kirkhall the north side/wall is at the top of the drawing, the south at the bottom. (the north arrow is shown to the right of the first floor). The wall facing south is the one with the front door, so its where the sun comes from most of the day. just fyi, there is about 7.5 ft ceiling height 5 ft from the south wall in the master bathroom, and there is a dormer in the center, which adds extra ceiling height (although not where the toilet is shown) (Also the dormers are not very clearly drawn...sorry about that....these are my drawings, so you know...drafting standards are lax, or rather non existent....) having the master suite upstairs in these cape style houses is tricky, in my opinion. the layouts in these houses are really constrained with the reduced ceiling height at those walls. however, the overall style has a lot of appeal for many reasons for us (appearance, energy efficiency, cost to build, etc.) the ridge runs east to west, and there is a lot of height there (entrance to master bedroom, loft overlooking below, and guest bath) I was originally advocating for the master suite on the first floor, for one floor living if necessary. DH has successfully argued for keeping all of the "public" areas downstairs, and "private areas" upstairs. Upstairs will have a cozy feel. He says we can always put an elevator in where the closet by the stairs is (1st floor) if we have too (I bet that's not cheap!). I'm with you on walking into the master bedroom facing the closet. it doesn't seem ideal for sure. I'm open to ideas. just keep in mind, that big window in the dormer on the north wall in the master bedroom looks out over the property and has views of the mountains. I don't want to block it with a closet. kelhuck re point 1) - i didn't even think about that. We toured a house with the stairs arranged just like it, and thought it was great. That's a good point though. I've thought about the stairs quite a bit, but never from that angle (odd in retrospect). They also had a little more space between the stairs and front door than I'm showing. 2)laundry - yeah, this is a big one for me. I go round and round on this:) The trade-off is to just have a laundry closet, but have the laundry upstairs, or put it in the mud-room, have more space, but have to haul laundry up and down stairs all the time. right now, i'm leaning towards not caring if the laundry clutters up the loft a bit, but there is not much room there at all, its only barely works. currently, my washer and dryer are in our garage, which is not conditioned. I bring baskets of laundry back into our bedroom, and process everything there. S, its not far fetched to have a small closet, but the appeal of a little room I can close off is strong. I swear I want a new house just for a space conditioned laundry room:) 3) pretty much, yes. the appeal of timber homes is showing off the structure, those gorgeous timbers. all timber homes I've seen have a least some two story view inside. however, there is strong sentiment on this board against it, that its loud. since I've never lived in a house like this, I'm inclined to listen. its a valid point, especially when its more than just the two of us (guests and/or kids). even just making the open to below over the foyer instead of the tv/family/living room may solve that. I dunno yet. I'll have a chat w/ dh about it later. 4) dont' worry about insulation, the entire house is going to be wrapped in SIPS. initial calcs for the efficiency we are looking for are calling for 10" SIPS, whereas almost everyone uses 6". No worries, this house will be tight (and require mechanical ventilation). we are focusing heavily on the envelope, so our budget is focused on SIPS and windows. I may even hae to sacrifice my nice kitchen initially (blasphemy!) in order to pay for it up front, but we'll see. liriodendron - that's awesome that you are using PV. the price is coming down, so its actually starting to make sense to pay for it, instead of just being for people like dh and me, who just have non-mainstream tastes and interest (energy nuts, sort of:) the property was logged 5 years before we bought it, so it doesn't have many trees (no trees anywhere near the home site) (and its an ugly mess, we've just now started re-planting). the south facing garage roof will have full sun all day. if it weren't for that, we would angle the house more, so the back faces the mountains a bit better, but we didn't want to sacrifice the front/south wall of the house with respect to facing the sun too much. we like PV just cause we think its neat, and we're trying hard to justify it, but it may be a few years down the road before we consider actually paying for it.

Couple of ideas: If you plan to have guests at any time, you could rearrange the closet from the hallway so it opens into the foyer. That way you could put away guest coats (or your own) near the front door without walking through the great room. (See mockup below.) This also puts the door to BR 3 further from the public spaces of the house. I like kirkhall's suggestion for eliminating the angle in the morning room. If you made that a sliding door with the opening toward the lower part of the drawing, you'd still have easy access from the kitchen to the patio (for carrying beverages, or bringing meat to/from a grill) and yet have room for a round table in there. Check your kitchen dimensions carefully, especially the aisle in front of the refrigerator. Even counter depth refrigerators stick out farther than the standard counter, and you have to account for handles, door swing, etc. (Plus most ref's require an inch of air space at the back.) Check the specs for whatever fridge you're buying and make sure that it can be pulled all the way out (e.g. for servicing) without removing the doors or moving the island. Definitely post your kitchen plan on the kitchens forum too for the best way to lay it out. Unless you need the extra upper cabinet storage, consider making the whole top wall of the kitchen windows, and just use upper cabinets on the right and bottom walls. That would make your kitchen nice and bright, and would be especially great if you have a nice view out the back.

I'll confess to not being able to read the floor plan properly. But, I do love tile/stone in a kitchen. Looks like you have an island? does the kitchen continue past/around the island?

Where is the closet for the master.Are you going to actually use that tub because IMO you do not have the space for a free standing tub you need at least 12” all around it .BTW a seconf floor laundry is IMO a poor choice so when doing laundry you have to run upstairs every time a load needs to be moved , with a main floor one you take the laundry down and at the end take the laundry up 2 trips instead of four or maybe six. I aheb had both and would never do another 2nd floor laundry