Newbieremodeler, This is my opinion but there are few things that are necessary in making a small home function well for a family for a LONG time, not temporarily until you buy a bigger house. But a well functioning home where you can raise a family. I am thinking about this alot lately because we are buying some rental properties and trying to make these homes "livable" for a family so they are easily rentable. These are things I am thinking about.... 1. Eat in kitchen is not necessary but a kitchen that is close and CONNECTED to an eating area is. (there is a difference) You can connect to an eating area with visual and physical connection. 2. Easy access to the nice green space in your backyard/sideyard that allows you to connect to the outdoors. This allows you to enjoy summer BBQs and perhaps entertain easily in the summer. (I would put sliding glass door from your dining room to make it happen easily in your house). You can't afford the linear foot without cabinets in the kitchen. So you have to put the slider in the dining. This is a typical small home solution. An easy way to make your house livable is to put a deck across the east side of the house (kitchen dining side if this give you a nice access to the yard and increasing the entertaining space without adding on to the house.) 2. Dining area that accomodates a larger group of people with rearrangement of furniture to host occasional parties, ie Thanksgiving, birthday parties, having another family over for dinner is ABSOLUTELY necessary for long term staying power of a small home. I think this is a more important criteria than actual eat-in kitchen. When the house cannot accomodate life's meaningful events in your own home, you feel that your house is not "good" or "big" enough. I think older home designs (pre-WWII) understood this well and gave generous spaces to the dining area even though they did not give enough to the kitchen. Imagine feeling that you can never host a Thanksgiving dinner for 10 at your house because there is no way to make it happen even with rearrangement of the furniture.... In your current kitchen, you can probably seat 6 to 8 adults in the dining and a card table with kids in the living room. Set the table close to the dining opening near the fireplace and have a nice Thanksgiving/holiday party at your home for 10 or more people. This allows you to create memories for your kids. In many of your plans, there is no way you can host the holidays at your home: ie the banquet kitchen and the kitchen eat in table.... These are great for larger homes where there are other areas to host a large party but not in a small home, IMHO. Do you forsee yourself hosting family parties? Dining rooms that are somewhat open to living room rearranges furniture easier for parties. There are people who never host sit down dinners (informal for families. I am not even taking FORMAL) at their homes because it is impossible. On the other hand, I have been in homes that are much smaller but the house makes holiday dinners happen. If you think having these life's events in your home is important to you, then you need to design for it. I think many of your designs show 36 inch opening between the dining and LR. I think this is smaller than what you already have. (58 inches, I am reading). I am not sure what the reason is behind this.... I would open up dining area as much you can given the load bearing condition. Figure out the house first then the kitchen. This is really important! This is not easy because you have to optimize everything and look ahead to the kind of family you will have. You need to have a reasonable plan for various phases of your family's life. For example, if you are a family that will watch TV in the basement, then you need to plan for the basement media room. More questions about the house: How will you use your basement as you have kids? Will you be satisfied with 1 bath on the main or wil need/want to add 1/2 or 1 bath on the main? Where is the nice part of the yard? How will you access that? Do you use the garage to park? If so, do you enter the house through the kitchen? Do you just use the garage as a storage and never enter the house that way? You can add storage in the garage easily to put overflow kitchen stuff in there IF you move the kitchen to where the dining is currently. (as is one of your ideas) In a small home, I actually prefer this type of arrangement than making a kitchen that is too big for the house... (there should be a balance of rooms in a given house) Do you have places for young toddlers/school aged kids to go and play on a rainy/cold day? Where will the toddlers eat? (I had a small toddler table next to my kitchen island for couple years until my kids were old enough to climb the stool easily. The booster chair streapped to the stool did not work for us as well.) Do you have places for teenagers to hangout and have some privacy? Do you have a place for adults to have a little quiet and solitute from one another. (Bedroom is fine for this if you design for it) Do you have a place for occasional overnight guests? How do you enter the house? Where to you drop your stuff as you enter? When I look at your LR, it looks underutilized to me. i would close that opening, and put a wall there so you can cluster the seating arrangement next to the FP. Then you move the kitchen where the DR is now. You create some storage in the garage that stores all your large occasional kitchen stuff. The dining room should have a large opening to the LR which makes the rearranging for large parties easy. You can see into the dining and you feel more connected to the family. (if you DH watches TV and he won't budge from that, then you need to be able to see the TV from the kitchen to feel connected to the family) The couch should face the FP and you can have a console behind the couch which will create a space near the front door a sense of entry. These are some ideas to get you started.... Good luck.

