It would help if we could see the plan.

Do you have a study already...maybe a his/hers
A theater
Another master suite

Can't wait to see the plans! We're in the planning stage right now for a Spring build. We live in a remote town in Alaska.

Good luck in whatever you do :)

Dr N.

Forgot to mention that we, too, are finally building the home of our dreams...after almost 34 years of marriage! Crazy - I raised 4 kids & a husband with 3 feet of usable kitchen counter space LOL Good thing my kitchen table was right behind me.

We've plotted & planned, researched. We have so many design constraints because of where we live. We're the snow capital of Alaska, the less angles in the roof, the better...so that sometimes just leaves a boring box shape. We are doing a sort of Chalet style.

We finally hired an architect out of Atlanta, GA...we found him during research on using containerships for a house. Yes, they actually make houses out of those! :)

Good luck!

Melaska:

Thank you for being so willing to help! So far we only have the plans from the internet but hopefully it'll make some sense once you see them...

http://www.dreamhomesource.com/neoclassical_house-plans_DHSW68989.hwx

My husband wants the master suite upstairs and plans to use the current area as an extension of the porch and a sun room. We've completely changed the layout of the upstairs to include the master suite and the bedrooms for our four little ones.

We are both Doctors in the Raleigh, NC area and we've been together since college. My husband wanted to save as much as we could so I've raised out 4 and 2 year old in a 2 bedroom apartment. I have twins on the way and can't fathom living here anymore!

I grew up in northern Ohio so I completely understand the dilemma with the roof! I would absolutely love to see your floor plans if that's an option!

Thank you again for all of your help!

Dr. N

Oh my word!!! Your house will be luxurious! Our plans look like a shed next to yours LOL. I can't wait to follow your build...I live vicariously through all the beautiful GW homes :)

Ours are still in the planning stage & I don't know if our architect would want us to post them...I'll have to ask. This will be our retirement home with enough room for having guests. We're building out of pocket & small as possible, we have a 20 mill rate so the taxes are high. They have to rake in as much 'oil money'. (We live in Valdez where the trans-Alaska pipeline ends...hubby is a lead op on 1 of 4 12-hour shifts.)

Our basement tax assessment will be roughly a third of upstairs so even though the upper part is considered 'small'...our exercise room is 32 x 16. We have a lot of equipment & I wanted plenty of room for floor exercises with friends. I dare not take walks out here in bear country - we have bears all around us. Going to the gym means driving 14 miles & no fun in our yards & yards of snow, ice, & cold!

I'll look at your plans closer later today but you will get LOTS of expert advice from the GWers.

I can't imagine having a busy practice, 2 kids AND pregnant with twins - my hat is off to you. I guess we all have our 'war' stories, it's just fun to swap :) Nice to meet you! :)

Dr. N,

You said your hubby wants the master upstairs. That was one of the criteria for our house, the master BR had to be on the main living floor. You don't start feeling the aches & pains until later in life...we never thought of easy access until they started :)

Will this be your forever home? I know you'd probably want to be on the same floor as your kids but once they are older, it's not as necessary (or desired!) :)

Maybe put another master BR on the main floor just for your 'golden' years or for extended family/guest BR? Just something to think about.

Melaska:

I completely understand not being able to post floor plans. Since these have yet to be altered by our architect and they're public knowledge I figured no biggie. As well as building out of pocket. Ryan and I are in the same boat as you and your husband in that regard. Ryan refuses to have a mortgage so the past few years have been nothing but save, save, and save some more.

I dream of one day (when my children are gone on their own) of traveling by Train throughout Alaska. I'm too nervous to walk about in the open especially now that you've reinforced my fear of the bears!

As I hope this is our home forever with all the stress it's already causing I agree with you in that our master should be on the ground floor. I really like the first floor as it is but Ryan wants to be upstairs. I have no idea why.

Thanks so much for all of the help! It's so nice to meet someone that's going through this around the same time. If you let the build get the best of you (and by that I mean the worst :D) feel free to turn to me anytime!

Dr. N

Good night that is a big house! You won't know what hit you when you move from a two bedroom apartment :).

I was going to second all the folks talking about the benefits of having the master bedroom downstairs. Our oldest is 10 and our youngest is 5. Our master is downstairs which was a requirement for us. Although we had a few years of up and down the stairs, now they are generally down for the night when they go to bed and if not they just trek down to see us :).

Truly, though, it is very nice having the run of the downstairs when the kiddos are in bed.

