The generic Paint program works fine for copy/paste, draw lines, etc. Your image of the boys brushing their teeth side by side cracked me up. I haven't been exposed to that many sets of boys close in age, but of the ones I have experience with, that would not be something that would last very long! Actually, I would say boy/girl would need the most privacy, and girl/girl would need the least with boy/boy in the middle. Girls tend to congregate in the bathroom together - still do as adults. My sister and I had separate vanities, but we often made sure to be in there getting dressed at the same time to have someone to talk to or to get an opinion real quick. The small sink in the toilet/tub area was more of an idea of just a bathroom within a bathroom. Even though you will not use bedroom 4 as a bedroom, the next occupant might and for this size of house, 3 bedrooms sharing one bathroom is not something I have really seen.

I have lots of thoughts, but would like to say that, like pp's, overall it is nice. I think you might be able to add the extra stairs to the first floor end and just move the LR door down the hall. I would reconfigure the powder room to get the toilet water service off the outside wall and give yourself a bigger vanity. Simply back the toilet up to the laundry wall room in the back corner of the PR and run the vanity along the same wall before the toilet as you come in the door. That gives the toilet a little niche beside the vanity, people tend to feel a little more secure with that arrangement :). You will also get your pipes off the outside wall, have water service for both laundry and PR on the same wall (less expensive for plumbing), have room for a 48" vanity (nice to have extra storage) and still allow a whopping 36" of space in which to center the toilet. Or you could have an 18" tower cab, 36" vanity, standard 30" wide space for toilet. Those measurements would adjust by 4" depending on which side you're putting your interior wall width. You need to swap the washer and dryer to put the dryer on the outside wall for venting and the washer further away from the outside wall. If it were me and I had both a LR (quiet place to read?) and a FR (TV, games, etc.), I think I'd take a few more feet off the LR and give it to the DR so that you can accommodate a crowd when needed and get better use out of the room for crafting and/or have room for piano or another secondary use. I'd put pocket doors in that cased opening between the DR and the FR. That way they can be open when needed and closed when desired (you'd be surprised how often in family life that need arises; especially if you do use it for sewing or put a piano, music practice area, or art corner in there! Or even if it just becomes a quiet place to use your laptop). I would also try to make the kitchen a little more accessible to the family room. Anyone with kids won't be able to see or check on them easily. Kitchen to family room is the highest traffic flow and talk-across in our family. I wouldn't want to have go through the mudroom (breakfast nook?) or go around through the dining room taking several turns to get to it. Pedestrian flow would be great, but even an old fashioned pass through over the base cabinets on that wall would help. The kitchen also seems a little widespread with over 10 feet between the cabinet run and the sink. It's not enough space for an eat-in table or island, but a little too much to me to just be open, kwim? If that extra space is your eat-in area and not mudroom, you could try schussing the whole kitchen to the back wall, swapping the peninsula with the range counter so that the range can vent to an outside wall. That shortens the distance walking in with groceries to counters and cabinets. Also, then your eat-in nook area could be open to or have a direct door to the FR and be closer to the formal dining room, too, for overflow family events (think kids' table or "befores" buffet, removed but not too far away from grown ups). As for collapsing or making the space between the outside wall and the pantry cabinet run more useful, I'm not sure, but I think it could be done by playing around with the arrangement a bit. And, yes, I'd definitely put the fridge elsewhere to make that doorway more open. Upstairs, how about making the two itty-bitty hinged-door closets between the office and BR one long two-sided closet with sliding doors instead? The office/extra BR probably won't need much closet space most of the time and that would give the BR more. Bath access for front left BR is awkward, but I'm not sure how to get around that with the center stairwell. You might trying playing with the idea of changing to a left-front entry instead of center, but that would be a lot reworking that might not work... Finally, what orientation is and what is the view out the left side (LR, DR, FR side) of the house? I see a lot of windows, but this seems to be a narrow lot plan. There is only one window on the other long side. I am wondering what you get to see from different places in the house and how the light works during the day.