My experience is “DON’T USE MINWAX FOR ANYTHING, ESPECIALLY THEIR POLYSTAIN”!!!!! I sat around for 2 weeks trying to stain everything and having issues with stain dripping or being uneven and stripping it back off to do it again. I knew it must be the stain because I was doing everything according to what I’ve seen on YouTube by Bruce for the Minwax products. The only problem was that that was the only color in the stores that I liked (Bombay Mahogany) When I started reading reviews I saw that everyone was having same issues. I finally got in touch w/ painter friend who said that’s why he didn’t use Minwax products anymore. He hooked my up with Old Master Gel Stain in Rich Mahogany and wow what a difference. Bad news is I had to strip all the old stuff off so it’s like I did my cabinets 2x. Still not quite done but I’ll post pics off my progress and the Minwax nightmare vs what Old General looks like. My cabinets are pine and with gel stain you don’t have to condition wood but with regular stain always use wood conditioner first or it will be a blotchy job. Also you need to make sure any scratches or flaws in wood are sanded out or stain will highlight them big time. The last piece of advice is that when you’re sanding to get scratches out, you must sand through the grits. For example: if you’re using 80 grit to get out a deeper scratch, you’ll want to follow up with a 150 grit then a 180 grit or 240 grit. You can’t just jump from 80 grit to 180 or 240, trust me I tried. 240 can remove scratches 80 grit leaves, by sanding through the grits you’re leaving smaller scratches until with the last grit the eye can’t see any scratch. To check if scratches are gone hold wood horizontal while shine light from the bottom of wood piece, with eyes just above eye level peer down wood toward light and any flaws should be visible. Also when using oil based stains if you wipe wood down with mineral spirits first any scratches will show up right away. Let the mineral spirits dry and then sand out.

FWIW, I think the new treads on my staircase -- unfinished oak -- were about $75 each . . . So, I'm guessing I have over $1200-1800 in materials for oak treads, oak balusters, oak handrail, etc . . . My new stair treads were part of a much larger project, so I haven't pulled out the costs, but, I'd estimate $3000-5000 at least to hire someone to redo the stairs. I would guess you'd need to replace the entire treads, and, thus, probably your balusters and handrail . . ., so, yes, live with the carpet until you can't stand it. A cheap alternative to oak treads, if you can DIY the labor and want cheap materials . . . is to use pine stair treads and stain them. I did that for our basement stairs (java gel stain by general finishes), and I love it. White risers. Black stained treads. Is dinged and banged up thoroughly from heavy use of just a few months, but the stain is durable, so, it just looks banged up, but the stain doesn't wear away. I *hate* carpet (it's all, all, all gone!! Woohoo!), but I wasn't going to pay $$ for basement stairs . . . so the stained pine was a good compromise for me. (I wouldn't want to pay labor costs to stain/finish pine treads . . . as the labor is such a huge part of the cost . . . I had my GC lay down the treads - quick and easy -- and then I did the finish work.)

Condos, senior neighborhoods etc. I'm 47 and I would never want to burden my child with rolling out my trash (and doing a lot of other things) when I could move to an area with better services as I need them. When my parents were in their 50's they moved to their ranch house and used to say the same thing to us. However when it became clear they were no longer able to live in their house without assistance, they started balking at the idea of moving to something with better services. As they aged they didn't quite realize how much more help they needed, even after we got my Mom full time help during the day. (Mom had parkinsons and started to lose her ability to think clearly, while my Dad kept his facilities till the day he died) So would it have been better to drag my parents out kicking and screaming to someplace else, or better to help them to still live in their home. And since Dad was "clear of mind" I doubt a court would have allowed it. Once my Mom passed away, my Dad moved in with my sister. But that was his choice because he realized he couldn't maintain the house himself and he was afraid at his age of living alone. Trust me when I say the decision is never an easy one on either side of the fence.