The first thing I notice is the lack of a closet near the front door. Perhaps you don't live in a climate that requires coats, etc?

I would move the door in bedroom four so that it opens into the little hallway near the bathroom and is closer to the master BR given the ages of the children? Do you really need the walk-in closet in that room? I could see a regular closet against the sink wall and the door also along that wall. I don't think you will lose any storage space and will have two uninterrupted walls for furniture placement.

I would also move the door in the bath near bedroom two. I would switch the door to the sink area and the sink area to the opposite wall. It's not that far, but it just makes more sense to me that a sink and plumbing is not next to the bedroom wall. It maybe that the roof line doesn't allow for this. I can't really tell.

How will you access the future bonus room? Thru the attic storage?

We definitely live in a cold climate (Minnesota!), but we removed the coat closet in the foyer because it took too much space from the office. We almost never go in and out through the front door, so the coats will all live in the lockers and big coat closet in the mudroom. We have a stand-alone hall tree with coat hooks on it, and that will go next to the front door to hold the occasional guest coat.

Thanks for the good feedback on bedroom 4. We've struggled with how to arrange that room. Also, good thought about the plumbing on the bathroom adjoining the bedroom. We hadn't considered that.

The future bonus room and attic storage are all one big space. The wall that looks like it divides the two won't actually be there--the architect just needed it temporarily to get the elevations to look right.

Very nice plan! Don't worry about the coat closet in the front of the house. We hardly ever use ours

You may want to move your prep sink down closer to the fridge.

What are you planning for your kitchen table? It seems like there's a huge empty space between the kitchen and great room but the dinette could potentially be cramped with the door right there. Would you consider putting the table between the kitchen and great room and eliminate the bump out?

Can the house be a little bit wider or are you maxed out?
The reason I'm asking is that the garage protrudes out quite a bit. If you could tuck the garage back so that it is flush with the back of the house and move the lockers/WIC to next to the stairway then it might look alot better.

The main dining table will be in the formal dining room. We actually use our formal dining room every day, so that will be our main eating space. I agree that there's a huge wasted space between the kitchen and the great room (it's my biggest issue with the plan right now), but we just can't really figure out what else to do with it. We've lived in a couple of houses before where the small dinette table was in a space like that between the kitchen and the living area, and it really drove us crazy. We were forever having to walk around it and bumping into it (and it's a heavy iron table, so it hurts!), so we don't want to put into in that space between the island the great room and have the same problem. Maybe it's time to just ditch the dinette, since we'll have the bar stools in the kitchen.

Good point on the prep sink. I don't like the current location on the plan, either, but hadn't thought too much about where it was actually going to go yet.

We should have plenty of width yet on the lot. I don't like the way the garage protrudes out so much right now, either, so that's a really good thought about bumping it back and moving the mudroom. That's also the reason we're considering switching to a front load garage--the architect is drawing us up a front load arrangement to look at this week.

Thanks!

Oh, I wouldn't do a front load if you don't have to...that is the beauty of having a nice big lot! As your children get older, those doors will invariably stay open a lot as the kids get their bikes, etc...and an open garage just isn't pretty on a facade. Also, if you think you might ever move, I would be careful about omitting the breakfast room. Many families (mine included) want and use a casual dining area...in addition to our formal dining room. While my kids eat snacks at the island, I wouldn't purchase a house with only island seating for casual dining. It may not matter if you aren't ever selling, but thought I'd mention it. Oh, and on the plan it said the family room was carpet, but the kitchen was wood. Where are you making the change? It would have such a nicer flow if all the spaces in the back had the same flooring, especially since it is all open.

Best of luck! It seems like a lovely family plan.

Great plan overall. I would be very proud to build this house.

One suggestion for upstairs common bathroom - separate the tub/toilet area from the sink area with a door. This has worked very well for us in our current home. I have two pre-teen girls with about 5000 miles of hair.

Also your Master BR is massive while the corresponding bath seems a bit small. Our MBR is 16x14 but I still regret not devoting more space to the master bath. A foot or two would have made a significant difference.

Thank you all for the feedback. It's all good to hear.

With the great room, I like the visual separation between the rooms that the carpet provides. My husband would rather have wood everywhere, though, so I suppose that one is still open for debate. On the plan, the idea is that the angled line where the great room bumps out a bit closer to the kitchen would be the dividing line between the wood and carpet.