However, with the size of your house (we are building bigger than we wanted and our entire house (minus the basement) is the size of your downstairs!), I might rethink wanting to be that far away from the children as well. . . Certainly a main floor guest suite that could be used as a master down the road would be a welcome addition to the plan.

Hi Dr. N.

Is there a way you can have both or use the 21 x 22 space as something else now but with the option of making it into your master suite when needed/desired?

I love the circular staircase! I hope you hire help to clean :)

That is so great that you saved for your build.

Yes, everyone needs to come to Alaska once in their lives. I'll post a pic of our Southern view where all the windows will be in our 22 ft ceiling. It will have a loft so it will break up the expanse. In order to get up high enough with our septic...we have to mark our water table at ground level so that has us doing lots of grading. The pitch is such that it has to cover 2.5 stories so it's high.

Here's the winter view

Summer view

North view...you can hardly see it but there's a waterfall coming down from the right to the left...I love the sound!

This is in town across the bay (where hubby works)

I'll link a site below about our town.

You just have to be careful about the bears. We've got a bear going around out here only because some people are careless with their garbage - it makes for a dangerous bear since they become accustomed to humans as a food source. We're making our deck as bear proof as possible...every entrance/exit will be with a strong door. That means no steps to the deck without a door. Keep the outdoor BBQ clean, garbage in cold storage until garbage day, no dog food outside...stuff like that.

Here is a link that might be useful: All about Valdez, AK

Dr. N: Congrats on your upcoming twins and your plans for a new home! We are "out of pocket" luxury home builders too, about 50% through construction. My comments are a little about $ and alot about value.

The plan you have chosen is a beauty, and it is going to require major $ to detail it in accordance with its design. My rough guess it that it would take nearly $3 million + land acquisition and prep costs. Cost is a relative thing (doesn't matter how much it costs so long as you can afford it), but value is another. Value relates to the value of your home relative to other homes of similar location and size. The value of a home like the plan you have presented, in a luxury home neighborhood, would be greatly diminished by the lack of a ground floor master bedroom - or at least a same floor plan where the master was far removed from the secondary bedrooms. I doubt that a "all bedrooms close together on one floor" lux house would sell in our area. Also, the master should set to the back of the home, if possible. So, using the existing billiards area as a holding space for a ground floor master doesn't seem to be a great idea - not to mention that the billiard's room is 2 story.

If you are falling in love with the elevations and room sizes, get to an architect and try to tighten up the plan so you can keep the upstairs master for now, and you will have a downstairs master for later when those 4 kids start getting really LOUD with their sleep overs and music! It just wouldn't be right to have the only privacy in the house reserved for the over the garage maid's room.

I look forward to seeing your final plans!

I agree- Beautiful house ! That will be so much fun to plan & build!
I think a downstairs Master Suite is a must also. Not only for you later as kids get bigger & louder, but maybe for an in-law-suite/guest room for grandparents who don't want to be near the crying babies in the middle of the night or can't go up & down the stairs when they come to visit.
Congratulations! That will be a beautiful home for many years. Have Fun!

Looks like a great starting point to show an architect. It is truly amazing to me how architects can problem solve based on your specific requirements. I certainly would not invest the time and money to build a house on this scale without an architect at the helm.

My first thought was that the square footage on the main floor can be consolidated a bit (which will also happen on the second floor) by reworking the master/master bath/master closet area into the area that is designated for the billiard room, and perhaps making the house not quite so wide. I saw a floorplan for a house being built in Atlanta that had a feel very much like this one (the exterior looked different, though), and they handled the central stairs differently (did not take up so much space), and had the master closet in the area facing the front, the kitchen more in the area where the breakfast room/family room is in this plan, and the family room more where the 'loggia' is located in this plan.

Hi there DRS. N, late in the game here but I must chime in that I think my house 11,000sq is too big!! I moved from a 4200 to this monster. I am a bit overwhelmed, and more so is my husband. He wants to almost move back, infact he doesn't want to sell it for that possiblility! It will be a big adjustment for you all. We have been in here one month and I wish it were one third smaller.... It is such a lONG walk to the master suite to the kitchen, esp when you forget something and have to go back up! I do have incredible storage everywhere, in fact I can't even fill all the drawers in ALL the rooms. I love my home but find it almost uncozy? I have to purchase more furniture and look forward to it but it will take time, hence the uncozy feeling for a while.
Will you have the energy for shopping, etc with the twins and actually 4 kids under 5? I mean it was enough for me with 3 under 10!
I don't think my opinion will do much for you in the excitement of the iminent build, but I would seriously rethink the size of your home! The taxes are more, the heating costs are more,etc. (We used closed cell foam so we are so curious as to the first months AC bill!)
Gorgeous home though, a real head turner too!

