The covered patio means you'll get essentially no natural light in your living room and kitchen. Is that appropriate for your climate? In the deep South that can be ideal, but up in the North where we're building it would make for long dark depressing winters.

Is the rear of the house to the West? Do you have anything to block the glare of late day sun in the dining and media rooms?

Having the patio where it is means you won't get cross breezes.

Where will the lightswitch be for the master bath? especially in a room without a window, I wouldn't want the light switch hidden behind the door when I entered, and double doors make that hard to avoid. I'd switch to a single door.

Your foyer is a long long way from your garage. How will you encourage guests to use your front door? Will you have a parking area in front of the house for guests? Recessed the way it is between the master bedroom and bedroom 2, how will people see your front door?

The front door courtyard is another area that is protected on three sides without a lot of sun (I think, depending on precisely where you're building). What will you put there? I'd make sure I could landscape that area successfully before I built it. I'm sure there are people who could have a lovely garden anywhere, but for me, spots like that tend to have bugs and moss and mildew and sad little plants.
I think you're going to end up with a really complicated roof if you go with this floor plan, are you ok with that? If you want a simple roof, I think you may want to simplify the shape of the house now.

I'm sorry if this is overwhelmingly negative-- I don't think it's a terrible house, I'm just trying to point out things you may not have considered. So much depends on where you're building and what you want.
Good luck!

Thanks for the detailed feedback - very helpful! To answer a few questions:

We are in Texas, and large back porches are almost a requirement here, both to reduce light inside, and to be able to go outside more than 10 days a year. There will be multiple ceiling fans back there as well. The media room is in the WSW corner - the porch itself will face SW. Not ideal, but we are hoping to get shade from the media room in the late evening. The media room will stay mostly dark (we will have windows, but they will covered with blackout shades.)

Good point about the master lightswitch - I think we can make those doors swing out. There won't be furniture there anyway, and they'll stay open most of the time. Although I supposed if they stayed inward swing, we could put a switch on the wall to the right, before the vanity begins? I'll look more closely at that.

We'll have a circular drive in the front where guests will park.

We will have shade at the front of the house, and I'm thinking of extending the porch there to enjoy it in the evening. Moss is pretty much unheard of. :) Most full sun plants thrive in the afternoon shade here, because a full day of sun kills off most everything.

I like the idea of the master bedroom being private, and love the idea of the bath, closet and laundry being connected (exactly what I did), but have you given thought to the master bedroom access to the rest of the house? If I'm looking at this correctly the only way to get from the master to the public areas of the house are to walk down the gallery and past the front door, or through the master bath, WIC, and laundry?

I agree with the other poster about the lack of light in the interior of the plan. I too live in TX and understand about the summer heat/sunlight, but figure if you can't be out in the heat, at least you should be able to enjoy the outside from inside, so I built my kitchen so that I'd have a large window area -- I spend a lot of time there and wanted a connection to the outside. Would you consider swapping the dining room and living room locations? If as you say your guests congregate in the kitchen, why not connect that space to the outdoor living space?

I think you should reconsider the master bath and "his" closet layout to allow natural light into the bathroom in some way.

Others have made good notes, so I just want to mention something small. The bath/closet layout in BR2 bothers me, because there is a lot of space wasted on the "entry" to the area, resulting in a very small closet. The closet is deep, but not wide, so the deepness doesn't really get you anything. If you're going to have a kiddo in that room -- particularly a girl -- I think you're going to want more closet space.

You might not want to lose the wall space, but consider combining the entry+closet into just closet, with bypass or double doors opening into the room. Then swap the toilet with the sink and have the bathroom door open with a view of the sink.

I really think getting to the master bedroom is an issue. From the garage it is a very winding path to the bedroom. Maybe love the door in the utility to where the mechanicals are? That would help a little. But still need to wind your why threw the closet and bathroom. I think that area needs work. It would be nice on the other side to have a small hall where the closet is in the gallery. Maybe turn the closet sideways and make a little hall there?

I like the connection between the laundry and the master closet.

I would miss the tub in the master, and if you ever sell -- I know, I know, no one on this board ever intends to sell a house, but, hey, we do have to live in the real world -- I think it would be a problem.

You know, I'm sure that the curved island will be inordinately expensive. I'm not against a unique splurge here and there (otherwise, you'd be buying a ready-made house), but be SURE this is how/where you both want to spend. Plus, once you have this island, it's going to demand a really great stone of some sort, making it even more expensive. This is a very visible item in the middle of your public spaces, so if it's what you really want, I think it'll be a good choice.

Island aside, this is not a kitchen that "works well". You don't have space for the two islands together, and the key players are too far apart from one another. The pantry is great, but don't expect much actual storage in the curved island. I think you're right to go to the kitchen forum.

