Ahh - here's the second floor link :)

Also - trash is under sink in kitchen in case anyone wonders...

Here is a link that might be useful:

If you're thinking about resale....Might look at putting the masterbed room on first floor? Of course the view might be fantastic on the second floor. Maybe plan on an area where an elevator could be installed in future. Two closets line up for it?

No offense intended but you need to think much more about good transitions between rooms especially where door swings disrupt easy passage. Bi-fold and pocket doors are a sign of poor transitions and should be used infrequently and located with great care. Almost all rooms in your plan could be improved.

The angles make relationships between rooms even more difficult. You need to look at each room independently to be sure it is not an awkward shape.

Thank you both for your time and comments.

Robin0919, I agreed with you about the master on the first floor when I started drafting the plans. My wife convinced me to move it upstairs, as with a small child, and perhaps another on the way she didn't want to be constantly up and down the stairs at night - and wanted to be closer to hear them / help them in an emergency like a fire. Also - the neighbourhood is very family oriented, in which a first floor master is a more a negative than a positive for the same reasons noted above. Elevator... hrm.... that is a heck of an idea - will have to consider that!

Mightyanvil, no offense taken! Would rather change plans now than try and fix mistakes later! I changed a door swing upstairs, and one of the pockets downstairs as per your advice. However, the play room off the kitchen will likely have the doorway open almost always - we were considering not even having a door - but figured a pocket would be perfect as opposed to always having a door against the wall.

As for the bi-folds on that room - we want a nice open space in the foyer, but also wish to 'close it off' with all the toys. So - I'm not sure how else to close off such a large wall next to a foyer. French doors would look silly right after walking in - and we want them open most of the time... so, any advice other than Bi-folds would be appreciated!

I'm not sure where you were going with the 'almost all rooms could be improved' comment. I've rechecked all the other swings and don't find any issues. Perhaps you had some other suggestions?

Anyone else? Liveability of the house?

Thanks again!

making some guesses here..... are we talking grand Cayman? I like the general floor plan, but depending on the canal (Hyatt, SafeHaven, ...) unless you are down towards north sound, you won't get much of a breeze, especially on the first floor, so bedrooms up is not a bad idea. Remember, the storm surge of Ivan was 16' from the North sound, so build as high up as you can (of course, I don't think God would send another Ivan thru there for another 100 years, I hope) I know building codes are better than pre Ivan, but that doesn't mean much to the actual workers, I would be very dilligent on your build process and remember, Cayman time is 2x of most other times, it took 5 years plus to build the Ritz!

I'm sure you've seen other posts re the master BR on 1st floor as opposed to all BR on the second. All I can add to those comments is that having been through an issue of rescuing an ill child choking on vomitus in the middle of the night, I absolutely would not consider being an entire floor away. Your wife gets my vote on this matter.

I honestly don't believe in building to suit unknown/future buyers. Some folks can do that successfully, but you won't find unusual or unique floorplans or components in those houses. That's because most people buy and then immediately make changes to suit themselves. So, design your house for yourself, and build it to be comfortable and safe and attractive (and dare we hope ecologically thoughtful). The appropriate buyer will see the same benefits.

I'm really not sure what to say about the plans as presented. I rather like most of the first floor -- as one who lived in an octagonal house, angles per se don't bother me. I will warn you that it is quite difficult to furnish angled rooms, and often there is a great deal of space wasted. OTOH, if you like minimalist furnishings,the angles can provide interesting light effects which are themselves a form of decor.

I don't care for the second floor as it is. Goodness, one area has 3 doors around a center post. May be convenient, but it reminds me of those department stores with go-round entrances. Round and round and round and I bet the kids will discover that right away. The closets seem very small, and again there is a trememdous amount of odd-angled waste space in each room. No doubt, others won't be bothered by that aspect. Me, I hate vacuuming in corners, and there are certainly a lot of corners on this floor.

Please don't take offense at my comments, they are just an opinion and I expect other folks - including you - to have considerably different viewpoints.

I would try to address the following issues:
entry too narrow
bifold doors in the way when open
too many facets to living room shape
shower too small to be used
toilet visible from hall/living room
dining room awkwardly proportioned and shaped
door to dining room from kitchen in corner
kitchen island too narrow
nook too narrow for stools at counter

Wow, what wonderful and helpful advice!

kcinkc71: Our property is in South Sound, near Hurleys. We survived Ivan - frantically bailing water out of our house for nearly 5 hours. We never want to do that again, so your advice is duly noted - we'll build up as high as our budget allows!

meldy_nva: LOL - Round & Round & Round - you put a picture in my head that solved a tough question that we'd had. We've now gotten rid of the door from the bedroom on that bathroom, and have re-done the whole area around it, which gave more closet space all around. You were right - too many doors. I've posted the new plan with the changes included. It's a start - will need to keep tweaking, but I've backed myself into a bit of a corner with the stair location, which I can't figure out a better place to put...

