everyone likes something different but some thoughts at first glance. is that a one stall garage? tv placement will be uncomfortable. my wife would not be happy doing laundry and having to run up and down those stairs multiple times. kitchen seems spread out a bit much.

Hi vhehn -- thanks for taking a look! The structure on the left is a porte cachere -- the garage will be detached and behind the house. We're hoping to mitigate the awkward TV placement by using a flat screen mounted on an arm so the TV can be pulled out and rotated. We're curious to see how the laundry will work out since it's the first time we've had one upstairs. In some ways we think it will be more convenient to have it near the bedrooms so there's no hauling clothes down and then back up. Of course as you point out, we will have to go up the stairs to change a load, etc. One of the purposes of the small sitting room upstairs is to have a place to comfortably fold clothes. We originally had the laundry downstairs but ended up moving it upstairs as part of our efforts to decrease the footprint.

Jeff2718, I really like your plan! It's very well thought out and efficient. I love the swoop on the roofline at the entry, the stacked screen porches and the porte cachere. How nice to have the study avaiable to your guests as a seating area! The only thing that seemed odd to me was the size of the front window in the guest bedroom. On the elevation it looks bigger than all the other windows but not so much on the floor plan. It's probably one of those things that looks odd on a flat plan but will be fine in real life.

Great job!

Congratulations on making such great progress with your plan. Very nice elevations!

I too love the stacked screened porches in back! And the study off the guest room is a great idea. If you ever have elderly parents come to live with you, that study gives them a little "living area" of their own which can make things so much easier for the entire family.

I disagree completely with Vhehn about the laundry room placement. As the wife who does all the laundry in our home (and who spent 25 years in a two story house with a laundry downstairs by the kitchen and just recently moved into a new two story house with my laundry upstairs) I can assure you that whoever does your laundry is going to love having it upstairs where all the dirty clothes are. Trust me, it takes a whole lot less effort to run upstairs (with one's hands empty) to move loads of clothing from washer to dryer than it does to CARRY tons of dirty laundry downstairs and then, when it is all clean, carry those same tons of clean laundry back upstairs! You make the same number of trips up/down stairs - the difference is in whether or not you have to do it with your arms full of clothing. And your architect has done a great job of moving the laundry away from bed rooms so that the noise won't ever keep anyone from sleeping. Just be sure that your architect also clearly specifies how the floor below the laundry is to be built (including the floor supports) so that the laundry floor can be sloped to a floor drain.

My concerns with your new design are relatively minor ones:

1) in your kitchen, do you have enough room between breakfast bar and cabinets for easy passage when someone is sitting in the bar stools? Mock it up with boxes and stools and make SURE. If not, you can probably gain a few inches by making your bar a little narrower or making the "microwave" wall just deep enough for your microwave.

2) Same question with regard to the space around the dining area especially on the side next to the sofa. Since you don't have a breakfast nook, I'm assuming your dining area will get daily use so you want to make sure it is not going to be too crowded.

3) Also, pick out your refrigerator (exact model) before you start to build. The outer dimensions of refrigerators tend to be much larger than they used to be. (My guess is that they're putting more insulation into the shells to make them more energy efficient so to keep the insides a reasonable size, manufacturers have to make the outsides bigger.) Except for the very expensive "counter depth" models, new fridges tend to stick out beyond 24 inch counters as much as 12 to 14 inches. If you know ahead of time exactly what the dimensions of your fridge will be, it may be possible to recess it into the wall a little bit if need be so that it doesn't have to stick out so far into aisleways.

4) In the guest bath/powder room area, I would suggest moving the powder room toilet to the wall where the little shelves are now and then angling off the corner between the two bathrooms.( i.e., basically, cut off the corner where the shelves are in the guest bath are. An angled wall there in the guest bath would make that shower much more easily accessible to someone in a wheelchair... and it's always wise to have at least one wheelchair accessible bath in every home. Plus, angling the wall off and moving the powderoom toilet would allow you to have a longer vanity in the powderroom and give you room for a linen cupboard there. You could still put shelves on the angled wall in the guest bath until such time as you need wheelchair access.

