A couple of questions for clarification.

1. Is the addition being added two stories, albeit "sunken". You are in essence added two bedrooms downstairs plus the master suite up?
2. Where is the existing access from the garage to the house?

Alku,
That is so nice that you have a house with a view to the ocean and dunes!
I am usually in new home forum and they can help you there, too.
My guess is that now you have a "L" shaped house with the main entry by the spare bathroom and your DH placed the stairs there.

In general, and for resale value, it is better to place the master bedroom on the first floor, you could consider a new Master where you placed the 2 bedrooms but I totally underestand that you want the master to be on the second floor so you can enjoy the view.

Is the drawing to scale?
Can we have the dimensions placed on the drawing? In order to suggest anyting I need as many dim as you can and not only for the new area since everything needs to "flow"

Now, instead sinking the addition, is it possible to raise the level of the joists and trusses instead?
If this were my house, I preffer that because 3-level houses are more difficult to resale.

Good luck with your adventure!

The drawing looks 'squished' and out-of-proportion to me, which is really messing me up and making a 12 x 18 space seem more 'bowling alley' than it actually is. (Though we had a 12x21 master bedroom and I hated the proportions.)

I'm thinking the stairway placement is going to be pretty much a 'given', so the door to the master suite will need to be in a certain place. Can you tell me where that will need to be? And will the stairs exit into the 19 x 21 or right below it? Also, how much higher will the terrace be - so how many more steps?

The 19 foot dimension is a little tough for a master bedroom with a king bed, because you'll need at least 11' for the bed and two small nightstands. Give it a little more room to not feel cramped, and you're up to 13', leaving just 6' leftover -- not quite enough for a closet or spacious master bath. Putting the headboard on the 21' wall works -- but still, a dimension less than 13' for a master bedroom seems small.

The design I'm playing with puts the bathroom along the entire bottom section bordering the terrace -- you'd walk through the bath to get out to the terrace. While this sounds odd, a tile floor would be very forgiving to tracked in sand, and splitting a long narrow space in half can reduce the long & narrow appearance. I'm thinking shower and tub on one half, vanities on the other, with a walkway and french doors in between.

One other issue -- How 'high end' will this house be relative to the market when you're done? In other words, how tolerant will the market be to any compromises?

And I gotta admit I'm not loving that drawing program. Some plain ole' graph paper would be better for me...

Thanks everyone!

A few answers to question:

Jaymielo: Yes, the addition will be two stories. There will be two bedrooms downstairs, and the master upstairs.

There isn't direct access from the garage to the house right now. You exit the garage, turn, and walk two steps outside to get to our back door. The current back door is located where the new stairs start by the bathroom.

Marthaelena: Good guess on a door location! That's where our back door is currently located. The bottom of the layout is the front of our house, and the main entry is where the indentation is between the kitchen and livingroom.

My husband's grandparents designed and built this house in the 70's as their retirement home (hence the 2-bedroom house!), and it has ended up in DH's hands because he respects thier wishes that it stays in the family. So, resale isn't very important to us b/c we have no plans of ever leaving it. If life intervenes, property values here are such that we could sell for half it's value and still be able to buy a house outright anywhere but CA.

We would LOVE to be able not to do a 3-level, but we would have to either give up a level, or sink it 18-24" because of the height restrictions here; we can't be more than 24' above our curb. Supposedly the layout shown is to scale according to DH's program there, but I'm not sure I'm buying that. I'm going to get a better layout for you guys including ALL dimensions. I know from doing my kitchen that the more info I can give you, the more you'll be able to brainstorm with me.

Sweeby: I hear you on not liking that program! That's why DH has been the only one who's been working on the plans so far. Everytime he asks me to sit down with it, I just get that Ew feeling b/c that program is difficult to work with, and doesn't do a great job showing you what's going on. Graph paper plan or better program (like BHG) will follow later today.

The stairs will have to be included in the 19x21 addition space, and it makes the most sense to us to put them by the garage there. The terrace will be 3 or 4 steps up from the bedroom.

We may be able to gain a bit more width by raising the roof on the part of the current structure that's over the current bathroom and guest bedroom. However, we'll need to consider how that roofline will look from the outside because we don't want a funny looking house.

I'm open to whatever ideas you come up with! That's why I'm posting here- we need a fresh and different look on this.

Resale is unlikely, so we'd like to do what's best for us. Our house is currently at about the 60th percentile value wise for our neighborhood, even with it's current 2 bedrooms. This addition and the terrace with it's view, would probably move it up considerably. The house is pretty unique with it's atrium already.

Here is a link that might be useful:

We're putting together a layout with Chief Architect and will post that as soon as it's complete. There's a bit of a learning curve to that program...

HOWEVER, a bit of time with the tape measure revealed that the addition's dimensions are really 21' x 28'!! Talk about that online program not working well for us! Hopefully that will give us some more layout options, and explains why the layout above looks so long and skinny.