Excellent advice re: 'build for yourself'. With such a big investment, sometimes it's hard to keep that in mind.

mightyanvil: Wow - thank you for taking the time to draw that out - I've been looking at it for 45 minutes. Some great suggestions! I think I need to sleep on it a bit before I get out the big virtual sledge hammer though! Going to be hard to narrow the kitchen in order to widen the play room / foyer, but I see where you're going with it. Also the island - that's bothered me a bit - I'm not sure if an island even fits in that kitchen, and if so, is it's so narrow as to be a waste. Good point on the toilet - already moved it. Not sure I want to door the hall before it though. I *really* love what you did with the stairs... but when I move them in, the exercise room becomes an exercise closet... Going to have to think that one through a bit.

Again I want to thank you folks - this is such an intimidating process in the beginning, and your thoughts are truly helpful!

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:1499214}}

I agree about the exercise room but it was already a closet. Perhaps you could put an interior window on the stair side and/or the study side with blinds or louvered shutters. Perhaps you could add a door to the garage and convince the building department that the exercise room is an uninhabited storage room and part of the garage so it could have two high windows at the garage wall. You might put the exercise equipment in the upstairs storage room (with the big windows) and make the original exercise room into a mud/storage room.

I recommend turning the exercise equipment 90 degrees clockwise so you can be more aware of someone coming into the room to get your attention when you are exercising.

I would add a foot to the garage width; 20-3 seems too small to me unless you own very small cars and are not concerned about resale. The smallest I have designed was 21-9 wide for two cars. The single car storage space needs to be wider as well. Adding a foot would relieve congestion upstairs and eliminate the awkward dropped top landing (maybe it would be necessary to start the stair a tread sooner or shrink the bedroom a bit as well).

Is it really possible for an adult to use the showers you show or are are they some other kind of fixture? Be sure to use adult sized toilets (they decided to call normal toilets "elongated" and drop the name "cadet" for the short ones 30 years ago so they could charge more for the normal ones sort of like Movie pop corn and McDonald's drinks).

Using angled walls increases the area needed for circulation, decreases the room sizes, and makes it difficult to place plumbing fixtures, closets, and furniture. Unless you are willing to let the size of the house increase to resolve this problem you run the risk of creating a sense of bold main spaces but stingy and awkward smaller spaces.

You should make the inside clear dimension of clothes closets 24 inches instead of 27 to 29 inches. I would also discourage the use of bi-fold or sliding doors at closets because they simply do not operate well and usually get worse with age. Anything closet worth using deserves a swinging door in my opinion.

Upstairs there are many tight spaces and some are between opposing corners that could cause injury. The back door to the laundry is essentially blocked by the sink. The master bath has a lot of open space but the clearance in front of the lav. counter and the tub is too tight and the other lav. is blocking easy and bump free entry into the bathroom.

Doors that open out into a hall present a greater risk for people walking into the door edge since they don't expect to find something thin and parallel to their line of sight and travel (when open) in a passageway, and this especially dangerous after dark.

Make the kitchen island 30 to 36 inches wide and just add a foot to the garage. That would be a small cost for resolving so many tight spaces in the house. Otherwise, I would suggest dropping the 30/60 degree angled walls and use the house space more efficiently.

Here's an idea of what could be done upstairs. I forgot the door to the third bath from the hallway but the tub could move to the right into the hall closet space and a second door could be added from the hall next to the first one. That would make it easier for someone entering or leaving the bathroom to lock or unlock the other door (the biggest disadvantage of a Jack & jill bathroom is that one of the doors is often left locked). You might also consider a standard 5-0 tub since it would be easier to fit into an irregular polygon shaped bathroom.

mightyanvil: Thank you once again for your time and wisdom. You've given me a lot to think over.

I've squeezed another 6 inches out of the garage already without having to majorly adjust anything. Seems a bit better...

Exercise equipment 90 degrees - good idea.

Showers - interesting - the one downstairs is the standard 'corner shower' from the BH&G Design Suite. The one upstairs is 4' wide, so I don't think that's an issue. I'm actually toying with the idea of taking that shower out of the downstairs bathroom to make it a 1/2 bath. There are no bedrooms downstairs, and there is a 'shower' outside for the pool anyway. Might be better to use the space otherwise.

