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Building a Home

Floor plan review ï¿½ new plans

8 years ago

Awhile back I posted plans for a house. Well, we ditched that house and started over. Here is what we have so far. (There are few things we know we want to change but would love thoughts/opinions)
Thanks!

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Comments (4)

mrspete
8 years ago
- Hate the garage sticking out in front.

- What is that walk-in closet type room to the right of the front door?

- I don't like the layout in the master bedroom. The little hallway is wasted space and the 90 degree turn will prevent you from bringing in large furniture. The master bath is large for the few items it contains -- lots of wasted space and no storage.

- I like the great room - kitchen - dining arrangement, though the dining seems a bit small. No fire place?

- Secondary bedrooms and baths look completely average, which is fine. My one concern: Another small hallway that may prevent furniture from moving into the two bedrooms.

- I hate the utility room. So much wasted floor space, yet the washer/dryer are pushed to the far end -- far from the folding area. Separating the machines and the sink is an expensive choice (necessitates water and extra-depth in two walls).
stumpydarby
Original Author
8 years ago
Thanks for your thoughts. :)

The garage sticking out is just a fact of life. I know not everybody likes it . . . but I would actually like a front and backyard and this design allows for that.

The walk in closet type room by the front door is a storage closet. You can never have enough storage!

The master hallway is rather large -- shouldn't be too bad for bringing things in. (much better than what we have now!)

The master bath has a huge run of cabinets --- most likely a "tower" cab in between the sinks that will be a linen closet. So, there will be tons of storage from the vanities.

No fireplace -- we are in Florida. It just wouldn't get used.

We might consider taking a little of the utility room to enlarge that hallway leading to the two bedrooms. (We need space in the utility room because I hang dry the majority of my clothes . . . so it isn't wasted space at all!)
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I'm not an expert on dimensions, but here are a few things that caught my eye: - Maybe move the MBR closet door a bit toward the front of the house, and use a pocket door. That would allow you to have a hanging rod or shelves on the other short wall in the closet and you wouldn't have to work around the open door when you're in the closet. - If you're planning a masonry fireplace/chimney, you're not going to be able to have the window where you've placed it in the Master Bath. - You might want two windows on the long wall in the MBR, so there is one on either side of the bed (assuming the bed goes on that wall). - if the Bonus Room is meant to be a media room, you could stub in plumbing for a bar sink in the corner behind the main bath. - if the main floor office is meant to serve as a guest room at some point, you might consider making the powder room at least a 3/4 bath. I'm not sure how to do that in the space you have, but it's a consideration. (Maybe cede the coat closet space back to the powder room and rob some space from the office closet for a new hall closet?) - You don't have a way to close off the laundry room from the rest of the house. Maybe there is enough distance and drywall between the laundry room and the LR to make the noise not an issue, but maybe not. - You're definitely going to be floating furniture in the LR, so consider ample floor outlets in your electrical plan.
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AlexHouse - This isn't quite the first floor plan, it's probably the 20th or so. It's just the first one done not on paper and that I felt was closer to what I'm striving for and therefore 'worthy' of being posted on the site. I've been looking at plans for about 8 months, following this forum for about 4 months (slowly learning from summerfield and many other great posts here) and will still continue. Your comment isn't overly negative at all! It's exactly the type of feedback that I was looking for. While the 3D views certainly help me see how they relate to the human body (at least better than my paper drawings), they're still a bit misleading and I'll continue working on that. Excellent suggestion for saving variations! I already have a few and will continue! Kitchen entry - I overlooked it and will definitely expand. I read that 3 feet for hall space was normal, 4 ideal, should I stick to that or somewhere in the middle for the kitchen? Right now it's pretty flexible by shrinking the island and that spare area across from the pantry. Master closet width - I never considered the aisle width. I can easily expand it and take up more space in the master. Right now the width is 5'3". How wide to avoid the shimmy? Toilet - Another measurement I didn't consider. It seemed that since the program doesn't allow the toilet to be right up against the wall, it was automatically putting in the code requirements. I'm pretty small, so on a 3D view it didn't look bad to me. I'll definitely expand it and look into code requirements. Second floor - The second floor is directly over the garage. I decided to put it here for various reasons. I wanted to take advantage of the view of the backyard wooded area rather than just my neighbors and garage (which would have been the view above the main portion of the house). I also wanted some distance from the kids rooms, but still be on the same floor if needed. The kids floors will be added later in the unfinished area. The second set of stairs (in an enclosed room, if that makes sense), go to the attic. I don't care for the pull down stairs. Hall - I can reduce the wall on the first floor to shorten the hallway, leaving the living room more open, but I don't see how I could reduce the hall space to the master.
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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!
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@ dpusa - I agree with the prep sink. I think we are going to want to enlarge the island and put a prep sink in there. In our current house we have the sink in the penisula and it tends to splash when people are on the other side. That bothers us quite a bit. The 1 bathroom upstairs will serve both boys. The third bedroom will be a scrapbook room for the wife, but another bathroom might be something for us to consider for resale purposes. Hi lavender_lass, that is funny you mention that cause this is actually our 2nd set of drawings and the first set had the flipped. We asked him to put it this way so it would be easy to access the kitchen from the garage. So basically the architect agreed with you lol. I think that it is almost a toss up of which one would be better. UGH... Did anyone say this was going to be easy?
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mrspete
8 years ago
I don't think you're going to find anyone who's going to say, "Garage sticking out in front -- YES! Just what we want."

Ah, a closet. Given that it has a window, I was trying to make it into a tiny office space.

Knowing now that this is a closet, I'd say make the master bath a little more narrow -- eliminating some of that unnecessary floor space between the sinks and the shower -- and allow the closet to be a little larger. As you say, more storage is always good, and you'll never miss it in the bathroom.

Still on the bathroom: I still vote for a linen closet; it gives more storage for a lower price than linen towers, and it'll keep your dirty clothes hamper hidden.

It's not the width of the master hallway that'll be the problem -- it's the turn. We bought a king mattress recently, and even bringing it down a straight hallway and turning it into the bedroom was tricky. The movers had to open my daughter's bedroom door and maneuver it back and forth a bit to get in the door. And a mattress has some "give". If you have a double or triple dresser, it'll never get into the room. One possible fix -- now that I know you're in Florida -- is that you might ditch the large windows in the bedroom and instead go with glass doors. In addition to being in keeping with Florida houses, you'll be able to move furniture in through the back very easily.

Thing about the utility room space is that it's not laid out in a user-friendly layout. All that space is in front of the washer/dryer -- you can't hang things in that space because you need it for walking. And the washer/dryer are too far from the folding area.
stumpydarby
Original Author
8 years ago
French doors are going to be added to the master bedroom. (That was one change that was left off the plan. As well as some more windows in the master)
Hopefully getting things in shouldn't be a problem. (Thank goodness!)

The master bathroom layout is still up for debate. We just wanted a large space and we could move things around. We are meeting with a kitchen designer and she that could trump these plans. (We have played around with separate vanities and whatnot) We shall see.

The utility doesn't bother me but maybe that is because I have been doing laundry in a garage without a folding area or a sink or anything. ;)

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