Originally, the master bath was quite a bit bigger, but a lot of it was just wasted dead space in the middle. We rearranged and shrunk it some to make it seem less unnecessarily large. As drawn right now, there's around 5' of space between the vanity and the tub. That seems like a lot to me, but I've only ever had small bathrooms before! Where do you think it should be bigger?

We're in MN too, and we're doing a front load garage-- primarily because it will make the driveway shorter. Less to pay for initially, less to clear over and over during the winter. Also I wanted a clear path for guests from the driveway to the front door. I hate having guests tromp through our mudroom, and I think that people tend to want to enter through the garage if they can't see the front door from the parking area.

Which way is North? One of my pet peeves in our old house was that most of the windows faced North, and we got very little natural light in the winter. I would encourage you to make sure you've got windows from the South into your main living areas.

Very nice plan overall! I usually find at least a dozen things on every plan I look at that I "couldn't live with" and, on yours, there are only two things that bother me. LOL!

One is the big wasted area between the great room and kitchen island. I actually think that having two different floorings will emphasize that "wasted space". Instead of using carpet to visually separate the two areas, why not plan on using furniture. If you float a sofa so that it is facing the fireplace and then put a sofa table behind the sofa, the two pieces of furniture will create the visual separation you want. And since you have lots of space, you can use a fairly wide sofa-table to use up some of that excess space. Something similar to the image linked below but, of course, chosen from a style of furniture you like, ought to work.

The other is that the fridge is so far away from the breakfast nook. Invariably when we sit down to eat, there is something in the fridge that I've forgotten and need to get up and get. The butter, more milk, sour cream for baked potatoes...something. I don't see any way to fix that issue tho so I'd probably decide I could live with the fridge where it is.

The other thing I don't like is that the refrigerator is so far away from the breakfast nook where, I assume, you will eat most of your meals. Invariably when we sit down to eat, there will be something in the fridge that I've forgotten to put on the table (butter... sour cream for baked potatoes...salad dressing.... milk... soda....something!) that I have to hop back up and go get. If you're a better organized cook than I am, maybe having the fridge so far from the table won't bother you.

Good luck with your project! It going to be a wonderful house.

Here is a link that might be useful: sofa and sofa table

Overall, I like it. Simple, straightforward. I'll make a few comments:

- You have lots of counterspace in the kitchen's main work area. What are you going to do with the counterspace over by the refrigerator? It's not convenient for working, and I suspect it'll just become a clutter-collector. I'd eliminate it in favor of bookcases, which would also cost significantly less.

- Do note that by placing the kitchen outside the main work area, you're going to have to run a plumbing line into that wall (assuming, of course, that you intend to have an ice maker). This is an extra expense, and it opens you up to the possibility of leaks inside an extra wall.

- Still on the subject of plumbing, your downstairs plumbing is fairly compact . . . but your upstairs plumbing runs literally from one side of the house to the other. If you could flip-flop your master bedroom and your master bath, you'd bring your plumbing closer together. This would save money AND it would get your master bedroom into a corner, allowing those oh-so-nice windows on two separate walls.

- It'd be nice if Bedrooms 3 and 4 could be moved next to one another, and their shared bathroom could move to the right to keep the plumbing compact . . . but that doesn't look realistic.

- I'd definitely add a small pass-through between the kitchen and the pantry. I mean a little door that you could open and set your things through onto the countertop.

- You've planned a switchback staircase, which is more expensive and takes more space than a straight staircase. This makes sense when your staircase is in a lovely, visible place and is a focal point . . . but yours is tucked away in the back. Why splurge on something that's placed across from the mudroom?

- Could you flip-flop the powder room and the back-door closet? The purpose being, you could get a window into the powder room.

- You have 12' of open space at the foot of your bed in the master bedroom. This is literally enough space for another small bedroom. It's going to be JUST walking space -- you can't place furniture there or use it for any other practical function. I'd use some of this space to enlarge the master bathroom and/or closet.

- I like that you didn't enclose the master bedroom toilet in a silly little closet. Could you flip the tub and the vanity so that you could have another window over the tub? I know you have a window at the end, so it's not necessary, but windows on two walls are always preferable.