A 45 degree turn in the stair will require two winders with their narrow dimension at least 6" (measured perpendicular to the leading edge of the tread) and the tread dimension a foot out from that point at least 10". This usually results in a winder tread dimension at that point of 11" so the rest of the treads must be a minimum of 10 5/8" (max. tread deviation in stair run = 3/8"). A tread size of 10 7/8 would allow some insurance that the max. deviation is not unintentionally exceeded. Thus the stairway will be longer (probably 10") and will require a larger opening in the ceiling/floor above (but that appears to be a 2 story space). The bend will be expensive if done right.

I would be a bit concerned about how the space created by the stair is used. Perhaps you could straighten out the stairway and create some storage in the space next to it.

Is the kitchen island really 5 ft. x 11 ft. It should not be so wide that no one in the family could easily reach the other side. I would limit the width to 4 ft. IMHO the optimum space from the island to the other counters is 3'-6" and 4 ft is a max. unless there is a dishwasher across from a range which I would try to avoid.

I would try to center the opening between the family room and the kitchen on either the island or the family room since the opening appears large and formal.

I would also make the transition space/corridor next to the stairway from the M Bedroom door to the back hall more defined and consider a door to the back hall that is symmetrical to the M Bedroom door or at least a trimmed opening. It might help to recess the M Bedroom door.

Thanks for the feedback Renovator- I have been concerned about the stairs using winders. The "shape" certainly suits how we want the space to be used. We love an open staircase in the foyer and it will provide our seperate piano area, but still allow it to be "open." We may have to go to a 45 with a landing, also thought of like a T-stair (having stairs off the hall and foyer, then a landing, then lead up. Was also wondering about a landing area somehow, rather than the winder. I have very little knowledge of the design of staircases.

We quite like our current wide island at 51 and I can't reach acroos it, never has bothered me. I walk around it to clean it, for some reason I have always cleaned narrower dining tables this way too. The aisles we have now are 53 inches and we love them. I think it is personal preference as we love the space and don't mind the extra space. Our kitchen is usually busy, lots of kids and lots of activites. It is so nice to not bunp into each other or get someone with a hot pan etc. I know this is personal, as many I have read prefer smaller aisles.

The opening into the family room is also something we have thought a lot abot and I really think I like it this way. We have always had the great room, the kitchen has been completely open. We have liked this, but we really want the rooms more closed off this time. The TV, noise and loss of coziness are some points we are focusing on with closing the rooms off a bit more. Also, the gained wall in the kitchen for appliances or cabinets will be very nice. I think with proper details, trim and decorating- the opening into the family room and kitchen do not need to be symmetrical.

Yes, I do know what you are saying about the bedroom door. I originally had a 4 foot space taken out of the bedroom in order to turn the door and not see it from the hall/foyer. It does take a lot of space from the bedroom, for form. We never change in the bedroom, so privacy is not an issue. I know many don't want a view of the door or to see in the master. We currently have it the way you are suggesting, so we'll comtemplate this more.

We have almost 7000 sq. ft. finished currently (with all the bells and whistles) in this home and we are really looking forward to function and down sizing some. We want little to no mortgage and a nice family home out in the country.

A landing would add 12 to 15 inches to the projection of the stair into the foyer toward the M Bedroom. That would need to be carefully drawn to scale to determine if there was enough room to pass between the stair and the bedroom wall. It's time to draw the plan to scale.

A double bottomed stair would force everyone to walk into the family room to get around it.

Unless you are willing to build a gradually curving stair I wouldn't bother with a bend. There's nothing wrong with a straight stair and you would save enough money to build it right. Perhaps one side could be straight (at family room) and the other curved so there were no winder treads or landings but it would get gradually wider toward the bottom and toward the front door. The treads could gradually become smaller on the curve side and perhaps be slightly curved. Now that would be seriously grand and elegant! I'm sure I could find some photos.

Recessing the bedroom even a foot would be a big improvement. It just needs to not be in the wall of the foyer.

The stated 6" minimum inner dimension _only_ applies if the stair is the entrance to a dwelling unit, never applies to a staircase within a dwelling unit. If the second floor were to be a separate rental unit, you would have to make the curve that type of broad sweep, but it is not called for under the code section of stairs within a unit.
I read that section one day while designing a stair and almost crapped. But about ten pages later is the section that applies here, and tight winders are still perfectly legal. You do need to keep a tread width exactly equal to the normal tread at a point 9" in from the corner of the wind, for comfort. Your design allows for the exact angle to be determined by these factors, so there is the freedom to make the angle a result not a precondition.
Casey

In general I like it. The one thing I would probably do as it seems like it is free is add a pocket door to the powder room from the entry. This way you can use it no matter which entry you come in from front/garage. I can imagine that would be useful when the boys are out playing as I would guess they wouldn't always walk through the garage.