Upstairs:
5) I am not a fan of Jack & Jill bathrooms - especially not if they are going to be used by children. (Too much "accidentally" locking siblings out! Do a search on "jack and jill" or "J and J baths" here on GW for a several discussions on the pros and cons of such bathrooms.) I would move the bathroom toward the hall (where the closet for bedroom 1 is now) and make it open only to the hallway. Then, I'd split the available closet space more evenly between the two bedrooms because, right now, the closet for bedroom 2 has a lot of wasted floor space. (I can understand having a slightly wider aisle to get into and out of the attic space but since you're limited in what you can store there by the width of the closet doors anyway, having a huge aisle is a waste.) Making the bathroom open to the hallway would also reduce the number of doors in the bedrooms making them seem more spacious.

6) But, if having a J&J suits you, do notice that getting from Bedroom #1 to the toilet is a bit awkward due to the swing of the door. Consider either using another pocket door there or making the door between bedroom 1 and the bath swing outward into bedroom 1.

7) And, since you have so much open floor space in the closet for bedroom 2, turning that closet door so that it swings into the closet will help make bedroom 2 seem a little less cramped.

8) I'm also not crazy about your masterbath layout. Overall, it has way too much empty floorspace as you first enter the bathroom and then the vanities seem too small for the overall size of the room and the tub seems squished over against the wall. Plus, having the shower and in the toilet room kind of defeats the purpose of a separate toilet room. Invariably, the exact time one spouse needs to use the toilet is when the other one is taking a nice long shower.

I would ask my architect to incorporate more of the "attic space" that is behind the MBR closet into the closet/bath area and redesign that entire area. Maybe turn the little closet off the bath foyer into a little toilet room area with its own tiny corner sink for washing hands. Then move the shower out into the main portion of the master bath and put both closets into the area currently occupied by the shower/toilet, big closet, and attic area. Just a thought.

8. In the meantime, I'm pretty sure the space alloted for your master bath tub is too shallow. I'm assuming that you plan to have either a 5.5 ft or a 6 ft tub because that tub is drawn longer than the tub in the other bathroom. 5.5 ft and 6 ft tubs are almost always at least 32 inches wide. Most are even wider. Be sure to pick out the tub you want NOW and make sure it will fit in the alloted space before you begin building.

With the exception of the masterbath area tho, I do think you've got a really nice plan. Assuming you've got enough aisleway space in the kitchen and dining area, all the rest of my suggestions are really just very minor tweaks.

So, congrats on finalizing your plan(or maybe NEARLY finalizing it. LOL.) Now you get to move into the really "fun" phase of watching it all come together in real life!

Heigh-ho! A 'sleeping porch' from the last century! My question is whether you'll use the upper porch enough to put up with a dark dining area?

I like all of bevangel's ideas, especially pushing into those 'attic' spaces.

LOVE the elevations. Pretty, simple, something your building review board SHOULD love -- but that's asking too much, right? LOL

I just started reading this forum so I can't provide the detailed feedback of others, but I just want to say that I love the plan...love the porches, porte cochere, laundry room where laundry is and so much more. It looks like a lot of planning and thought went into this plan.

Thanks everyone for your thoughtful suggestions and kind words!

Buckhead -- thanks for catching the window size issue. We'll point that out to our architect. I believe the window in the guest bath is to be smaller as shown in the elevation, but that isn't reflected in the floor plan yet.

Chisue -- the upstairs screened porch is one of those things that we _think_ we're going to use a lot but won't really know until we're in the house. (My wife has already claimed part of it for a hammock!) It should help that there's a nice view off of the back of the lot, and we think the view will be better from the upstairs. Hopefully the openness of the first floor plan and the windows in the kitchen, living room, and front door will help keep the dining room from being too dark.

