Here is the elevation print

There isn't much of anything that I find appealing. The stairs, as you say, are not attractive there and are even dangerous. Bad "Feng shui", too.

The kid bedrooms, one is right behind the LR wall. If child goes to bed and others are still watching TV or listening to music,the sound travels right through the wall. Their bathroom is in direct view of the LR and kitchen, but the guest bath requires a walk through the working areas of the house and past the master bedroom door.

When you come in from the garage, there's no "drop zone" for jacket,umbrella, parcels,backpacks. It'll all go on the dining table or the kitchen counter.

The kitchen,the island is too far from the other counters to be efficient. But I kind of like the pantry location and a window facing the front.

From the mastere bedroom, you can look right into the kitchen. That's not what I want to see! The master bath is a squish, from the lack of elbow room at the vanity to the lack of storage to the elbow-bashing shower.

Where's the driveway? It could be a long walk from the car to the front door for visitors. And the way the garage looks from the front elevation, looks utilitarian, yet it protrudes. It should be minimized.

You deserve better! Consider sight lines in the next plan you look at. Imagine moving around the house as you do your daily activities and "see" how it feels.

Yeah, I'm not in love with this plan either, and I find myself wondering where 1850 sf have gone:

- None of the bathrooms are what you'd call spacious. With the secondary bath open to the hall, I would drop the half-bath altogether. The secondary bath vanity isn't big enough to support two sinks (and two sinks in this spot means you have no drawer storage); plus, the closet and bathroom door will forever be a minor headache as they bang against one another. The master bath shower isn't big enough, and it'll have a rather odd feel: A tiny room with a sink, a shower and a door.

- In my opinion, the functional portions of the house are the whole reason to build -- I mean, most living rooms are perfectly good, but many bathrooms and kitchens aren't nearly as functional as they could be. Yet these rooms are no better than the average track house.

- The kitchen layout could use work. The problem is that you have all that empty space in the middle -- yet not nearly enough space for an island. You'll constantly be taking 3-4 extra steps to go from one side of the kitchen to the other. Furthermore, while the kitchen has enough square footage, the shape is just odd, and I don't think it's going to get any better.

- The dining room space is kind of small, but it would be okay . . . except that you're going to find yourself caught between two problems: On the one hand, you need to keep the table pulled far from the wall so you can use the sliding glass door . . . and on the other hand, you need to keep the table pushed against the wall because this area doubles as the hallway to the master. In short, it just doesn't work.

- On the subject of the master, where will the bed be placed? Every wall contains a door, and they're going to limit your furniture placement.

- I don't like the garage and front door placement combination. When a guest pulls into the driveway and parks near your garage, the guest will have to park out of the view of the front door, which leaves the guest kind of
floating uncomfortably between the parking and the door. Ideally the guest should be able to see where he's going.

- No fireplace?

Actually, I like the plan! It has potential...

A farmhouse should have porches! If it's in the budget, have a covered front porch (with porch swing) and a table and two chairs. The back could have a covered screened porch, or a sunny deck, giving you more living space and a covered patio for the lower level.

On the main floor, I turned the stairs and moved the kitchen sink under the window...with nice work island. The dining room now has a bay window (window seat?) and a fireplace/bookcases in the living room...with French doors or slider to the porch/deck.

The master bedroom needs a good wall for the bed. I took out the window, since you have the bathroom entrance in the middle of the other wall. A large window overlooking the back would give more privacy to the master, with no windows off the porch.

Also added a bit more storage in the laundry room and another wall of storage in the (mudroom?) so you should have plenty of pantry space. Hope this makes up for taking out the corner pantry...

The kids' rooms are now a bit bigger and I moved the closets (as suggested above) it would be better to have a little noise block from the living room. Also gives you room for a coat closet in the entry.

Hope this helps...take as many or few ideas as you like :) {{gwi:1503955}}From Kitchen plans

This post was edited by lavender_lass on Thu, Oct 23, 14 at 23:41

I like the porches. Every farmhouse should have a porch swing :-)

Nice work, LL!

Some further suggestions/comments on her revamp--

It doesn't look like there's enough space allowed for the stairs--there will be more than 11 steps.

I'd turn the island and make it a little longer to make better use of the large empty space near the stairs, and which I think would fit better with how you may want to extend the dining table at times.

In the left rear BR, extend the bath wall across to the fireplace wall, and put the BR door there to get a little more space in the BR.

Extend the MBR wall so it's parallel to the powder room wall, and shift the door "down" ~3' to give the MBR more privacy from the kitchen area and a little more space. I'd also put a pocket door in the K/DR wall & the MBR/Mudroom/Powder Rm area. We use our door separating these areas all the time, since we often get up and go to bed at different times.

The Master Bath is still a little crowded.

Measurements that we can read would be REALLY helpful! It looks like you might need to add ~2' all across the length of the house to adjust the MBath and stairs/Kitchen.

