It is kind of hard to tell how your second floor lines up with the first floor but if I'm interpreting the drawings correctly, I'm pretty sure you haven't provided enough room for your staircase. It looks like you have twelve risers (including the landing) between the first and second floor. Typically a riser is between 7 to 7.5 inches high so twelve risers gives you 7 to 7.5 feet for the TOTAL floor to floor distance. If you have 8ft ceilings downstairs, your floor to floor distance will be more like 9 ft because you have to add on the thickness of the ceiling/joists/flooring. So, IF you were to reduce your downstairs ceiling height to 8 foot, you would still need 2 or 3 more risers at least. Each additional riser will need 10 to 11 inches of "run" space so with 8 foot ceilings you would need about 2 to 3 feet more run space for your staircase. And unfortunately, you don't have room at either the top or bottom to add any extra steps. And, if you keep your downstairs ceiling height at 10 ft as you have indicated, you'll need to find space for about 6 more risers...figure an additional 6 ft of run space. Revising the stair case so that it will work will force you to change everything else so I'm afraid there is not much point in making lots of additional comments about your current plan. However, a few suggestions to help guide you if you want to continue trying to design your own plan without the assistance of an architect. First and foremost, keep in mind that a straight staircase is the most space efficient and the easiest to design. Landings take up extra space and are harder to design. With a narrow lot, you're probably better off sticking with a straight run. Second, in order to design workable rooms, you need to develop your spatial sense to a very high degree. You have to KNOW in your bones how much space various things take up and how much space you need to move around them in. 1) Get a tape measure and go measure your bathtub, toilet, and sinks AND the space you need beside and in front of each in order to use them. Having a sink right in front of the toilet (like you show in the powder room) isn't very comfortable when a guy is trying to stand in front of the toilet to use it. Having your shower block half your tub (like you show in your master bath) would make getting into/out of the tub difficult and possibly even dangerous. And, BTW, given that wet feet and steps are a slipping hazard, do you REALLY want three steps between your masterbath and bedroom closet??? Besides, who would want to have to navigate up three steps to use the john in the middle of the night? 2) Measure your kitchen cabinets, fridge, sink, stove, etc AND the standing room you need in front of each when the oven door or fridge door or DW door are OPEN. If two people will be using your kitchen, you need to add on additional aisle space so person 2 can squeeze past person 1 if need be. Get out the things you use when cooking and measure how much free countertop space you need beside each of the appliances. 3) Go to your closets and measure how far from the wall your clothing sticks out. If you're planning to have a walk-in closet, find one and measure how wide an aisle you need beside the clothing in order to move around in the closet. For reach-in closets, notice how wide the doors are in comparison to the width of the closet. Closet "ends' that can't be reached easiy are wasted space. You'll quickly realize that closets that are narrow and deep (like the one you show for the upstairs back bedroom) are inefficient uses of space. 4) Measure the length and width of your car with the doors open (including the hatchback if you have one and ever intend to open it while IN the garage). Your garage needs to be big enough so you can get in and out of the car. That requires room on the sides of the garage for the door to open and room at the front/back to walk around the car so you can actually get to the car doors. You also need to plan space for trash cans, your water heater, bicycles, the lawn mower and any other stuff that you typically keep in your garage. If you don't make it large enough, you garage will turn into a large closet and, if you're just going to have a large closet, why design a garage at all. Just make a large closet and be done with it. 5) Measure beds and dressers and other bedroom furniture AND the space you need to move around those objects. When you design a bedroom, you have to think about where major pieces of furniture will go and how easy/hard it will be to move around the furniture to the closet. Also, will the room have free floor space large enough to comfortably get dressed. 6) Measure the dining room table with chairs PULLED OUT around it as if people were sitting in them. Remember also that diners may need to be able to walk around the table while others are still seated so you also need aisle space. 7) Measure living room furniture and THINK about how you want to place it for conversation as well as watching TV. In your plan, the furniture is probably fine for watching TV but is poorly placed for conversation. And then you have a huge area near the fireplace that isn't used at all. Then think carefully about how each room will be used. In your plan, the room behind the living room appears to be a dining room but you have a window seat dinette set off in one corner. How is the rest of the room going to be used? Finally, as you are designing, you always need to stay aware of how the exterior is going to look... particularly the front elevation. For example, where an upper and lower window come close to lining up, you'll want to make sure they actually line up. Having the front bedroom and office window offset by about half-a-window width as they now appear to be would just look sloppy. Kind of like someone who has misbuttoned his shirt buttons. Make sense? I do hope this posting doesn't sound too harsh b/c I do appreciate how much work you've already put into your design and I know hearing negative feedback can hurt. Truly, I mean this to be helpful.

