a home, but you are paying for every one of those square feet. What struck me on second look was that my home has the same 4300 square feet. I have 5 bedrooms, kitchen, living room, dining room, study, great room, and bonus room. None are small. In other words, same square footage-3 MORE useable rooms. Just something to think about. BTW, I have 6 kids (3 still at home) and my parents live with us