A 15x15 living room is pretty small but whether it is too small depends on what you plan to do with it. You mentioned that you are a family of three (with maybe one more someday) but I see a living room, a family room, and a game room. That's essentially THREE living areas. Plus you have a dedicated office. Then there are FIVE bedrooms. I won't be like some folks and try to tell you that you don't need all that space - perhaps you have lots of overnight company on a fairly regular basis or expect to have aging parents move in with you fairly soon. But, with only three people living in the house full time, it does make me wonder how you plan to use the front living room. The family room and game room should provide plenty of space for one or two children to play and the family to gather to watch TV, converse, play games, do chores, etc. The dedicated office means you shouldn't be needing the the living room as a computer space or home office. So I'm guessing the living room will mostly be a "show piece" that gets little or no use. And in that case, 15 x 15 is plenty big. What I see missing from the floor plan is any sort of mud-room area. I also don't really like the location of the downstairs powder room and the garage looks too small to park two full-sized vehicles. For comfort, your garage needs to be at least 4 ft longer than your longest automobile and it needs to be wide enough to give you two feet of clearance on the sides and between the two vehicles. Otherwise you're constantly brushing your clothing up against a vehicle when you try to get in/out. And, if there are any steps down into the garage, you need extra space around the steps so that you don't have to park with your bumper over the bottom step. I also don't like front-facing garages that nose out in front of the house because it tends to make the garage more prominent (noticeable) than the house. Makes it look like you built a garage with an attached house instead of a house with an attached garage. The proverbial GARAGEhouse. If your lot is small and you have no options except a front facing garage, I would at least want the architect to push the garage back so that the house is closer to the front of the lot than the garage. I'd also rethink having the master bedroom over the garage. Anyone sleeping in the bedroom over the garage is likely to hear the garage door open/close. I'd see if there wasn't some way to move the game room to the spot over the garage and put the master bedroom in a quieter location.

I think the plan is really strong. The thinness of the sections gets you light from multiple sides of a room and deep into the room. You might get some of the corridors to do double duty by lining with built-ins. Are you sure you need the stair from the master? How old would the kids be when you move in? Could the youngest be right at the top of the main stair? Good call on not letting the 5-10 minutes per week of carrying in groceries drive your entire plan by parking your cars 3 feet from your fridge. The spacing of the porch columns is in some places inconsistent, and quite wide given the spanning beams aren't that deep. A prior suggestion of board and batten on the barn sounds nice, clapboard everywhere else. Some thoughts on the front elevation. You're on a big farm and if the intent is a farmhouse that has grown over time, then the main (front/head) house might be more consistent with this approach if it were conceived as three connected boxes with gable roofs. If you look at your 3d view, this is how it looks from the back. This would require losing the twin front facing gables and some jogs (which as nice as the plan is, the inset front entry doesn't look to be essential). If you did this, it could be nice if the largest part with the main entry could be all stone, as the "original" house in the narrative. The rest as clapboard additions. As it is now, the front elevation although ok on it's own doesn't have much in common with the rest of the ensemble and is clearly the newest part. Just depends on your intent. Good luck. This post was edited by dadereni on Sun, May 12, 13 at 13:14

If stairs go down to the basement, what ceiling height are you planning for the basement? And what size (thickness will floor joists be? Also, will there be any other access to the basement to allow you to bring any necessary furniture to the basement without going down those stairs? Since stairs going down into a basement are not typically used as a focal point feature, do you really want to have the top of the stairs open up into the front foyer? It might make more sense (space usage wise) to have a door going down to the basement located in the great room. That way your staircase would only need one L-turn landing near the bottom of the stairs. A landing for an L-turn on a 3 ft wide stair case takes up a 3x3 space. Straight run staircases uses available space most efficiently. Either way, I think you're still going to have an uncomfortably steep staircase but you can probably build one within code IF your floor to floor measurement between basement and first floor is no more than 9 ft. Second issue: Although I totally understand the increased sense of privacy gained by having the twisty hall way leading to the master bedroom, have you consider how difficult that is going to make the process of moving furniture into the bedroom? Issue 3: Is that meant to be a fireplace on the right hand great room wall? If so, it looks like the allocated space is only about 24 to 30 inches. That is not enough for even a very small fire place. Do some research on "firebox" dimensions and then keep in mind that you also have to provide enough space around the firebox for fireproof insulation. You simply can't put wood framing right up next to a firebox... not even a gas fireplace. I suspect that once you widen that space to accommodate the size fireplace you want, you're not going to be happy with what that does to your master bath and master closet. Speaking of masterbath, those two vanity sinks are scrunched awfully close together. Most people want a double-sink vanity to be about 72 inches wide. Otherwise if two people are trying to get ready at the same time, they are constantly bumping elbows. Plus, with a narrower space, there is no room to set down hair curlers, make up, electric toothbrush, electric razor, etc. Finally, I think you mentioned early on that you wanted an "accessible" design. If by that you mean you want at least one bathroom to be wheelchair accessible, then you need to rethink at least one of your bathrooms. None of your bathrooms, as currently designed, is at all accessible. An accessible bathroom has to provide enough free floor space for a wheelchair to turn completely around. That typically means 5 ft diameter circle of free floor space at a minimum. You also have to make sure that there is room enough next to the toilet to park a wheel chair while the occupant transfers him/herself to the toilet and room in front of the vanity for the wheel chair to roll in under the sink allowing the occupant to wash his/her hands while seated in the wheelchair. If you're serious about making the house accessible, while you're doing research, you might want to read up on accessibility design a bit.

