What happens if you flip the stairs, so you enter them to go to the basement from that front hallway? Now you start to go upstairs to the girls' space from the great room. Can you then re-work the upstairs space with the new stair entry to your satisfaction?

Ideally, I would like to be able to go upstairs and down to the basement from the front hallway. We have plenty of space upstairs to play around with so that that doesn't limit us with the placement of the stairs.
Just to give you an idea - here is an elevation picture that is similar to the feel that we want.

OK, so to do this it's GOING to cost you a chunk of main floor space from something else, since that means your two staircases won't be stacked upon each other.

How about switch the laundry room with the dining room, combine the new laundry location with pantry space, and make an entry to basement stairs from what is now the back wall of the pantry, stairs heading down into the basement toward the direction of the new dining room. So your two stairs will be off different ends of the main hallway. I really like that LOCATION for an entry to the basement, too. But now you need to get clever and do your best to recover pantry space, now incorporated into your laundry space, somehow.

You'd have to flip the powder room with whatever that is behind it, too, so the entrance to the powder room is off the garage hallway, next to the entrance to the basement stairs. Then incorporate whatever that is in that hallway now (I can't read it, maybe a closet?) into the mulit-space that is now laundry, desk, pantry, and (closet)?

Or, you could re-locate the powder room to the back notch in the great room, where the entrance to the basement stairs is currently, then leave alone your garage hall closet. Now you can use what was powder room real estate to re-coup your pantry space.

Also, critical problem: you have no front closet inside front entry. Take a notch out of that laundry room to make a front closet off your entry hallway.

If you want to re-coup your launrdy room/desk space, then bump out the notch in front of the now powder room to make the house flat across the front there instead of notched. This should approximately get you back your space you lost from the staircase coming into that room.

This post was edited by beautybutdebtfree on Sat, Jul 19, 14 at 13:12

That is a good thought - to flip the dining and the laundry room. Thanks so much for your suggestions!
I found a picture of ideally how I would like to configure the stairs, but not sure how much room that would realistically take.

Jen-nice elevation inspiration. I think a good place for stairs would be where your powder room off the garage is. You could have a window there still that will bring natural light to them. That said I'm not sure where you would incorporate that stuff unless you widened that area.

Our stairs are just as the picture you posted shows and they take up about 8 feet in width and 9 1/2 feet in depth if that helps. I like your sort of breezeway type entry there by the garage. Great idea for the laundry. Multi-purpose is perfect.

The positive of the stairs where you have them is a sound barrier between the great room and master bedroom. But I get why you want to move them too. Sorry my comments don't have any solutions to them. Those are my thoughts and maybe the measurements will help.

Flipping the laundry room and the dining room puts the dining room too far from the kitchen.

Do you have a proposed second floor? The inspiration staircase is very nice. Your inspiration elevation shows a 1 1/2 story house. That means the location for your stairs going up is limited by the roof line. The stairs have to be located where you have the necessary headroom.

Don't forget to make the door on the master bathroom toilet room an outswing for safety.

Here's our proposed 2nd floor. My issue with this is that we aren't making use of the front dormer.
Another thing that may make a difference is that we don't plan to keep the front door to the mudroom, we will just have one door going to the back. That gives us a bit more flexibility with that area.

Autumn.4 - thanks for the measurements of your stairs, that does help.

dekeoboe - I hadn't thought about the safety factor and the door swinging out, nor the headroom issue with the stairs.

Thanks everyone for the helpful information - it's great to hear different perspectives! I'll take all the help I can get! :)

I rarely give opinions on floor plans .... maybe because I just don't have a vision of what it would look like ... or not knowing the lifestyle of the people living there makes it difficult to judge. Anyway, I just wanted to say I like your original plan a lot. Don't think I'd change a thing except the kitchen. Not terribly fond of the actual layout, but you have sufficient space to make it exactly what "you" want.
We have two stairways to our basement, and use them both often. The one from the garage is so convenient. Can't imagine building a house without that feature.
Our exterior looks a lot like yours. After living here 4 yrs, we still get lots of compliments on the house. Can't wait to see this house when finished. Do keep us updated!