Supersized toilets = normal. Roger.

Bold / Stingy - interesting comment that I'm trying to avoid, but may already have run into...

I can see you really hate those bi-folds & sliders. They are so commonplace here on the island I hadn't even considered anything else. However, a nice french door would add some class...

Going to play with the island. We don't have one currently, so I'm a bit nervous it's making things smaller, as opposed to better. Even with the wider garage, the kitchen is still the same. Will think on this too.

Again, thank you very much for your help!

watercayman ~ I normally greatly admire MA's advice and comments, but we part ways on the bi-fold doors. I find them much more convenient and less space-grabbing than regular doors, and far more convenient than sliders for a closet. I will agree that installation is an issue, and improperly hung bifolds are a PIA. I actually ended up completely un-installing and re-hanging after leveling the ceiling tracks, but since then, the doors have been fine.

Am I the only one who turns on the shower before actually getting into it? I don't think I'd like the showerhead right beside the entry to the shower [bottom right]. OTOH, that looks like such a skinny entry, I wouldn't use it anyway.

And note that I have not said one word about kitchen islands. But I have 52" in front of my present oven, and when I drop open the oven door to lift the roast out, that space feels skimpy! One simply does not hug up close to a hot oven door. Be sure to lay out the kitchen on graph paper with refrig and oven doors open, and then make a you-sized model to go through the daily cooking issues. Don't forget to allow for the kids running behind you.

I didn't remove the bi-fold doors in the plan; I just reversed them so they would not stick out into the entry and restrict passage next to the stairway to less than 30 inches which to me would be a big mistake. I also thickened the dining room walls so the open bi-fold doors would not cause a similar problem in the dining room. Bi-fold doors have serious operation problems but when used in a normally open condition they cause even more serious passage problems. Obviously, pocket doors would be a better option in this location.

I have found that 48 inches between an island and a range is quite adequate and would not recommend taking an additional 6 inches out of the island unless you intend to operate a catering business from your kitchen.

I've even seen plans that alloted a meagre 36" between oven and whatever. Apparently not designed by anyone who actually baked.

It's occurred to me that one needs to know how much space the oven door will require. My home oven door is 25"; open it sticks out 26"; at 400F, I want at least 6 inches between door and my knees and my big butt takes up the rest of the area. OTOH, I've seen really cute new little ovens that use very shallow doors which obviously would need little opened-door space.

But M-A allots 48" which is likely fine for the average person; whereas I customized to suit my real-life comfort. OTOH, if you don't bake at all, please use M-A's spacing, lol.

All of my clients who were serious bakers have all insisted on double wall ovens and a cooktop.

I really do not get the oven clearance requirements from above. I cannot think of one time in my life that I removed items while standing directly in front of the opened door. I always remove items from the oven while standing to the side of the opened oven door. While my house has more than 36" of clearance between oven and island, I do not think that I'd experience any problems whatsoever with proper use of the oven with only 36" of clearance. I am a baker...serious about it on occasion.

I'm *not* serious about baking, in spite of often doing so several times a week. But while working at a bakery years ago, I do remember being taught that standing sideways to the door was a good way to get a burn on the arm closest to the oven.

Oh yes, wall ovens and a cooktop sound perfect!

Ditto the above!

I was taught (as a child) to NEVER stand off to the side of the oven, as that increases the chances of the close arm getting burned.
I to this day stand directly in front....

IMO, it is equally likely that you will burn your knees/legs reaching from the front as it is that you will burn your arm reaching from the side. But, then again, I am not of a tall stature...it would be much more of an event for me to reach into the oven from the front to pull out the tray than to reach from the side. I suppose we all have our individual ways of doing things that work best for us and our lifestyles...

Very interesting dialogue. We've never had an island in any of our homes, so we weren't sure if it fit. Taking MA's suggestion to widen it really helped - it no longer looks like a toad stool.

Considering it's about 100 degrees here every day, we do very little baking. So, I think we'll opt for the 48" margin. We're not totally sure on the stove yet, but this should give us some clearance on the models we've been looking into.

As for these pesky dining room transitions, we've decided to go with beads. The heck with these doors.
Just kidding ;)

We've re-done the master bath 11 times now, and I think we've finally found a solution that works. Well... hopefully.
Still working on other areas to improve items as noted by all of you. We've decided to go with this plan and all its angles for now. We'll see what the architect says though!

Thank you all for your continued suggestions - it's a great help!