Sorry, forgot to mention that the wings are flip-flopped in the elevation renderings. The floor plan is the correct layout (garage on the left, bedrooms on the right). I didn't have the stamina to re-do my Sketchup elevation rendering after we made the switch!

If you are building on a hill, you might consider finishing the basement as interior space. It is one of the lowest cost ways of adding square footage. We did that in our house with the down hill side facing south for passive solar gain. The south side also faces the view of the pond and the woods beyond. With all the daylight and the 9' ceilings in the lower level, the rooms don't feel basement like at all.

Front

Rear

Mountmerkel,
I love the passion you clearly have for this house. I'm no expert, but these are my thoughts. As far as cost cutting, adding a second floor to a wing would reduce that wing's cost. You could do it like in your photo, and you wouldn't need that steep of a roof slope.

What if everything was put under one roof? The many corners and the wings are much more expensive than just having it under one roof.

In general, however, I think you to rework a number of things about this plan:
-Your master closet will seem very cramped with only 2' of walking space (clothes take up 2')
-Your stairs pretty clearly are not long enough (they look like 8', they need to be more like 12 or 13, depending on ceiling height), but if you make the stairs longer, it will cut into your dining room
-The hallway by the kid's room's wing is very long and wastes a lot of space
-The kids rooms have no closets--you'll have to put closets on the wall between the hallway and room, but then all the kids rooms will share walls and so noise will travel between them a great deal. Plus, although you've got a very spacious house, the kid's rooms will be very narrow.
-Your breakfast room is a very long ways from your kitchen. Breakfast nooks are supposed to be convenient spots to sip coffee and have toast--you won't want to walk 15 feet to do that. Plus, the area between the two is a strange waste of space.
-9x7 is NOT enough for a nursery. Our nursery is 9x11, and it feels pretty cramped. The walls are pretty much filled with a bookshelf, crib, rocker, toy box, and changing table.
-The powder room is very narrow

I think you can generally have the house you want, but you need to rework it significantly. Some specific suggestions:
-Reorient the kid's rooms to take up the hallway and 3/4 bath, and put a jack and jill bathroom between the kids rooms for two of the rooms.
-Maybe put the kids rooms above the garage/master bedroom, take out the little connector between the main house and the garage wing, and push that section up against the main house (like in the picture above).
-You also have A TON of windows. It looks like you could easily remove a third, and that might save you tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the quality you are using.
-I think you will need to move around the main section of the house a bit when you put proper dimensions on the stairs, but even if you had no stairs, I'm not convinced the current plan works terribly well. Does the house you love have the front door open up right into the dining room table? The layout is almost symmetrical, but not quite, which would bug me.

Ah I see, your view is to the front but the living spaces are to the back. I'd suggest thinking outside the box and trying on the idea of a main floor above and a ground floor with bedrooms below. This will help maximize the view and gain lots of energy efficiency by berming the lower level. (Our lower level maintains a temp of 63 all winter without heat and doesn't get above 78 in the summer without a/c).

I'm posting a link to Robt E Lee's home where they did that with a grand entrance. Not that this is your style, but the concept might work for your site. I'd also try to reverse the layout so the front rooms with the view are the primary living spaces.

Here is a link that might be useful: Robt E Lee's home

Wow, thank you for the awesome suggestions CamG and Annie! As you can probably tell, this is a DIY effort (based on an actual house, but nonetheless...), and I really appreciate the ideas! Moving some bedrooms to the basement is definitely something to think about since we probably will have to do a partial walk-out. CamG -- you've given me a lot to think about. The house we love does not have the front door opening right into the dining area and that's something I suspect will bother me. I'm going to try to do some tweaking based on both your responses, and hopefully come up with something better/more affordable. Thanks SO much for your help!

Our downstairs space has 9' ceilings and some rooms have trays that are even higher. Then we also put a lot more than normal glass on the outside, not only to capture the passive solar gain, but to ensure the lower level does not feel like a basement. Then we also built a regular staircase to get there....not the narrow closed door through the back of the kitchen kind of basement stairs. When you look down the stairs, you see daylight from below and when you look up the stairs, you see daylight from above. It's very inviting. The lower level is really integral to the house.