I like it. I like it a lot! Can't wait to see the upstairs,the basement, and your elevations.

Renovator is correct about the stairs tho. You have to be really careful when designing a "winder" to keep it reasonably safe. Back when I was a teenager, we lived for a year in a house in Europe that had a staircase with not one but two 45 degree "winder" turns in it... and I don't think there is anyway it would have passed current U.S. stair codes. It was gorgeous to look at but we all learned to HATE that staircase. I think every single member of my family (parents, one toddler, one pre-teen, and two teens) took at least a couple of tumbles on it in the year we lived there. Fortunately no one ever suffered more than bruises but I'm sure if we had stayed there longer, sooner or later someone would have broken an arm or leg.

Obviously if your stair is built to code, it will be much safer than the one I experienced. But still, even at their best, winder staircases can be a bit tricky to navigate. Friends of ours have one and my husband almost fell down it last time we visited them. Full landing with 90 degree turns are just so much safer.

If you had a low landing that started about five feet from your master-bedroom wall and had 2 or 3 steps going up to the landing from the front-door side, the L-shaped staircase would nicely define your piano room and your foyer area.

You could leave the stairs open on both sides and just have railings so that the staircase and the rooms feel very open and airy. But at the same time, the foyer/piano room and staircase would help to provide privacy for your family room from anyone standing at the front door.

I think that with a landing and a couple of steps at the start, you ought to have plenty of headroom by the time you got to the other end for your staircase to have another staircase going down to the basement. If not, you could switch your bathroom around a bit to provide space for a couple of more steps.

You also need to leave a bit more space between the stairs and that (wide) supporting wall next to kitchen and family room. It looks like the hallway there is only 3 feet wide on your sketch and, by the time the stair wall thickness is taken into account, it may be a bit narrow... especially considering the amount of traffic that is likely to pass thru there with 5 kids. I don't see anyway to do that except to either make the whole house a little deeper or make the family room and kitchen a little less deep. Another 6 inches would probably be fine.

You might also want to think about swapping the laundry room and mud room spaces. You're going to want windows at the front of the house and tall mudroom cubbies don't work too well under windows. The washer&dryer and folding counters and some wall storage might fit in better around and under the front windows. Besides, if I know boys - and I grew up with three brothers so I think I do - your mudroom is going pretty much be a disaster zone all the time what with all their sporting equipment, bookbags, shoes, etc. If you have front-facing windows in the mudroom, you'll always want to keep the curtains closed so that no one can see in to see the mess. Might as well not have windows. With the laundry room tho, you might stand a fighting chance of keeping the room reasonably neat. If the men in your family are the men in mine, they won't go into a laundry room unless you force 'em to. So, you could put the laundry room at the front and turn it into a nice bright pretty and maybe even slightly FEMININE room if you wanted to!

Also, I would suggest double-pocket doors between the mudroom and laundry room so that, when the pocket doors are open you basically have one big room. That would give you a nice area for sorting dirty clothing when you need it. I'm attaching a sketch done of top of yours to show you what I mean.

BTW - I love love LOVE your big covered porches! I have 1200 sq ft of covered porches wrapping half-way around my home plus another 600 sq ft of open decks so it warms my heart to see someone else designing nice big porches. And, they'll be fabulous places for your boys and their friends to gather!

Be aware tho that deep covered porches will block light from your windows. That can be a very good thing if you live in a hot part of the country. If you love light-filled rooms and want your houseplants to thrive inside the house, you might want to consider putting some sky-lights into the porch roofs so that light coming thru the skylights falls on windows or near windows to help light up the inside rooms.

Finally, I have no idea how you plan to use that office at the front of the house but, if you will ever have clients/customers or other business people coming to see you at your office, you might want to put another door opening from the office to the front porch. The office door can and should be much plainer than the front door but should be in a compatible style. Then, all you would need to do is hang a small sign on the door indicating "office" to direct business visitors to ring that doorbell instead of the front doorbell. With the pocket doors to your master bedroom closed, business visitors would never have to be admitted to your "home" at all. Perfect!

