Your stairs need some attention. How do you enter them? The run is too short and there are way too many risers.

Dining area is tight; 12 X 12 is minimum. Can you push the garage farther to the rear and have a larger window in this area?

That's a mammoth master closet!

I don't like the master bath layout. I'd prefer the toilet room to have a winow. You probably want a mirror, not a window, over a sink.

Do you want a 7.5-foot throughway in the middle of the house (LR to end of master closet)?

Cooktop is too tight against the kitchen wall. I'd sacrifice pantry space for more upper cabinets right IN the kitchen.

Can we NOT walk through the middle of a laundry room? Put laundry sink beside washing machine?

Downstairs, it seems awkward for occupants of the BR's to walk through the rec room to the bathroom. What do you plan for the unfinished basement space at the rear -- something worth having that 'aisle' between the BR's?

jey - I'm sure you're right about the stairs. I was not sure how to make them! I'm taking the plan to an expert tomorrow, so hopefully she can give me some guidance. Here's a picture of how I would like the entryway to look.
My dream foyer:

chisue - you make a lot of interesting points. The huge throughway - I think I can extend the dining room out into that area and that should solve the "too small" problem there. I could extend the mud room a bit too. Good point about the stove being pushed up against the wall. I should be able to move that out. I might make the master closet a bit smaller. Think I might have gone overboard there, but I really hate my current 5x5' "walk-in" closet, so I'm probably overcompensating.

Thanks for the advice!

Wow, this is a total change from the last plan you posted!

Please let me start by saying that I don't mean to come across as overly critical -- it is hard to fit everything you want into a houseplan, I know!

I think you will really benefit from meeting with a house designer / architect. There are some pretty unusual things about your layout that I think they will be able to help you improve.

Some examples --

- you could shave some space off the foyer -- slightly large for a home this size / could shift dining room and stairs over
- kitchen layout needs work
- that's a very large pantry for a house that size
- you can fit a powder room in a 3x6 space which might wind up being more efficient for you, once other things are better arranged
- space for door into master bedroom is too small -- closet length would need to be adjusted
- very strange to walk through the master closet to get to the master bath???
- you have a window over one of the sinks in the master bath. I realize you'd want a window in there, but won't that person want a mirror?

I can't really comment on the basement layout -- I'm in south Louisiana -- no basements here. I guess I thought people mainly used basements for game rooms / media rooms / utility rooms / maybe guest room. Didn't realize you'd have bedrooms in the basement. But again, not something I'm familiar with.

Good luck. I'm sure you'll be able to make it all work with a little professional advice.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you've made you sketch so that the front of the house is shown at the TOP of the page. (Most floorplans show the front of the house at the bottom of the page so it's a bit confusing to see it sketched upside down.)

And, if I understand correctly, the driveway will run from the road (which is at the top of the page) along the right side of the house (beside the dining room). Further, the driveway slopes steeply upward from the road to the garage doors which face the road. Is that correct?

If so, here are the issues I see:

First, given the placement of your "front" door at the side of the house and the fact that you plan to have a walk out basement because you're building on a steep hill, it seems to me that you're going to need an outdoor staircase that is at least 6 to 8 feet high to get UP to the front door. If so, those outdoor stairs are going to be right in the way of a car driving into or backing out of the garage bay nearest the laundry room. That won't work.

Since I assume you plan to put a deck across the front of the house (otherwise you wouldn't show patio doors going out of the Living room), I would move the entry door to the front of the house. Just swap the front door and that single window in the foyer. Then your steps can be at the front of the house and lead up to the deck instead of needing to be on the side of the house right where the driveway needs to be. Also, if you need a closet near the front door for guest's coats and hats, you could put one against the wall that faces the driveway in place of the window. As currently designed, you really don't have any place to put a front closet.

I think you need to dedicate at least one more foot of space to the staircase (from side to side of the house, not front to back). By the way, you've turned the staircase sketch backwards and that is why it looks like you're walking into the wall. The "landing" of the u-shaped staircase is that large section and the arrows should be in the middle of the house because they indicate the start and end of the steps. The landing also needs to be wider. For the landing of a U-shaped staircase, the landing is as deep as the staircase is wide and the landing length is slightly more than twice the width of the staircase. Then, if your basement level will have 8 ft ceilings, you'll need about 15 risers on your staircase with your landing counting as one riser. So you need 7 risers on each section of staircase. Each tread will be around 10 inches, so each section of steps will have about a 6 ft run. Thus, if you plan for your steps to be 3.5 ft wide, you'll need a space about 9.5 ft by 7.5 ft for the U-shaped stairwell.

A 16x14 living room is small but workable. But there is no way you'll have room for a dining penninsula with stools along one side of a 14 ft wide living room like you've shown. There just will not be enough room.

Your entire kitchen needs to be reworked. You hardly have any cabinetry and NO upper cabinets which is where most people put their often-used items like glasses and dishes. I know you're got a huge pantry - but while pantrys are nice, you and your kids are not going to want to have to walk into the pantry every time someone needs a glass to get a drink of water. You need some upper cabinets but the way you've designed the kitchen, you don't have a spot for any.

Having your stove jambed right up against a wall is NOT a good idea either. You need some free countertop space on both sides of a cooktop. Also, your fridge is way too close to the island and the island is too small to be of any real use. I would redesign the space as an L-shaped kitchen and move the pantry so it opens into the hallway leading to the master bedroom.

Hallway leading to master bedroom is too wide and wastes space. (I assume that doors to masterbedroom and powderroom got shoved out of position when you made the master closet bigger.) I would not like having the door to the powderroom located so that one can see straight into the powder-room while seated at the dining table! I would move the powderroom further down the hallway... and instead put the pantry about where the powder room is now.

