One more comment, and a question: Note that your plumbing is strung from one end of the house to the other. Downstairs you have the kitchen on one end and the bathroom on the other end. Upstairs you have the master bath on the far left and the other bathrooms and the laundry on the far right. You will save significant money on plumbing if you scoot these rooms closer together. For example, upstairs you have two "back to back" secondary bathrooms. This is economical because the plumber will run water through that center wall, and it'll serve both bathrooms. The laundry room is close to these bathrooms, so a pipe'll have to run across the hall, but that's still cheaper than running the pipes across the whole house. You'll save on installation, and you'll save on materials. Consolidation of plumbing also saves in two other ways: A wall that contains water must be 6" thick, whereas other interior walls may be only 4" thick. Thus, a non-water wall is cheaper to build and allows you a few more inches of interior space. Any pipe is subject to leaking sometime down the road -- perhaps because you accidentally cut into it or drove a nail into it, or perhaps because it grew old and rusty. If your pipes are shorter and more consolidated, you have less plumbing to potentially go bad. This lessens the potential problems you might have to pay to fix, and it lessens the number of walls that might one day have to be opened up to look at the plumbing. And the question: Since windows matter so much, and since a pool is involved, where's north on your plan?

neoheatpump - he lives in N CA in 1000 sq feet - do you really think a 2 stage furnace makes sense? OP - Your heat load is hard to determine because you may have zero insulation and a window open all the time. Probably not but impossible to say without more info. Since your heat load is hard to determine, it is hard to say if you can even have a 2 stage furnace that makes sense. I know around here, when it is 60 degrees out, I don't need heat. In most cold climates, you don't need heat at that outside temp. Solar and internal heat gains give you well over 10 degrees in an insulated, tight house. I'll guess that you have a leaky older house. Your best bang for your buck is to tighten the house. A 95% furnace is overkill for your climate and size house. I would guesstimate that for your situation, you'd probably need $200 a year in gas. A 95% furnace might save you $10 a year over a 90 and $30 over a 80. Very hard to get that to pay off when you pay $1000 extra for it (or more). If you need more gas than that for heat, then you would be better off insulating the house better. My political rant here is that CA is so stupid sometimes. You would do better for the environment by having a heat pump. It would be more efficient in every way than using NG to heat in a mild climate. But you have tiered electric rates that discourage your best option. All they have to do is relax the tier in the winter for heat pumps. Lots of places have lower electric rates for homes with heat pumps - around here we just have lower electric rates in the winter (to encourage heat pumps). Rant off - if you stay in lower electric rates, a heat pump will be cheaper to run. With the typical $.10 a kwh and $1 a therm, at mild temps a heat pump will be half the cost of NG or less. It will cost more however and may not pay off but is a better deal than a 95% furnace (compared to your most cost effective 80% or 90%). Rant back on - does CA mandate 95% furnaces? It would be far more effective to outlaw SUVs or mandate hybrids....

Hi Sugarbaby, Your post was very interesting and it will be exciting to see what the gurus help you figure out. I'm not a guru, but I'll toss some ideas out that may or may not be helpful. Do you use the coat closet as a coat closet? If not, I'd be eying it up for your pantry to get the pantry cupboard out of the kitchen. Someone posted an awesome pantry that was a converted closet (about the size of yours) filled in with Ikea drawers a few weeks ago. It was amazing what they were able to fit inside there. Edited to add the thread with Mulemom's ikea pantry drawers, below. I really think you need more landing space next to your sink. I realize you were trying to avoid corner cupboards, but with the size of your kitchen I think putting a corner cupboard where you have your pantry drawn would give you some desperately needed counter space. You'll need a spot for dirty dishes (both from the table and from any cooking or baking activities) to land before they go in the dw, and 2' is awfully tight for a family of 7. You are also going to want to shorten the island a bit. Even with a cd fridge, it's a bit too tight, I think. Most CDs still stick out past the counter, unfortunately. That's a main walk area and it will function much better for your active family if it's wider. It's fantastic that you are starting your planning so early. We started planning our kitchen when we first moved into this house 4 years ago, and it has taken us until a few weeks ago to hammer it out. (Lots of challenging "architecture", big family, extra appliances, etc.) Hopefully yours won't take nearly as long. Best wishes! : ) Here is a link that might be useful: Mulemom's closet is about 1/2 way down the page This post was edited by laughable on Thu, Feb 7, 13 at 12:04

Glad I came back and checked. I will first answer the questions. (1) Who does most of the prep and cooking? My wife Stephanie does most of the prep and cooking. (2) Who does most of the cleanup? Most of the cleanup is done by me and the kids (there are 4 kids, 3 who are old enough to help). (3) Does cleaning up ever take place during prepping/cooking? Some times, but usually it is after. buehl, I think you are right about the dimensions, so that does mean my estimating for cabinets is way off. I am actually talking with our architect today so this will be a big help. I think we may need to move the door down a foot or two, so we have a little more cabinet space along that wall. Now that we have the dimension right, do you have any good suggestions for the layout? I think we like the idea of having the fridge close to the dining room because then it won't be in the main traffic pattern. We do want to make sure we have enough counter space beside the sink and the cooktop, and we also want enough drawer space, but we think we can add drawers to the island s well.