I'm not a huge fan of two-story rooms and, like J&J bathrooms, you'll find multiple discussions here on GW regarding what's right/wrong with two story rooms. You might want to review some of those so that you can make an informed decision about opting for two-story spaces. Of course, it may be that you're planning a roof line that will reduce most of that two story space to a much lower height. However, even if you decide that you really want the WOW-factor of having a two story living room, I really think you should rethink having it extend over to the dining area and HALF-WAY across the kitchen. It's going to look really odd and accidental for the ceiling to suddenly drop down from two-story height to single story height right over the middle of your kitchen island and right over the middle of your sink. Have you given any thought to how you would light that island and put lights over the sink????? If it were me and I wanted a two-story living room, I'd drop the ceiling back down to normal height along a line extending from the right edge of the pantry to the south wall. That would provide a visual divide between living room and dining room, give the dining room a lower ceiling and avoid the weird ceiling height jump right over the center of the kitchen island. A lower ceiling in the dining room would allow that room to feel much cozier. And, you would gain up to 200 sq ft of extra space upstairs for almost NO additional cost. Even if you plan for a sloping roof on that side of the house so that only a portion of the extra space upstairs would be fully useable, 100 sq ft of extra space would allow for larger bedrooms, larger upstairs closets and/or a second bathroom so as to get rid of the J&J. At the very least, each bedroom could have it's own vanity area so that only the toilet and bathtub are shared. The only thing I really dislike about the downstairs is having the "laundry area" in the pass thru space coming from the garage. Consider...a couple of friends drop by for drinks before they and you and your significant other all head out to dinner together. You decide to drive so everybody heads out to the garage to leave. Or, you pick up your teenager and one of his/her classmates from school and bring them both to your house because they're working on a school project together. Of course you pull into the garage as usual to unload. Do you REALLY want to have these guests walking past the family laundry that is stacked on top of the dryer waiting to be put away, or having to step over/around the piles of dirty laundry waiting for its turn to go into the washer??? Let's face it, getting laundry done takes time and most of us have at least a bit of laundry piled up in the laundry room on occasion. Do you want to have to constantly make sure your laundry room space is immaculate? Or, do you want to face your teen's utter mortification if that classmate who has to wade over the family's dirty laundry just happens to be someone he/she has a huge crush on? Me, I'd move the laundry room upstairs (into some of the extra 200 sq ft gained by getting rid of the two-story ceiling over the dining room. Or, I'd move the laundry to the basement. Just my 2 cents.

I, too, had worried about the cabinets coming all the way down to the counter being so close. The BlueStar installation guide says that adjoining walls or cabinets need to be 6 inches from the stove. I think that can be arranged. Question about the location of the range: At present it is centered with the island and the opening. Wouldn't it look strange if it was off center? The area to the left of the range was purposely left "blank" so that we could display art and maybe eventually a flat screen TV. For now we are going to use the TV we have and just leave it above the refrigerator. There will be pocket doors on that cabinet. It does seem a little high but it's mostly just for listening rather than watching. The refrigerator will be a standard size one, not super tall like a built-in fridge. Regarding the pet station, we have a cat and a westie (under 18 lbs) and plan to use the alcove for the filtered water station. Their food we don't leave out (because they eat each other's food if we do.) But the water thing is kind of bulky and I wanted it out of the way. As far as the drink fridge. It's mostly an overflow drink storage for beer and can drinks, just a second fridge. We will also have a bar with a beverage center next to the family room. Right now I have the island 4 feet from the range. If we make it only 3 feet will there be enough room for both of us to maneuver around there? I think I'd rather "thin" out the island. It doesn't have to be that fat. Originally I had thought that I might build some sort of storage under the overhang and actually use that space rather than just leave it propped up in an empty space. We'll definitely do that if we use a local cabinet builder, but if we do semi-custom I don't know what they might have that will do the job. Right now we have 52 inches of clearance on both the dishwasher and refrigerator side of the island. That seems like that is enough to me especially since we don't have a big family that will constantly be running through. Would you sacrifice island space for more clearance? Thanks so much for the ideas so far. Moving the trash pull out sounds like a viable option. DH definitely wants the open shelves for pot storage. I know it will be a mess most of the times and will probably get beat all to hell with him banging pots around, but in this case function wins out against form.