Your link is bad. Please confirm that the one I have below is what you are looking at.

If it is, the floor plans are so small that the dimensions are unreadable and many details can't be made out, which is really unfortunate.

If you have a good link to a larger version of the floorplan, that would be very helpful.

Here is a link that might be useful: Grimaldi Plan

It's not my style house at all but the floorplan seems like a reasonably good one. No extra space wasted on hallways. No doorway conflicts except the one between the door to garage and that back powder room.

All the rooms are good-sized. Bathrooms are workable. Kitchen is a nice size and seems well laid out. Bedrooms 3 and 4 could benenfit from having at least 1 more window on the other exterior wall. (Rooms that get light from two directions tend to be more comfortable. (It subtley gets rid of harsh shadows. So whereever you can do it, I think you should take advantage!)

I do like that bedrooms 2 and 3 are not a mile away from the master bedroom.

I'm guessing bedroom 4 must be designed to be the maid's quarters since it opens off the butler's pantry. Might seem a little odd for overnight guests to have to go through the butler's pantry to reach their room. Maybe opening bedroom 4 off of the dining room might be more appropriate. I'm not really sure. Neither one seems quite right. But, if you like the plan otherwise, I certainly wouldn't reject it for that reason.

However, UNLESS BR4 is going to be assigned to a child, you might consider adding an exterior door on the side to give it its own private entry. Then, if you ever needed to have an elderly relative move in with you, the formal dining room could be converted to an enclosed living room and a microwave, fridge and two burner cooktop added to the butler's pantry thereby creating a nice little MIL apartment in that corner of the house. You would lose your pantry but the elderly person could still have a sense of independence and their own "space" - which would go far to keeping you both from losing your sanity!

Some folks on this forum will find it problematic that bedroom 2 shares a common wall with the MB. Personally, I've always thought it was good for parents to be able to hear their children if they cry out in the night. But if you are concerned about parental privacy or potential noises emanating FROM the MB (LOL!) there are relatively simple ways to reduce sound transmission through a wall. (Google "staggered stud wall")

Alternatively, you could flip the entire master suite upside down so that you enter through the sitting area. That would ensure the bedoom area is totally private.

Given the design of the house, gaining space for a mudroom would be fairly simple. Just pull the garage back about three feet so as to enlarge the back entry and laundry room. You can then line the walls of the back entry with cubbies and it becomes a "mud room". Given the overall size of the house, the additional cost to add the extra square footage would be minor.

Re the door conflict with the powder room door and entry to the garage, it also occurs to me that you could enclose the steps going down to the garage and move that door down to the garage floor level. That would get rid of the door conflict.

Here is your plan redrawn showing what I mean about the garage (lengthened walls are shown in red.) I've also flipped the master suite which turned out to require making the fireplace into a corner unit. But I think this would work.

Still, in addition to the private sitting area in the master bedroom, you would have a formal living area, a family room AND a bonus room above the garage that (on the website) is shown as a media/TV room. Seems to me there already ought to be plenty of space for both kids and parents in this house. You just need to decide which areas you're willing to let the kids be kids in.

If I had little bitty ones, I'd probably forego putting a table in the breakfast area until they got bigger and just use that space as "play space" so they would be under my watchful eye while I cooked. Granted, the toys would still be on view to anyone entering the family room but they wouldn't be immediately visible from the front door.

With slightly older children (say , from 6 to about 12 or 13 years old) , I would consider temporarily closing off either the dining room or formal living area. Non-load bearing walls could be inserted where you have things wide open right now and then taken out later to open the space back up.

As kids become teenagers, it might be appropriate to turn the bonus room over to them and their friends. Depends on what you're comfortable with. Personally, I would rather have teens and their friends in the family room... especially if I had a private sitting room right around the corner that I could retreat to but where it was always in their minds that mom or dad might walk thru any moment on their way to the kitchen for a snack. By the time a parent could clomp upstairs to the bonus room, teens could figure they could hide a plethora of stuff they don't want their parents to know about. And, speaking as an ex-high school teacher, if teens think they can hide things from their parents, they are MUCH more likely to push the boundaries than if they're pretty sure they're going to get caught. LOL!

Anyway, that's my 2 cents worth.

My feeling is that in this house formal living and formal dining are almost never getting used! They are so far away from the kitchen and besides family area is so convenient that it'll be difficult for anyone to use living unless they want to be left alone :-)

Also, if you do see formal living/dining getting used, then visitors who want to use powder might have to hike through the entire family/kitchen area to reach there.

I am, however, not a great fan of powders located near entries. That to me is too un-private. Given this, if only there was some way to flip the bedroom4/bathroom 4 and current powder/mud/laundry area.....

Also as bevangel pointed out, Master and BR1,BR2 are close. However they are entered from two ends of Family room; thus though they share a wall, they're not really that close. Something to take note of if you have young kids.

The question I have is about your site. Are you on a smaller lot, big lot, acreage ? The points noted above are all valid questions to discuss for your family. The concern I have depends greatly on the site. If not a small site I dont like how the rear yard /view is closed off so much in a tunnel like fashion. Most people have the best view toward the back yard and yours is closed off by the garage massing and master bedroom massing. The Master suite only windo is toward the courtyard created. The plan bevangle reworked helped solve this by moving the bedroom to a better view. If this plan works for you and you have room I would consider her version there or slide the master wing out if room is available and also consider moving the garage to the right 5-7 feet if possible. Pull the half bath with it so you open that view from the dinette to the deck /rear yard and open the tunnel back there. I would add a covered entry to the rear family mudroom entry as well. Th rest of the plan is reasonable and can be tweeked per other ideas noted here as well as your own. All of my ideas are predicated on your site though. Also if the garage is rear loaded and you enter the site from the front your driveway is longer and more expensive. May consider a side loaded one. This may help reduce the width of garage encroaching on the courtyard as well. For whatits worth I posted the floor plans of the 2 houses on your one story homes post. Good luck

bigkahuna, Actually we are building on a big hill with beautiful views out the front. But I think you bring up a great point for others to consider. Thanks for posting the plans. I'm going to go check them out right now.

Bevangle, Thanks for all of your insight. I love the idea of putting up "temporary" walls for play area. And we will definitely do some sound proofing but I think even with that, I like the bedroom flipped. Can't wait to show my husband your ideas.

Thanks to everyone!

Another thought: I love everything about this plan: the look, the feel, the functionality. BUT (there is always a but) I have issue with laundry room being so far from bedrooms. I want to put washer/dryer in MB closet for our clothes...but that won't help with ALL the little kid dirty clothes :)

It would be so much nicer if laundry was close to their bedrooms. Where we live now, our laundry room is huge and is right off kids' bedrooms so I actually had cabinetry put and store their clothes in there. This makes putting clothes away so easy and fast.

I cannot keep their clothes in the laundry room forever but it would be cool if their rooms (just 2) were closer than shown in this plan. I have no idea what the solution is but there has to be a way... :)