The masterbedroom is small by workable. However the master bath really needs to be revised. The shower is too small. Notice that it is smaller than the vanity sinks! And do you really want a window immediately over one of your vanity sinks? Most people want a mirror over their sinks. 10x10 is a nice size bathroom but not for two large vanities, a large tub, a shower AND a separte toilet room. If you want all of that, you're going to need a bit more floor space in your bathroom.

And, do your really want to have to walk right thru the middle of your closet to get to the bathroom? That big closet won't feel nearly as big if it is also serving as a hallway!

Finally, downstairs, bedroom 2 might work but bedroom 3 CAN'T be positioned where it it. Let me try to explain. The window to bedroom 3 is directly under the dining area window. Right? And your driveway is positioned right outside that dining room window. Since the window is only about 2ft from the edge of the garage, the driveway has to be very nearly up to the level of the garage floor by the point where it passes the dining room window. The driveway has to be supported with dirt and rocks. So, you can't have a basement level window directly beneath the dining room window because the basement level window would be covered by the dirt and rocks that support the driveway. The only possible way it might work MIGHT be to have a narrow window well that goes right up to the edge of your driveway. But, I would NOT want to live in that bedroom! It would be a dungeon.

I suppose you could have your driveway and garage quite a bit lower than your main floor level - but then you would need a half dozen steps (at least) going up from the garage to the laundryroom entry and you don't have enough room in your garage for more than one or two steps. So, bedroom #3 can't be located where you show it. That means the whole walk-out basement needs to be redesigned.

I think better as I sketch so I copied your drawing to my paint program and moved things around as I thought thru what I would do with the upstairs. Here is what I ended up with. It might help you understand what I'm talking about and give you a few ideas. Haven't done the downstairs yet.

You are awesome Bevangel! I love what you did with the plan. The basement is something I have been agonizing over. The layout was my contractor’s idea, so I’m not sure how he was planning to have an egress window in bedroom 3! My initial plan was to have both boys’ rooms in the front of the house (where the rec room is in plan). I think I might go back to that idea. Then their rooms hopefully wouldn’t feel too much like basement rooms, as they would have regular windows. We could always put in a huge rec room in the back of the basement later. The problem, of course, is the stairs. I could probably move them to where the dining room is and move the dining room up or something.

Thank you for the great layout in the kitchen/master bath/powder room areas. I do like your layout much better than mine and will definitely incorporate your ideas.

To answer your questions: Yes, we will have a deck off of the front of the house, and yes the front of the house is the living room area (facing the street). The garage doors you drew are in the correct spot. The driveway will come up the hill at an angle and level out so that the whole area from foyer to garage doors should be a flat, slab-like area. I will have to put my limited skills to the test and draw a picture of the layout because I know it’s kind of weird.

Dash3108 ��" I didn’t take your advice as overly critical at all ��" I know I need it! You made some really great points. I know the plan needs a lot of work, but I wanted to post it here first before taking it to the expert so that I could have some of the kinks worked out ahead of time. Thanks again :)

So I drew a bad (seriously bad) picture of how the house will kind of look on the hill. I am also posting a new plan for the basement that might work. The bedroom windows will be at the front of the house (under the awesome deck I drew).

Glad you liked my sketches. Your rough image is fine for giving a good idea of what that side of the house will look like. (And it is going to be very pretty!) From the picture tho, it is clear that you can't possibly have bedroom 3 where your builder suggested. With the porch there is no way to have a window in that bedroom - and codes require that bedrooms have a window of a certain minimum size for emergency egress in case of a fire.

So, the bedrooms are going to have to be moved either to the front or to the left side of the house(assuming the land on that side drops off as quickly as it does at the front)

Actually, I think you can leave the staircase where next to the entry foyer and still put both bedrooms at the front of the walk-out basement. Keep in mind that you have room to walk under a part of the staircase in the basement. If you go with a 9' ceiling in the basement (which would require one more step but you have plenty of room downstairs to add another step), there would be plenty of headroom under half the staircase to tuck a twin bed. Kids usually love having odd shaped ceiling anyway...plus, whoever got this bedroom could have a hidey-hole storage space under the landing!

Here is a very rough sketch. (I just took my upstairs plan and erased everything except the staircase then added walls back in for the basement). Plenty of light in the kid's bedrooms and, depending on how your land slopes on the right side, the game room could have either full sized windows or narrow high windows that would still let in light albeit, no views. At worst, you could use window wells for the game area windows tho that would be my last choice.

Unfortunately, the bathroom in this sketch wouldn't be able to have a window at all. I was thinking you could install a light tube when I sketched this - but that was before I saw your picture with the porch covering the area where the light tube would need to be.

Bevangel. Thanks again for the great sketch. I turned in my plan to the designer and I used a ton (almost all) of your ideas in the plan that I gave her, and I felt good about the plan. I also incorporated some of the other forum members' advice. I'm soooo happy I found this forum! Hopefully after this process I will be a pro and can help others figure out their dilemas.

Your sketch of the basement gives me hope that I can put both bedrooms in the front of the house. The plan I gave the designer has both bedrooms on the left side of the house for now with the bathroom in the front of the house on the right side. I can always change it in the future if it looks like we can make it work with both bedrooms up front. My kids would definitely love the sloped ceiling and "hidden" closet area. If I have to put the bedrooms both on the left side of the house I can always make the one in the back a lot bigger to try to make up for the lack of a view - my older son thinks it would be reeeaaally cool to have a big bedroom.

Best desgin best home use different Black and Decker blender parts for your blender can be found and replaced easily if you experience trouble or broken parts for it.
black and decker blender parts