Marcolo and Blfenton, the box thing in the southeast corner is just that, a box constructed out of drywall to take up the corner. I hate blind corner cabinets, so I would rather "waste" the corner entirely rather than spending money on corner cabinetry I hate, especially since it lets me put more efficient drawer storage on each side of the corner. It also allows me to have tall cabinetry on the east wall and uppers and lowers on the south wall, without having an issue where they meet in the corner. I might put a door in the guest room wall to utilize the 27" x 27" space from the other side to store items we do not need to get to often, like luggage. I agree that having the wall ovens 4' away from the nearest landing spot on the island is not ideal, but it is a big improvement over the 7' walk between wall ovens and counters in our current kitchen. If we move the wall ovens to the east wall, there is still at least a 4' walk to the island. Amanda, the trash pullout and dishwasher are on opposite sides of the sink cabinet. I will also have storage for dishes, Rubbermaid containers, plastic wrap, etc. on the south wall. That way, after meals, the plates and pots all go to the counter next to the sink, leftovers can be packaged, dishes can be scraped into the trash and then go into the dishwasher. When I empty the dishwasher, the dish storage is on uppers on that wall. It sounds like cooktops on islands are not popular. I agree it is not ideal, but it was the only way to get the entire wall of tall cabinets on the east side. My DH loves the look of that wall, and that wall will be highly visible from our kitchen and dining room. I would prefer a real hood to a downdraft vent, but, then again, I have lived without a proper hood for 10 years. Mahlgold, I am having trouble balancing the look we want with function. We plan to do prep on the island and the counter to the left of the sink. Those 2 areas give us more counter space than we have had in any prior kitchen. We do not own a coffee maker or toaster oven. Our only countertop appliances are a KA mixer, small toaster and blender. The mixer and blender will go under the uppers to the left of the sink (mixer in far left corner on an angle). The toaster could also go on that counter, or maybe behind the lift door on the left side of the east wall along with bread storage. We only do breakfast and lunch at home 1 or 2 days per week. I am not sure how many or how deep of drawers to put in the tall cabinets. I drew each side with 5, but it could be 3 or 4. This kitchen has so many more lower cabinets than we have ever had before, that I am not sure what to put in all of them. On the right side tall cabinet, I thought I would want a couple of shallow drawers at the top to store extra trays for the Advantium, pot holders (those will be kept in 3 different locations near all the hot appliances) and wine tools like the opener, Vacu-vin, etc. Maybe a drawer for DH's vast tea bag and leaf collection and related tools. We could put all the empty baby bottles and plastic plates for the kids in a drawer in that tower or on the south wall. On the left side tall cabinet, I could use the drawers to store pyrex, roasting pans, pie tins and other baking dishes that might not fit in the drawers below the wall oven. My stove top pots and pans and utensils will go in drawers below or next to the cooktop on the island, as I have several feet of drawers on the south side of the island. The wall ovens were put on the north wall (where they are in the current kitchen) because they are less attractive to look at. Also, if we get the side opening Gagg ovens, they would be difficult to place in the east wall because they need at least 8" between the hinge side of the oven and an adjacent wall, so we could not put them at the very end of a cabinet run. It is also tricky because we are trying to find space for 3 wall ovens: standard 30" convection oven, speedoven/microwave, and steam oven. They are too tall to stack all together in one column and still have at useful heights. I will use the speedoven/microwave more than once a day, so I would be miserable having that oven below countertop height. I also hope to use the combi-steam oven regularly. I feel like we should have 1 full size oven, but that one will get the least use (I very rarely bake or cook large meals), so I could buy the Thermador wall oven with the standard door and put it under the counter somewhere and stack the other 2 together on a wall. The problem with swapping all the cooling appliances to the north wall and the pantry to the east wall as was suggested is that the pantry is only 16-18" deep and the appliances are 24" deep, which would prevent us from having a 24" deep coat closet on the hall side of that space. (We really need a coat closet because the house does not have one now.) I will think about whether we can steal coat space from another room, like the guest room. I am debating the idea of a prep sink on the island. DH looked at me like I was crazy when I suggested a second sink 5' away from the main sink. We do not use the sink a lot for prep. We rinse the veggies, but then put them on a cutting board and move it to where we want to work. We use a large bowl to collect veggie or meat waste when we peel, chop and trim. Sadly, we do not have any family in this state, so no one brings us food to prepare. It is just DH and I in the kitchen now, although we hope our two daughters will like to cook as they get older.