Oh yeah, and I was gonna ask, Don't you need to change your login name to mommyto5boys??? Your baby may feel a bit slighted once he gets a little older and starts to read! :-)

I'm so excited, I'm singing inside and smiling outside. I have 100's of hours (actually we could add another 0 there) reworking these plans. It is completely different than when I started over a year ago. I'm so glad others "understand" our way of living. We currently have a formal dining area in the front of the home (our museum) and the formal den (actually we use it as a play area for the littler ones). We so wanted a house without these formal areas....except we still love a foyer, the open stairs and a little seperate piano area. We love a seperate dining area, but so wanted it to serve as the breakfast nook (large enough for our family) and dining room without being formal and in front of the house. It is literally impossible to find this, so my desire to draw out exactly what we want.

Bevangel-The time you took to respond to me has made my day, bless your heart. I absolutely love your rendering and changes. Yes, I have a thing for windows and need them in every room! I love the added windows by flipping the laundry room. Prior I had a window over the desk and wash sink and cubbies seperated all over the place. I just LOVE your ideas! The stairs is a much better option and still gives us the same concept. We do like the stairs to be open, but yet sort of block the entire house from the delivery guy (KWIM).

As for the office, I do understand what you are saying about the public entrance. Originally I had a plan like that entering the office from the foyer and the master. The office will be used for me and DH. My DH is on call often and needs to use the phone and computer at times during the weee hours and I get ideas about floor plans at 2 AM, etc., that we really wanted to have it attached to the Master Room. We don't work from home or anything where someone would enter our office.

Yes, we are excited about the large outside areas. DH and the boys are outside ALL the time. One of my worries is the covered porches taking from the natural light. I will look into the different sunlight roof options there.

Lyfia- I undertsand your idea of the pocket door, but this Momma runs a tight house with her boys, LOL!!! There will be no running into the house for them via the front door, into the "piano" room to use the potty. They make enough of a mess, I need to contain them to the "back" mud area only. Thank goodness for me, I should be embarrassed to say...they often find a tree out back while they are hunting frogs and worms. I used to hate that, but it does help me keep the house cleaner.

And, YES, I need to find out how to change my user name:)

Overall, it's a very nice plan. Efficient use of space and good functionality. A good designer should be to tweak into somehting really special.

The few comments are regarding the flow and 3D feel of the space. This is where our architect did what we could never do in our pencil sketches :)

I agree with everyone and I'm juts not feeling the stairs. I would maybe do a U or L instead.

I also like to have a nice view staight through the house when you walk in. Looks like you can easily do that.

I like what bevangel did switching the mudroom and laundry room I would take it a step furthur and line up the door from the garage with the main hall of the house. There's a lot of zig zagging in the back hall of the original plan.

Same with the family room/kitchen/dining room. That island is huge! And there's a lot of walking around it: from the family room to the fridge, from the family room to the door to the screened in porch etc.

Good luck-you're off to the a very good start.

Casey, what code are you quoting?

mommyto4boys, what building code applies or where is the project located?

I can believe the 100's (1000s?) of hours spent drawing and revising and redrawing. I worked on my house plans for 3 solid years before we were finally financially ready to build. The last year was just making tiny little tweaks like moving an electrical outlet over 8 inches so it wouldn't wind up covered by the table that I wanted to put right there.

By the time I took my plan to an architect, he ended up just drawing the floor-plans exactly as I had them. Didn't even change a single door-swing. And, once the house was framed, except for all the construction crap lying around, I could have walked thru the house blindfolded because I'd walked thru it in my mind so many times. It was an amazing experience to watch it take shape and turn into the house I'd been picturing in my mind for so long.

Now, after living in my new home for 16 months, I remain totally and completely ecstatic about the floor plan and about the way my home lives. It just "fits" us. I love coming home from work and still get a huge thrill when I catch that first glimpse MY HOUSE thru the trees as I round the corner.

Your design shows the same careful thought about how the house as a whole and each room individually and each element within each room will work together to be a home for you and your family. It is going to be lovely and totally personal to you. Exactly what a custom home should be.

If you've spent 100s (1000s?) of hours on your plans and haven't thrown up your hands in disgust, you obviously enjoy do this... and you are good at it! A word of warning tho, playing with floor-plans and designing living spaces can be totally habit forming. That's why, now that my house is actually built, I still haunt this forum and spend (waste?) uncounted hours suggesting tweaks for other people's floor-plans.

I suspect you may already be a fellow addict. We'll know for sure if, once you have your final plans back from your architect and start building, you're back here on this forum making tweaks to other people's plans in between trying to ride herd on your builder and make sure he gets your home built right. LOL!