Anne

Move the door between the garage & mudroom to the right so that it doesn't open looking into the MBR. Put a "to go"/charging station where the door was. That also will make a nice corner in the garage for "stuff." When you have kids, especially school age with backpacks, and all of the paraphernalia that goes with them, you will want to have lots of move around space as you come and go from the garage. A bench/drop zone and lots of hooks are wonderful here, if you can plan the space to fit them in.

It's difficult to tell without readable measurements, but you might need to add another 2' through the living room and kitchen.

Anne

Good ideas :) Sorry I jumped to conclusions in the beginning! I took LL and Anne's thoughts a bit further.

I moved LL's kitchen out a bit, evening out the front of the house a bit. You lose the nook in the porch, but gain space inside. The kitchen is a little more removed from the living space. Still plenty of space for chairs in front on the porch.

I moved the master bath and closet out even with the garage, making a nook THERE, for a covered stoop. This allows more elbow room in the bathroom, a nice sight line to a window instead of the vanity, and a little more room for the commode and shower. I took the laundry room door out of the closet (since, after all, the laundry room is right around the corner). This gives more clothes space in the closet.

Closing up that wall also allows the laundry machines to rotate to the side wall, and you could put a door out to the covered stoop.

I like a side stoop like that for muddy kids, taking out trash and shaking a mop/dumping a bucket, or as a place for dropping off that isn't visible from the street (I'm thinking of kids in school, when you volunteer to coordinate treats for an event, people can drop off water and paper plates there)

I liked Anne's idea to move the garage door away from the bedroom. This also gives a corner in the garage for storage. You'd have to check measurements to see if you can still park the car and not bump into steps or have to walk around the car.

It really bothered me that you can see the kids' bath from the kitchen, so I moved things around a bit. The only problem is, I lost the front closet. What is your climate? Can you get by with a smaller guest closet tucked in somewhere or nice hooks on the wall and a small chest?

edited to add: I found the closet! Now it defines the entrance to the kids' wing better, more visual/sound separation from LR.

It can be really cute and functional!

This post was edited by bpathome on Fri, Oct 24, 14 at 12:27

Here is what the elevations might look like. The front of the house now looks more important than the garage, as it should. The side stoop is shown, too. I tried to change the windows where I remembered.

The bedroom window on the front porch is gone, room for a nice seasonal wreath!

Thoughts?

(Can you tell I'm having a quiet day?)

In this one, made the house an L-shape instead of a T. It added no square footage, but did add more space. Here's how: It creates a central passage way from laundry to kids' wing, without skirting around LR chairs or kitchen island. And it removes the utility areas out of the living areas, making them more useful and the living areas more, um, livable. You can use the whole space, instead of leaving passage room. And, it takes the stairs out of the living space.

It brings the kitchen forward for more light at the sink. I have a north-facing sink under a porch roof, and it gets dark in the winter (nice shade in the summer, though). So as not to lose the porch, I added a window facing the porch and front door.

The dining table in the bay window is a bit further away. You could move it closer, but at any rate you could use some of the new wall space for display space, shallow cabinetry, etc. Does give you more room for high chairs, though. Little kids take up a lot of space!

The master suite changed up a little, and here's why. It's nicer to walk in by the foot of the bed than right into the nightstand with lamps, cords, books, etc., and who wants to look up from reading to see the bathroom? So I slid the bed over to under the window. (I love my bed under the window! But if you don't, you could change to a window on either side of the bed.)

Well, that meant that someone was having to walk around the bed to the bathroom/closet, so I flipped THOSE. Also, I remembered that you originally had the commode in a little room, so I added a bit of wall (also shields it from the closet and bed). You could make it a pocket door if you like.

Side benefit, all the plumbing is closer to the laundry plumbing, equals less pipe = less $$. Also, if it freezes where you are, the pipes are better insulated. And the seat isn't icy in the morning :>

Okay, enough from me, I'm getting back to work :)

edited to add: if you really, really, want a walk-in pantry, you could add it off where the little kitchen porch window is, enclosing part of the porch. But really, you'll have LL's laundry room storage and the basement right there for extra storage, and wouldn't you rather be able to see who's at the front door, and have a nice porch for decorating? (grin)

This post was edited by bpathome on Fri, Oct 24, 14 at 13:41

Back to basics, if all you did was flip the stairs so they dont start right next to the front door, bring the whole right side forward so the kitchen is even with the front of the house (leaving the dining room where it was) and tweak the walls along the bedrooms, would it work for you?

Thanks for the input up to this point. Right now this is a rough draft so keep the suggestions coming. We plan on doing some rearranging in the master bath area. We will eliminate the âÂÂtoilet doorâ and probably swap around the toilet and shower. We may extendthe house a couple of feet to create some more space also. We are working on changing the roof to more hips rather than gables and will hopefully be able to incorporate a covered deck. The dishwasher and sink probably will be eliminated from the island. Any reason to keep the sink and/or dishwasher in the island area? The steps are challenging with this plan but right now we are leaning towards flipping the stair entrance around so its not right next to the front door. IâÂÂll try to post our next set of prints to get some more thoughts. Thanks again!