When I look at the plan, I am struck by how there is no where to "go" once you walk in. Your sight line falls onto the coat closet. It isn't clear which way you should walk, if you were a guest. To me, it is important to have some sort of long view upon entering a house. Are you working with an architect, or is this a stock plan? I am not good with re-doing plans, but to me, the ideal thing would be to move the stairwell, somehow, to the other side of the house. That is the more private side with the master on that side and all. Then your kitchen and dining could be opened up, or you could have a wall so you wouldn't see your kitchen first, but could see the dining? Something like that? Personally, I would flip flop the kitchen/dining and the family room to further separate the kitchen from the entry (and I'd also flip the dining and kitchen so the kitchen is in the back and the dining in the front, but that is just me.) I am not sure this helps, but these are my *very* ameteur thoughts upon seeing the plan.

I don't know how to fix it but I agree you need a sight line through your house when you enter, preferably. If you don't have this, you need a good focal wall for some great art, a narrow table, a couple of great lamps, etc. - not a coat closet. That is the biggest issue I have with the plan, not the hallway which I think would really not be an issue when you were there (short and you could widen it a bit by stealing room from the laundry). The staring into a coat closet is an issue for me though . . .

You can put the basement door at the bottom of the stairs to eliminate the walls under the main stair and have the stair co fabricate a gate to match the balustrade if you are concerned about little ones. Note the door at the bottom of the stairs will need to be at least a few feet in front and not right at the bottom.

Not that it would give you more space but I'd also flip the laundry room door so it opens against the closet wall and not the shelving.

Ian

Is the basement going to be fininshed? Is the door to the basement a must? If you can open up the staircases- using more railing and less wall that might open up the space. you can also turn the stair agin so you are going down form the entry foyer. Am I understanding corrently, there will not be a coat closet? So that door won't be there?

For the stais something like this:

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[traditional staircase design[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/traditional-staircase-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_745~s_2107) by architect Richard Taylor Architects

I am hoping that you have a walk out basement because you are never getting anything down those basement steps with as tight as it is. Is there anyway you can flip the hallway and the stairs. You will also to move the bedroom to the front of the house so the bathroom is more accessible to the rest of the house. I am not loving this plan at all.

I'd be more concerned with squeezing between the shower and sink in Bath 1... it looks like you have about 2 feet there.

Kauorika, I am afraid I too am "not lovin it."

In addition to the tight hallway you originally asked about, and the lack of enough aisleway space between the shower and sink in Bath 1 (that betaiota mentioned), I see the following issues:

1) The extraoridinarily thick exterior walls are eating up a fairly high percentage of your potential interior space. Are you really planning for the exterior walls to be 18 inches thick? And if so, why are they so thick? Are you building a straw bale house?

2) While your hallways aren't that long, because your house is so small, the hallways, foyer, and staircase take up way too much of your available floorspace.

3) I think you're going to find it hard to fit a full-sized bed and a dresser into the bedroom and still have room to easily move about to reach the closet. I only see two possible walls for the head of the bed to go against. Either it will have to be placed under the (#12) windows - assuming they are high enough - or it'll have to be placed against the wall directly across from those windows. In the first case, getting around the bed to reach the closet is going to require squeezing between the foot of the bed and that bumped in wall that you have because of the little hallway niche you created to provide access to the bathroom. In the second, it's gonna be a long walk around the bed every time you need to get to the closet. And, because the bathroom really needs to be made wider (to give you room to slip past the shower), the bedroom will have to be made smaller making this problem even worse.

4) I suspect you visualize a pretty little seating area in the "window bumpout" in the bedoom. A couple of comfy chairs, maybe a little round table? At 7.5 feet, the bumpout is just barely wide enough for that purpose but, depending on the direction that house faces, the windows on three sides could effectively create a little greenhouse and make the window bumpout area uncomfortably warm all the time. And, if you need to reduce the width of the bedroom to make the bath wider, your bed may crown any furniture you attempt to put in the window bump-out.

5) The dining room is just too small to accomodate anything more than maybe a tiny little four-seat round table. Remember, you need space all the way around your dining table for diners to get in and out of their chairs. And, because the only path from front entry to great room goes right thru the dining room, if the dining room is not wide enough, you'll constantly be having to duck around dining room chairs to get to the great room.

6) The pony wall/bar between kitchen and great room is a problem. The plans show that it is supposed to be 42" inches high as measured from the kitchen floor. Then the great room floor is dropped down from the kitchen floor level. If I'm reading the plans correctly, there are TWO steps down, with a 6" drop for each step. That means the great room floor is 12" lower than the kitchen floor. So, from the great room side, that pony wall is going to be 54" high! Now I'm fairly tall but a 54" high bar would be uncomfortably high even for me. And, it would be at chin height for my best friend. No way that is gonna work.

7) I see no possible way to arrange furniture in the "great room." You have a window seat on one wall. YOu have a kitchen bar and the step down entry on a second wall. YOu have the fireplace and built-in bookcases on the third wall. And you have a wall of windows and an inswinging patio door on the last wall. You have NO reasonably blank walls against which you can place a sofa or a couple of easy chairs. That means everything is going to have to "float" which would be fine EXCEPT that floating furniture arrangements take more space than arrangements where the furniture is pushed up against the walls. Here, your whole room (except for the window seat niche) is only about 12X15. By the time you leave space in front of the window seat niche for an aisleway from kitchen to that patio door, and leave space for barstools at the bar and aisleway space to reach them, and leave space in front of your bookcases so you can get to books shelved there - your available room for arranging furniture has shrunk to something like 9 ft x 12 ft. Possibly even smaller Awfully hard to fit a sofa and a couple of easy chairs into theat small a space. If you want an end table or two, or a coffee table, or an ottoman, you're totally sunk.

Do yourself a BIG favor. Make some scaled cutouts to represent every piece of furniture you THINK you want to have in each of your rooms and see if you can make everything fit. And, remember that you need room to walk around and REACH each piece of furniture so be sure to build in aisleway spaces.

sorry to be so negative but even without seeing the upstairs or the basement, my inclination would be to scrap this plan and start over fress. There are just too many issues on this one floor that cannot be addressed with via small tweaks (i.e., tweaks that don't require moving the staircase or any exteior walls.)

Two of the doors are closets, the laundry room door swings the other way and the basement door is open only as someone is going through it. I think it will not be as much a problem as you imagine.

bevangle gave great feedback as always. Please do follow this advice: "Make some scaled cutouts to represent every piece of furniture you THINK you want to have in each of your rooms and see if you can make everything fit. And, remember that you need room to walk around and REACH each piece of furniture so be sure to build in aisleway spaces."

I did this when I thought I wanted angled corners in our new great room. Even tho the room is ~ 18x20 I was surprised at how difficult it would be to arrange furniture. (I nixed the angled corners after doing the cut-out test. It was an eye-opener.)