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.

Thank you, everyone - that info is *really* helpful! gsciencechick - those businesses are great! We have actually done a little work to try to find similar businesses in our area (we're on the opposite coast from you - SF Bay Area), in the hopes that some of the "stuff" in our existing house can be re-used or at least recycled. The kicker is we'll save $ on dump fees for the rest of the structure, as well. Way cool all around. Glennsfc, thanks! Sounds like this is a company you've worked with before? breezy_2: thanks for the input, very much appreciated! Yes, I'm still getting my arms around the premium involved for reclaimed materials. But it's a philosophy we appreciate, a look we enjoy, and a surface we'll be seeing at a LOT, so I think (gulp) it might be worth it.... Floorguy: yikes! Thanks!! I definitely have some homework to do now. Question, and you (and glennsfc) are in the industry - most salvage/reclaimed wood houses seem to be in the midwest/east, which makes sense, because that's where a lot more of the sources of the materials are. Have you worked on any projects with any of these vendors that had to be shipped cross country (which I imagine is fairly easy and standard), but which ran in to issues: underestimated the amount of wood needed, or wood quality not as expected, etc etc.? Wondering how customer service is, and a little nervous about $20K worth of materials purchased sight unseen and not exactly an easy return-in-the-mail... Thanks again ~

We took out a load-bearing wall and needed to put in LVLs for the load needed. Our contractor then covered the LVLs with great looking wood that will be stained next week, to match barstools and cabinet backs. I had originally wanted a reclaimed beam but could not go that way because of specs . . . so you could also go the route of an engineered beam and cover it - and get it finished to look rustic. I'll post pics when ours is stained - right now it looks like a great lovely wooden beam up there. Good luck!

Just wanted to update. Ended up trying a few different designs and this is what we have now. Beams need to be stained. Could use some lighting suggestions. Morning Room: Great Room - the ridge beam did end up being really large but it doesn't obstruct the view from the second floor. There are some dark spots behind the beams that we'd like some ambient light in. Any ideas on placement locations and types? Either spots to paint the beams, or maybe spots in the eaves to paint the wall behind?