Thanks for all of the reviews. I will make sure to change the swing of the bathroom doors and will most likely make the pantry door a single outward swinging door. As for the family room, it's 18 x 18'2 including fireplace and built-ins. I'd like it a little bigger but we're tweaking an original plan and trying to only make minor changes to keep the costs down. I think since it's an open plan, I'm ok with the size. I've measured the size against our current family room and I've seen pictures of the family room in a built house and it seems large enough. lyfia, I hear what you're saying about the location of the laundry room but it doesn't really bother me. As for the front porch, I think it's 7' but that is the one last thing I have to confirm. I agree that 7' should be the minimum. Yes, we'll change the french doors to sliders. That works much better. gobruno, I hear what you're saying about the bedroom with the small dormer as the only source of natural light. Unfortunately, in order to keep the elevation the same, I don't think there's much we can do. I'm going to look at pictures of larger dormers to see if we want to make them larger. There are skylights in the playroom but I think we're going to add a large dormer instead. Thank you all for the reviews!

For some reason I'm not getting replies sent to my email. Lots of great responses! I'm definitely planing cased opening and not paneled jambs. When we get slab poured and everything marked out I will mock up the furniture placement to decide on the casing to the right. All permits are in so hopefully this will be in the next month. Nini, I think your living room might be one I was admiring while we were planning. ;-) everyone seems to be doing fireplaces on interior walls so I've been nervous since we moved ours to the exterior wall. Hope it looks half as nice as third!!

Benjesbride, what you say regarding dining/island makes sense, but unfortunately I have ~11'x16' space to fit in the kitchen. If I decide to rotate the kitchen the way you say it, then my kitchen island will be quite small. I too started out thinking of a longer island and thus came up with option 2, and am not able to find pictures to tell me if that would look ok or not. Secondly, currently the plan is that the Great Room will be mainly conversation area. TV will be in a separate room, so no need to consider TV-watchability. Mama Rachel, your idea of spice kitchen is great! That's the kitchen I started out "wanting". I had to abandon it halfway, however, because of space constraints. My whole house is ~2200 sqft, therefore allocating disproportionately large amount of space to the kitchen would have meant I gave up on some other priorities. Mama Rachel : regarding powder: we decided to ditch the powder because of the availability of full bath on that floor, which otherwise will be guest bath. We also wanted as much storage as possible, therefore decided on having a storage rather than powder. Anyway, here's the original plan. Note that we added ~5ft towards the courtyard and some square footage along top wall (which is facing backyard). I am working on sizing of the entry right now, because I think it's a bit too big for the house, but that space will NOT become available to the kitchen again due to the building rules.

That really leaves you with the current arrangement, replacing the grey chair by the front window with kid stuff and leaving the floating living space opposite the TV. I'd really look into rerouting cable so the TV can be where the large art piece is. It's not usually very expensive and will be necessary in order to keep your walkway from running right in front of the tv.