I cannot even beging to express to all of you how helpful your replies have been to our family. Thank you all so much for the wonderful information, tips, and opinions; as well as all of the beautiful photos!

Some of the things all of you have mentioned I never would have thought of; and other things my husband and I go back and forth time and time again on just trying to make up our minds!

We are working with an architect so I will have to check to see if I may post our final prints (if we ever get to that point - some days I feel like we are years away still) and if not I will surly post any decisions, pictures, and progress updates that we have in hopes of even more great ideas!

Thank you all again for being so helpful and I wish you all a safe and happy Labor Day weekend.

Dr. N

With 4 kids have you considered having a main floor play room/craft/homework area?

I know with just 1 I wish we had built with that in mind as it would have been nice to be able to close it off when needed, instead our breakfast area is the play room - we don't use it for a breakfast area anyways, we use our dining. If I could do my ideal play room I'd like it so is near our central area living/kitchen and with wide double doors so they could be open and I'd have a good view of it, but able to close off when need be.

Good luck on your home!!!

The elevation on your house is very pretty. Do you want 9000 square feet+? It seems there are alot of rooms you don't know what to do with. You also don't seem to like the floor plan very much. You are completely overhauling it. You already have an architect, so start from scratch. We went from 1800 square feet to 4000 and although I love the extra space it's much harder to keep track of DS.

I complete agree with everyone else, you sill want at least one bedroom on the main level. I would build double master, one on the main level and one on the 2nd. You can use the one on the main level as a guest suite.

On the main level, you have a family room, living room, library and billards room, but you're mudroom is quite small for a family of 6. I also agreee a playroom on the first floor would be nice.

I'd want the laundry on the 2nd level to be bigger.

I am going to chime in here and agree with everyone else ... I would want a downstairs master as well ... one up and one down sounds ideal. I see that the plans include an elevator which will be great especially if you have 4 levels (including the basement and the 3rd floor). Will the basement be a walkout basement ? I would like to see the changes you have made so far before I make any more comments ... likely some of the things I may see have already been changed based on your comments above. I would not want to wait for "finals" to be able to post them and get others opinions. A whole bunch of fresh eyes will see things you have not even thought of.

I also agree with some of the above posters ... do you want your house to be that big ? Or is it the exterior look of the home you have fallen in love with but not the floorplan so much ? You could have the same look & feel of your home in much less square footage. One thing we did was buy a home design software. Then we could play around with different layouts as much as we wanted.

To design our house, I used older versions of a software program called Broderbund 3D Home Architect Deluxe (v.2, 3, and 4) and a more recent professional version of this software, Chief Architect (v.10), both by ART (Advanced Relational Technology). Honestly, I almost always use 3DHA rather than Chief because Chief is so complex and 3DHA is simpler to use, plus it does pretty much everything that I want it to do. A beginner could be designing in 3DHA within minutes. Designs drawn in version 3 can still be opened by the more recent versions and can be exported to dxf files which can be opened by most CAD or design programs. About the only time I use Chief is to play around with exterior siding textures in the elevations.

If you were interested in getting this software, Chief runs $1500-2500 depending on the product features you get. They have a free trial download. They also have a consumer version for $60-500 depending on features. You can find the older versions still floating around, but be sure if you get Broderbund 3DHA, that it is version 3 or 4 (They had a falling out with ART and version 5 or later under the Broderbund name is completely different software by another company and is not compatible with Chief. Also, I heard those later versions of Broderbund were awful). After they split from Broderbund, ART started marketing under Better Homes & Gardens Home Designer for v.5 and up. If you do get v.3 below which is just the software for $8, I have the instruction manual as a pdf file that I could share.

Chief http://www.chiefarchitect.com
$8 v.3 new http://www.amazon.com/Home-Architect-Deluxe-Jewel-Case/dp/B00006IS82/ref=sr_1_1?s=software&ie=UTF8&qid=1282145525&sr=1-1
$20 v.6 used http://www.amazon.com/Better-Homes-Gardens-Designer-Suite/dp/B000AQ6I1E/ref=sr_1_23?s=software&ie=UTF8&qid=1282146605&sr=1-23
$39 v.7 used http://www.amazon.com/Better-Homes-Gardens-Designer-VERSION/dp/B000HGHDJI/ref=sr_1_27?s=software&ie=UTF8&qid=1282146794&sr=1-27