I think you'll be VERY glad about your drawers. When I first started our remodel journey, I thought that I would get the typical "door and then a pull out" in most of our cabinets. In our previous home, we had a few pull outs, which I enjoyed having. But, drawers...so much more sense. And, yes, while drawers ARE more expensive than just doing regular base cabinets, if you're planning on putting rollouts in them anyway, your cost is right back there. It was funny when I was talking with cabinet makers - everyone kept pointing to the number of drawers that was bringing the cost up, and we "could save so much if you just go with standard base cabinets". When asked about the cost to then put rollouts in, they agreed that the cost was going to be about the same. But, be prepared, if talking costs, you will be told that it's going to cost more. This will be the first that we've had hardwood in a kitchen, so I don't know how it will be overall. I do plan on an area rug to help with any splatters/spills. We didn't want to do a built in MW (and we aren't heavy MW users, so I wanted to conceal it and we went with a barrister style door) - I've attached a picture of where our MW will go...forgive the mid-construction mess in the cabinet. Also went with the idea of having a roll out shelf to have an easy place to stir anything that's being MWed and then we have a shelf above that will hold the splatter shield that I use. DH wanted the MW container area to be big so that we could get the biggest MW (to him, bigger is always better...to me, I would have been find with a smaller MW area!)

purrus - your floor plan is similar to ours. Overall, I like it - how could I not since it is similar(although we do not have the peninsula and have wall ovens instead of a range. Are you putting in new windows - if you can, bump it out a bit to give you some space behind the sink - I wish I had waited on our garden window and would have put it down to the counter and just had it as a bay instead of garden. I included some pictures - probably too many but might give you some ideas. I didn't want anything that would avalanche in the upper cabinets - so towels, dishrags, pot holders, food storage containers etc are in drawers. My flours (I have about 10-12 different varieties) are in glass and tupperware in the uppers. The shelves are not warped - it was the camera setting. I am also swapping out some of the MadeSmart containers for ones with taller sides. I think the pull outs to the right and left of the range are throwing off the symmetry. You also mentioned needing a place to store dishtowels etc. I am sure I missed some of the pieces of the thread but I will add a few thoughts. I store my big pots in my Super Susan corner cab - I think you have one of those. I store my lighter weight cookie sheets etc above my oven and fridge - the heavier weight items are not something I want to crawl up on a ladder. My cutting boards are in a narrow cabinet - not a pull out - I almost switched to drawers for this but decided against it. Oils and spices so close to the oven... not sure that is a good idea but others have done it. Suggestions for improving the plan. I wish I had put drawers under the sink - I still hope to swap them when I save a few dollars..so if you can do it, go for it! I would ditch the cabinet to the right of the range and start your bank of drawers next to the range. Then add a small bank next to those drawers - My smaller drawers hold my pot holders, dish towels etc or you could put the cabinet next to the DW for cutting boards and cookie trays, etc The cabinets to the left are a total of 48 inches? I would make 2 sets of 24 inch drawers out of them to align with the top cabinets or whatever configuration you use. For spices - I went with the spice stack - others use a drawer. I wanted to leave them in their original containers whenever possible - I am tired of pouring into containers. Here are some things we did First an overview picture - we could not get the cabinets to be all the same size but I think it can be OK. What bothers me on yours is the difference between the top and bottom alignments. Cutting board storage near knives etc - this is the one that I thought of switching to a drawer but it would have been too thin. This is a small bank of drawers near the DW and yes, it really stays that organized. The drawer above has pot holders and trivets in it - but I added a divider and have my egg slicer, avocado and apple corer(sp) standing up along the side. This one shows all 3 Spice Stack - you can get this one and there is a smaller model as well. SuperSusan holds a lot (and lots more in it now!) - Not sure if tall enough for your tallest stock pot - but I could measure mine. On your other side - I saw an angle cabinet - we put some of the food oils and taller bottles in this location - you could also use your pantry next to the fridge. (we have some tall ones in our pantry as well) Here is our above oven storage - slots and a place for pots - the shelves are adjustable on the right - but you could do something similar above the fridge. Good luck - you are almost there!

Okay, the holidays are over, back to decorating! Although crown moulding is not our style, We do agree that other than the fireplace, the room is lacking in architectural detail. We've always loved wood beams, but it just didn't fit the budget when we were building. So we're thinking of adding beams similar to fireplace mantle.Something like this: I was also think of replacing the media console.I do like it but we need a console for the library so I was thinking of moving it there. Plus I would something a little wider. Here's what I'm considering. I love the walnut and it's wider. Then I would just keep the current coffee table to tie in the stainless steel. opinions? too much wood? too modern?