Anyway, thank YOU for letting me get my fix for the day by tweaking on your house plans!

Quick...

We are in Union County, Ohio. This will be our 2nd custom here that we GC'd ourselves. The permit process is not something I'm looking forward to doing (again).

Bevangel, How scarey that you have me figured out! I started redoing house plans years ago with stock on-line plans, white-out and a sharpie marker. I'm a total addict! I enjoyed being the GC of our previous home like you can't even imagine (well, you probably could)!

I'll BBL, my obsession is causing my laundry to pile and my kids to be hungry, LOL:)

The Ohio residential code is based on the IRC code but is slightly different from the 2009 IRC code that I used to design the stair above. The only difference is that the minimum stair tread depth is 9" instead of 10". All other dimensions are the same.

However, if you want to achieve a 45 degree turn with only two treads they will have to be 11" deep and the other treads will have to be within 3/8" of that dimension which is what I drew. Using the 9" tread minimum I suspect it would take 3 winders to turn 45 degrees and the stair would be shorter.

The code is a minimum standard. The 9" min. tread has been allowed in my state since '74. I have used a 9" tread on a basement stair never on a formal front hall stair. I would never use a tight winder on such a stair even if it was allowed in my state which is is not.

Ohio code:

"The minimum tread depth shall be 9 inches (229 mm). The tread depth shall be measured horizontally between the vertical planes of the foremost projection of adjacent treads and at a right angle to the tread's leading edge. The greatest tread depth within any flight of stairs shall not exceed the smallest by more than 3/8 inch (9.5 mm).

Winder treads shall have a minimum tread depth of 9 inches (229 mm) measured as above at a point 12 inches (305 mm) from the side where the treads are narrower. Winder treads shall have a minimum tread depth of 6 inches (152 mm) at any point. Within any flight of stairs, the greatest winder tread depth at the 12 inch (305 mm) walk line shall not exceed the smallest by more than 3/8 inch (9.5 mm)."

I'm another 'house plans addict'. Our house is now ten years old, and I'm still reading here! (OK, so I didn't discover the forum until after we'd moved in...)

I like this plan! However, I don't like *dangerous* stairs. I appreciate code on riser height and stair depths. REGARDLESS, I don't like curves, and I don't like straight runs -- especially in higher-ceilinged houses.

For a front stair that is not in the "monumental" or "grand" category but still the primary stair in the house, the following riser/tread sizes are good.

8 ft. ceiling: 7.2/10.5
9 ft. ceiling: 7.5/10
10 ft. ceiling: 7.33/10.25

The actual floor - ceiling thickness of the upper floor will have a slight effect on these numbers.

The riser size is first determined by the floor to floor height trying to keep the height between 7" and 7.5" and then the tread is determined using the formula: T=20-(4R/3). Then make sure it meets the code requirements.

As you know, I really like your plan! One observation (and I don't mean to be a pain) but is there anyway you could make the office/den accessible from the entry or living room? With five boys, chances are...someone may end up on crutches for a few weeks, due to school sports, skiing, etc. I'm not wishing you any ill luck, just know what my brother and his friends were like...especially in high school.

Also, you may have older friends/family visiting that can't negtotiate stairs very well. Unless you plan to let them stay in your room, it might be nice to have an office that can double as a guest room, when necessary. The shower (maybe a walk in/no tub) in the hall bathroom would give you all the space you need for a nice, occasional downstairs guest area.

As for the stairs, they're beautiful, but a bend back staircase might be easier and safer for the younger ones to negotiate...same holds true as they get older, too. Again, same brother and friends, as they hit teen years, taking stairs at three bounds, rather than twelve steps :)

I am not experienced as the other posters here are, (still drawing plans for our first house) but I like what I see. I love the outdoor living spaces, the kitchen/ dining area and the piano room.

I like the location of the piano room at front of the house - you have a utilized area that is easier to keep looking nice. I see a big plus to it being separated from the family room yet right by it - looks like it would be audible from the family room and yet give a degree of separation and privacy to whoever's practicing. I assume you'd want to hear it when family/ friends are gathered in the family room. Would you and the rest of the family want to hear the piano during practice times too?

The side entry with laundry/ mud room going into the kitchen makes sense. I like bevangel's suggestion about switching the laundry and mud rooms. It seems like it would be a liveable house to live in and enjoy.

I will try to find the two code sections, code book at office, I at home.
Casey