Lower level guest room w tray ceiling

Lower level exercise room w tray ceiling

Staircase to the lower level is in the foyer

mountmerkel,
I was somewhat in the same boat as you, trying to create a new floorplan from scratch based on what my wife and I wanted. I spent hundreds of hours making a ranch plan, brought it here, and after awhile it became clear that plan wasn't going to cut it. Made a 2 story, brought it here, became clear that plan was seriously lacking. Redesigned that plan significantly, and we were getting closer... then I thought we were really close, brought that plan here AGAIN, and again, received feedback that led to some more major changes. And voila, we have our plan, which is currently being drafted and construction will begin in Spring. So while the from-scratch approach works, it takes a long time and a lot of eyes to make it work! :)

Was thinking about your plan. Ask yourselves whether you want both a breakfast area AND a formal dining area. With so many stools at the island, it seems to me that is where many informal, quick meals will be (the typical coffee and toast). If you were to ditch both dining areas, and just have a nice, big table to have all of your meals at, it makes your main plan much more flexible. Particularly in such an open floorplan, where the formal dining area is not separated from the kitchen, it seems redundant to have both. Then you could have your dining area in the front, to the left of the door, the kitchen where it is, and have the living room take up the area to the right. That would shorten your main area, saving lots of space, and would allow a great symmetry to the room. The stairs could go in the middle. At any rate, I think you need to get that main area working well, then you can definitely get the wings working, but the flow between the kitchen/dining/living/entry are the trickiest parts. You may find, as we did on our first couple of plans, that your desired shape simply does not allow a good enough flow. But I think there are some options here!

Congratulations on the little one about to arrive! I'm a complete novice when it comes to house plans, but I do know a bit about caring for little kids. Keeping the family you're planning in mind, I see a few things about you layout that you may not have thought of. As CamG mentioned, your nursery is very small and the kids' rooms need closets for their little wardrobes and the amazing amount of stuff kids seem to accumulate.

I'm also wondering about the wisdom of placing of kids' bedrooms so far from the master. Since you are just starting your family, you may not realize that some kids need their parents at night for years and years. Before their bladders mature they wet the bed and need their sheets changed, sometimes they try to get to the bathroom and don't quite make it, leaving a bit of a mess to clean up. They have nightmares. They get lonely or feel insecure, etc. If the next baby comes along in a couple of years, and you need to put your then two year old in one of the bedrooms, it's a long walk for you, and a long and scary walk in a quiet, dark house for the child, when that child needs you. And if you eventually have three kids, spaced every two years or so for example, and they routinely need you in the night until they're about 6, that equals a decade of making that long walk in the middle of the night. I think that would get old fast.

Where do you anticipate their play area to be? In the loft? In the basement? Really little kids usually want to play close to where their parents are and you'll need to keep an eye on them anyway, so make sure there is enough space in that area for you to comfortably hang out too. I wish I'd had a dedicated play area near the kitchen.

A 2 story configuration is usually more efficient but it requires a stair.

The most efficient configuration would be a 2 story main structure since the loft as shown would not be of much use (if it is even a legally habitable space). The next most efficient configuration would be a 1 1/2 story main structure.

Getting rid of long corridor would save quite a bit. The kitchen island is too wide for practical use.

Okay, I'm going to give the main house a shot first because I'm still unsure what to do about the bedroom wing.

Cam -- I think you may be right about the redundancy of all the dining areas. Is the attached plan similar to what you were suggesting? I eliminated the middle dining area and scrunched the whole thing up a bit, eliminating about 200 sqft. It's funny that you would suggest putting the stairs where the dining area is, because that's exactly where they are in the house this plan is modeled after. We weren't sure about putting them there because it cuts off the openess from the kitchen to the living room.

What are people's thoughts on spiral staircases? I know they can be expensive, but seem like they would save SO much space.

I'm not crazy about the way the foyer juts into the living space, but I'm not sure what can be done about it. I know most house plans have additional rooms along the same wall as the foyer, but one thing we really like about this house is that the living room and kitchen/dining area have windows on both sides of the room, allowing sunlight all day.

Annie -- your basement is STUNNING! (as well as the rest of your house). Our north/south slope is very gradual and will probably be leveled -- the hill drops off more steeply on the east end, so if we do have a walk-out it will probably only be on the east corner of the house. However, it is worth thinking about putting a bedroom in that spot.

RedHouse -- very good point about the kids' rooms, and one that has been mentioned by a few other moms as well :) This is one of the reasons I was trying to brainstorm ways to plop the kids' rooms over the master wing. My husband and I may end up living in one of the bedrooms in the east wing for a few years, then moving into the master once the kids are older. We were anticipating that the loft would be the play area once they are a little older. Thanks for the mommy perspective, it's very useful!

Is there a reason you haven't stacked your stairs? It seems a huge space waster to have them separate and next to each other.

It seems like it would not be difficult to have your kids bedrooms above yours/kitchen. You will just have to decide if you want a split floorplan for kid care.

And, I agree that your nursery room is too small to function as a nursery.

What about using a stacked U-shape stair about where the back door is? That would leave an open flow in the main part of the house. You could put the back door somewhere else. And yes, stack your stairs--an open u-shape stair would look really nice.

If you are going to dine where your dining room is placed on the new plan, that is still too far from the kitchen. Why not put the table in that space between the dining room and kitchen? Then you could get rid of the dining bumpout, save lots of a square footage and cost.