What does work is the bar, which will keep foot traffic out of the kitchen during parties. Also working well is the adjacent dining room: Plenty of entry access, nicely sized.

Last kitchen comment: No natural light. If you're doing this curved island as a focal point, and the kitchen is so visible to the living area . . . you really don't want it in the dark.

I know some people are dead-set against the master in front, but yours is somewhat "set back" via numerous hallways. Plenty of privacy. I don't see a problem.

What I don't like about the master bedroom is that it sticks out so far in front that a guest parking in front of the garage will have to traipse allllll the way around that bump-out bedroom to reach the front door. It's awkward. If you pull the laundry room over adjacent to the A/C room, your master bath /closet could "pull back" a bit, allowing your master bedroom to "tuck into" the spot currently allocated to the master closet. Yes, this would mean walking across the hallway with laundry, but you're only talking about a few steps more, and it eliminates a major problem in front of the house.

I see you're looking at a circular drive. These can be problematic. People never quite know whether they're supposed to park there, and if they do, they block in the person behind them. I've only known one house in real life who did a circular drive "right", and theirs was two-cars wide AND had a "pull off" so people could park in that little spot without feeling that they'd block others. I have one good friend who has a circular drive, and no one ever parks in her drive -- everyone parks on the street.

I would definitely look into how to get some natural light into the master bath. If nothing else, I'd do a narrow, long window across the top of the mirror . . . though this is right in front of the house, and that's not going to look so good on the exterior of the house.

I also like the idea of an open shower. I'd put the open shower in the spot that's now an exterior wall WIC . . . and make what's now the shower the closet /maybe an extension of the already-spacious closet. The open shower tucked around the corner will work nicely for water-containment, AND you can have a window at the end of the shower.

I vote against the derpy little double-doors into the bathroom. They never quite work out as planned, the light switch issue being the first problem with them.

I really dislike having to walk through the foyer from/to a bedroom. Is there anyway you can work through to get the access different to the master and the other bedroom. I also prefer to have at least two of the bedroom entries by each other, especially if you have more than one child so if something happened in the middle of the night you could get to both of them easily or if you just want to check on them you don't have to walk from one end to the other.

The other part that bothers me about walking through the foyer is privacy and being in my jammies and just in general the idea that it has more dirt dragged in near the front door. How private is the front of your house? Will you have noise from the road?

It looks like you could create a small hallway to each secondary bedroo, by just moving some of the rooms a little to have access from the great room area instead. Which direction is up on your stairs? If the up is at the top then you could remove the wic in the drawing and make that part of the hallway and entry to both bedrooms and then move the closet to the stair area. It could utilize the space open in front of the stairs going up and also some of it underneath for more storage.

Off hand I'm not seeing an easy change for the master.

Where would be the nicest views? Would putting the master in the rear and the other bedrooms in the rear work better and the media room in the front along with the master bath?

Edited to add: I do think you have a too small great room for good furniture placement and being able to walk by the island. Also look at the proportion of the kitchen to the great room. You probably would be served better by having a single large rectangular island and then you'd have the space you need in the great room too.

This post was edited by lyfia on Thu, Jul 11, 13 at 16:06

You guys rock. Lots of good feedback.

To address a few common questions - I'm not worried about the LR / DR / kitchen being dark. The ceilings will be high (in the 14 feet range) and have transom windows in the LR - I've been in probably 5 models that have the same arrangement, and there is plenty of light. I can see how it would be really dark with lower ceilings though.

I think I'm deciding against the master at the front. There's no easy way to recess it without losing the laundry entry (and I think it would be odd to have the closet to the master open into the back hallway - but maybe not).

Also thinking of going with a standard straight island instead of the curved double - like lyfia suggested. That would give us more room for furniture in the great room and I think a better arrangement for cooking as well. We will try to curve the island so we aren't sitting all lined up at the bar.

I'd love to have a window over the sink, but I don't think flipping the DR and kitchen would work since we'd lose a lot of window area to cabinet uppers (unless we ditched uppers on that wall??).

We will have to rework the entire master / bath situation - definitely move the "his" closet around so there is natural light.

I like the idea of putting a closet under the stairs for the other bedroom - that might be a better route and more private from the media room and stairs (if we leave the media down).

The 2 downstairs bedrooms are for my son (13) and a guest bedroom. Daughter (14) will be upstairs. No late-night check ins needed or wanted. ;)

Due to lot / tree issues, the garage arrangement will be changing as well since we don't have as much width as we need. We might be doing a porte cochere with 2 forward facing spots and 1 rear facing in front of that (hope that makes sense). There will be plenty of parking there, and we'll rethink the circular driveway. It seems that everyone in this neighborhood has one though - all one one acre lots. There's a good bit of street parking as well since the lots are largish.

The media might be going upstairs - not sure at this point.