Bevangel -- thank you for looking over everything so thoroughly. We'll definitely need to adjust some door swings. We think we're okay in the kitchen and dining room for aisle space, but I like your idea of getting out some boxes and making sure. One thing that may help in the kitchen is that the microwave will be in the other cabinet on the pass-through wall, so we don't think the aisle there will get a lot of foot traffic on a daily basis. When we're entertaining that's another story and something we need to consider. As you pointed out, we could lose a couple of inches off the island width if need be. For the J&J bath, we're hopeful that a couple of things will help with the lockout issue. One is having the private fixtures in their own room with a lockable door. We're thinking that this will minimize the desire to lock the hall doors. The other is that we're going to have our two daughters (our only children) share Bedroom #1. It is perhaps a bit optimistic of us to believe that they will be content with that until they go off to college! The tub we've selected is 30" wide, and I confirmed on the plan that the space drawn will accommodate it. (It occurred to me after I posted that I had once again failed to include a scale on the drawings.) My wife and I agree about the amount of open floor space in the master bath. We'll take another look at that and the powder room/guest bath issues you raised downstairs.

Jmck_nc -- thank you!

Jeff

Very nice plan and elevation. I'm a big fan of hammocks myself. I agree bevangel. I would take another look at the master bath. Particularly, if you can get the toilet it's own space. Can you make the closet bigger by going into the attic space? It's really nice to have a window in the master closet. The more natural light the better! You would then be able to get rid of the smaller closet in the master and make the room a little bigger. Is it big enough to hold a king size bed?

As far as your daughters' rooms, I love the idea of having a sleeping room and a separate room for homework and hanging out with friends. Seems much more funstional.

Are you building in a mild climate? What do you see from the upper porch -- and who sees you? LOL Any trees? Which direction do the porches face?

Here in Chicagoland we enjoy our screened porch late spring through early fall. It's in a SE angle of the house with a deciduous tree on the south for shade. Skylights in the porch roof keep the adjacent bkfst. room and DR from being dark in winter. BTW, I doubt you will use more than ONE French door out to the porch; save some money and 'swing space'. Would a pair of French doors work in the middle where you have stationary glass? They could fold back inward against stationary flanking doors. It's unlikely you'll put furniture in the middle but you might use the porch corners for furnishings.

I'm not happy with your master bath setup: Shower IN the toilet room and a closet accessed via the bathroom itself.

I'd want a powder room near your family entry door. I assume the family will be using the door off the porte cochere? The most-used toilet in our house is the one in the powder room off our back hall. If you have a lot of company and need facilities off the front hall, I'd make the guest bath accessible from there. Do you have many guests? Will the guest bathroom gather dust?

I know I'm late to this party, but I wish I'd discovered this forum to access some 'extra eyes' before we built (2001).

Chisue -- we're building in Birmingham, Alabama, so the porches will be usable most of the year. The lot is near the top of a hill and overlooks downtown Birmingham. (We can also see Vulcan if you're familiar with the city.) The porches face west, but there are established deciduous trees that will provide good shade in the afternoons without obscuring the view too much (we think). The view will certainly be best in fall and winter. Good point about the doors -- our budget will be a bit tight and it would definitely help to eliminate a couple of outside doors if possible.

Our original hope was to have the powder room near the side door, which will be our main entrance. As the plan developed, though, and we clarified our priorities, we ended up sacrificing the location. One of the difficulties was situating the powder room so that it was both most convenient and private. At least we ended up with the privacy!

Thanks again for weighing in.

Oh my, a west-facing porch in a hot climate. We've had that situation and could only use it in the mornings. Would ceiling fans help? You might want to wait to lay the patio until you see how much use it would get.

I know it's YOUR house and not mine, and nobody wants to re-think 'the final plan'. However, I'd seriously question not having a back hall area FAMILY powder room, especially as you could easily make the main floor guest bath do double duty as a formal powder room.

A friend has a main floor guest 'suite' not very different from your plan. The only time that bathroom gets use is when her son stays at the house to house-sit. YMMV!

I love the exterior and wish you best of luck with your building board. Our house was delayed *forever* by nit-picking volunteers...then went ahead almsost exactly as we first presented it. What a waste of time and money.