I question the idea of living in a kids room. 10 or 11' is REALLY narrow for a master. And if you don't, you'll have to climb a set of stairs every time you put a kid to bed. If you have 4 kids, that's a lot of years of stair climbing.

What if you made the house into two mostly equal wings? Two wings that look about the same size as your current main house? If you kept them to a nice, simple shape with few bumpouts, that would help minimize costs. I'm envisioning essentially an L shape. Then you could ditch the nursery and just use a child's bedroom. I just really question whether master suites on different floors or far from kids rooms is smart for someone hoping to have 3-4 kids. (Or you could be like us, and give up on putting the kid in the crib and have him co-sleep, in which case the kid's room is superfluous!)
I guess what I'm saying is that your house shape could become so much more efficient, I question whether you need to add a second story if you don't want to climb stairs.

As I've said, I still think your house is really quite big, such that you don't need to move to a spiral to save space. You've already got some real layout problems, I don't see pushing a spiral staircase into your plan fixing much. Plus, it would be awful to carry furniture up and down...

Oh and forgot to mention, best of luck on the delivery, when it happens! BTW, my wife loved the whirlpool before she could get her epidural, in case your hospital has one available. :)

Thanks for the stacked stair suggestion, and good point about carrying furniture up a spiral staircase! You all have given me a lot to consider. Right now I'm leaning toward kids' rooms above the master wing -- maybe a little stair climbing will help me keep the baby weight off! I tried that configuration as well as some of your other suggestions (shrinking the island and moving the kitchen closer to the dining space) and was able to cut around 600 sqft, so hopefully that will make this house more feasible! Although our builder might kill us for changing the plan...

Thanks again everyone for all your helpful advice!

This plan is inherently expensive due to the large perimeter, which requires: 1) extensive foundations and floor framing; 2) extensive exterior wall framing, sheathing, waterproofing and siding: 3) extensive roof framing and covering. The single most effective cost reduction strategy is to reduce the house perimeter!

If you are wedded to the plan and can't consolidate it, then other "interior" cost savings will be minor by comparison. Just a thought--good luck!

Very good point about the large perimeter -- I agree that that is where we need to focus our attention. Here is my stab at a floorplan that reduces the perimeter by stacking the two wings onto one. I also tried to shrink the footprint of the main house by moving the kitchen closer to the breakfast area, reducing the size of the breakfast area (husband really wants a separate dining area anyway). I also tried to reconfigure the foyer so it won't dump people right into the dining room, and decided to go with the spiral staircase after all (figured we could do built-in window seats in the loft rather than couches). Do we think this is an improvement?

I also included a mock-up of the exterior, because I'm still a little worried that it looks wonky with the one wing taller than the other. I was really hoping to do all this without an architect, but I may have to involve one so that our house doesn't end up looking like a cobbled-together mess! I guess this is why people don't typically draw their own houses...

Anyway, thanks again for sharing your wisdom and advice, and for the kind words about the baby! Could be any day now... yikes!

I'm sorry, but I think you would be well-served either to consult an architect or find a stock floor plan somewhat similar to this that you can base this on. There are a number of issues with the wing, but I think those could generally be fixed. And I don't think the outside is bad. However, the base of your house, the main section, still has too many problems to proceed with anything else:
-You have no room for a foyer from the front door, and the dining room table is still almost-but-not-quite centered on the main room. If you centered it, it would be oddly far from the kitchen and oddly close to the living room. I don't think you would want to center it anyway.
-The really small breakfast room looks to be about 20 feet from the sink, with a lot of wasted space between
-The spiral staircase would look really strange right there, IMO, again, almost centered on the room but really not quite.

Going forward:
-Try to draw up a very accurate version of the house you like and post it so the experts here (not me) can see the effect you're going for
-Look online for some stock house plan that somewhat matches what you're going for, particularly with the huge open main area
-Consider seriously increasing the depth of the main section, and then play with rearranging things. Consider adding *some* walls to create a separate foyer, a coat closet, etc. If you do this, maybe redo your main plan at floorplanner.com--it's pretty user friendly and you can easily put in dimensions, wall thickness, etc. There are too few dimensions in this plan to understand it very well, and I suspect a number of your estimates are off tremendously (your spiral staircase, for example). Then you can put in real furniture and the like.

Don't be disheartened, as I mentioned, I had several different plans with lots of time invested in them before I figured out the one I now love. These drafts help you figure out what you want in a house. And when you get a plan that's closer to working, you will get lots of fantastic suggestions on specific things. Don't worry, this gets a lot more fun and rewarding the closer you get. You've obviously got the budget for a really neat house, you've just got to figure out what that house is! (And keep us updated on the baby!)

(Forgot to say, if you find a stock plan that is close, you can incorporate its layout to some extent.)