I think you're on the right track. This is both a more economical plan and more functional plan in terms of livability.

Your kitchen is going to get summertime West light and heat, so if there was a porch of some sort on the West side you could mitigate that effect.

You have a good southern exposure, how is the light there? If good, then with the right windows and thermal mass you could actually gain more heat than you lose. You'll want some deep overhangs though do deal with summer light.

With your staircase in the center you now have the flexibility of putting a bedroom in each corner on the 2nd floor and having a fairly short hallway to reach all of them.

If you switch closet and bath in the master suite, the closet can act as an insulating buffer between your garage and master suite and bath.

Your placement of the mudroom is ideal. From garage to kitchen in a short distance and right up the stairs to the bedrooms is just a few more steps away. Now the question is whether sole entry from garage is going to work with the way your family lives? Maybe flip the mudroom and utility room and allow both a garage entry and an exterior entry into the mudroom.

Alex House - thank you! LOVE the suggestions about flipping the mudroom and utility and the master bath and closet. I also appreciate your other points about overhangs on the south side and shade on the west side of the kitchen.

Notice your traffic patterns in the center of the house and compare to the old plan. Your dining room is the only room through which you have to transit to get to another room. That central hallway now performs very efficiently, on the left, on the right, up top and bottom too. Less hallway means more living space for you to use and enjoy.

Wow, I can't believe I'm seeing this. With soo many great websites of floor plans that can be bought for under a $2000 why are you doing this? This is my favorite one......http://www.houseplans.com/

Oh Nick! I'm literally in the middle of an email to our architect, but now have to stop and think about it more...because I like this option quite a lot. Thank you (I guess!).

What I like about Nick's design is that it gets rid of those walls that otherwise cut off your view and connection to the LR. Also, guests walking in, with the right windows opposite, will have a view of your views! To me, those are both big wins for your plan.

We have that type of front door entrance - opposite the front door is the switchback stairs to the basement with a huge window at the landing. Our land is all wooded, so I call the view from the front door my money view. It is a really nice set-up.

Thanks for the input! I really like Nick's design. It makes the mud/utility spaces bigger, and provides that view. The only negative is I don't want a completely open kitchen/dining/living (probably not a popular view, but with three young kids, some degree of separation is nice). I think it'd be easy to provide that separation with a partial wall of bookshelves or even a two-sided fireplace, though.

Do you plan on having a fireplace? If so, put it smack dab in the middle of the room and use it as a divider between LR and DR. That would give you separation.

Alex House - wouldn't a two-sided fireplace work great for that? It'd give heat to both the dining room and living room. I like the idea!

Besides moving the entry to the side, the main change Nick made is to move the garage outside the house "cube." The garage will only share one wall with the house instead of two. Are there any advantages/disadvantages to that? Does that increase cost for foundation work? Is it healthier to have more separation between living spaces/garage?

Btw, I've send ideas to our architect and we have a call set for Friday. I'm excited to see this moving along.

A two sided fireplace is not an efficient heat generator, it's an aesthetic feature, designed to allow you to LOOK at a blazing fire from two directions.

A few points. Putting a fireplace on an outside wall does wonders for heating the outdoors. If you want the heat inside in the home, then better to put it centrally in the home.

If you would like to use the fireplace for heat, then steer away from traditional fireplaces and incorporate a Masonry Heater instead. Google the term and read about them and view the pictures. Essentially you fire the wood once per day and burn it in an inferno so hot that all the gases and smoke burn as well (1,100 F rather than the 600F in wood stoves) and all of this heat gets stored in tons of rock or brick and then is released slowly and steadily, unlike the rapid heating of a wood stove followed by the rapid cooling.

With Nick's plan, the bulk of the garage blocks North winds from your entry courtyard. Nice feature. Your plan had the bulk of the garage inside the footprint which makes the roof line a bit easier.

Also keep in mind that your first floor has to integrate with your 2nd floor. When you had central stairs, then a central hallway can be quite short and yet still access rooms anchored in each corner. With the stairs now on the East wall your hallway in going to have to be extended a bit more to reach the room in above your bath and next to the garage. Your plan, with a switch, allowed mudroom entry from both the garage and the outside, Nick's plan puts the mudroom entry only from within the garage.

What I like about Nick's plan is that he increased your Southern exposure in the K, D, L area and he uses the bulk of the garage to shelter your entry and the roof line will have a bit more oomph and pizzazz to it that what you would get from a more square footprint.

I keep learning and learning...thank you!

If you are going to have architects involved all you need to do is give them is a schematic layout like the one you have shown us and let them offer their suggestions. Trying to develop the plan to a higher level can be detrimental to the design process. Don't take a sandwich to a banquet.

Welcome back, Renovator8.

renovator8 - thank you! That's a fabulous line.

I've sent the architects the schematic I drew, plus comments on what I thought worked or didn't work for us in two of their four proposals. The next step is a call to go over everything.

I just want to add how much I appreciate the feedback on my two posts. I value the input and help I've received. I'm sure I'll be back for more advice when I get the next round from our architects.