Gosh would never have thought of any of these things. I figured though, once we start digging through what is left of our home, we will find things from the old house we will want to incorporate into the new house. I never thought of embedding them though, but I had thought of maybe trying to reuse the old front porch, maybe put up a welcome sign of some sort. Also, the old fireplace chimney is still standing tall and proud. Thought of maybe trying to make some sort of outdoor fireplace entertaining/sitting area. Great post. Thank you

Hi Heather, I apologize if my comments are redundant since I didn't read through all the previous comments. We have 5 kids, and we have a similar upstairs loft type set up, but ours doesn't have the open railing along it. We have a 2 story great room similar to yours, and the railing is open between the foyer and the great room. We like the 2 story great room, although it can be challenging to decorate. One thing that we did that I love was make the "cat walk" the upstairs hallway overlooking the great room and the foyer extra wide. Ours is 8 feet wide. It makes that hallway feel less scary with openings on both sides, and it feels welcoming. I know this is personal preference, but with kids, I would close off the overlook from the loft to the great room. I'm imagining that you are giong to use that loft space for toys and video games, etc., and it is nearly impossible to keep that looking nice at all times. Plus, the noice traveling down will be difficult to control. Also, my kids have thrown or accidentally dropped things from the "cat walk" which is around the corner from the loft (like your set up) to the great room. I know that there would be many more things being thrown over if that railing were open all the way around. The other things I was wondering about was your 1st floor laundry room. In our house, the kids generate the most amount of laundry, and it is a TON. Our laundry is upstairs and it makes it so much more convenient to gather up their clothes and put them away. I couldn't imagine hauling baskets and basekets of clothes up and down the stairs. The other thing I agree with are the windows in the kitchen. I'd try to get more natural light in the kitchen, and have windows on the wall with the fridge (since they aren't covered by a 4 season room). I worry that your kitchen will be dark otherwise. Finally, since your dining room is your main and only dining area where you will put a table, I wonder if you'd want to have a sight line from there to the great room. We have only one main dining area as well, and I know it's nice for us to be able to have a sight line into the great room. Although we start dinner as a family, kids start taking off/wandering off while we're still eating since it takes the adults awhile to eat since we don't sit down from running around untile everybody is practically done. Anyway, as much as we'd like everybody to sit at the table the entire time and engage in lenghty dinner conversation, the reality is that we're just glad that we got everyone around the table for some part of dinner and that we can still keep an eye on them in the family room and feel like we're still having dinner together. Anyway, best of luck. It looks like it's going to be a wonderful home.

I need help to understand what I'm looking at. I am an engineer and used to reading drawings with certain symbols. You have used different symbols than I've seen, so can you please explain what yours mean? Normally I would make some guesses at what the symbols mean but I see enough inconsistency that I hesitate to guess. I think I recognize the toilet and doors, and possibly the sink, but what do the sunspots and various colored ovals mean? And why is the floor partially shown with "tiles" and part of the floor is not? Is the space outlined in blue "walls" a separate room? If so can't the door open inward to that room? Otherwise you have a door in your back at the sink or a door blocking the heater. What is the meaning of the color of the walls? You have skinny thin black walls, blue, aqua, and pink/flesh colored walls. By using your own symbol for a toilet, you may not be representing the actual size. The front of a toilet is usually 30 inches from the wall. If your floor markings are 1-foot squares, then you might have problems. For another example, a 36 inch wide entry door is very large, and your drawing shows the door through to the wet room being more like 29 inches. One of the reasons for making drawings before hand is to fit everything in. If your drawings are not accurate to at least the 1/4 inch, it could very easily double your costs when the plumbers and carpenters cannot make everything fit in the room. How do you put a 62.00 inch long tub into a 60-inch long room? Where does your waste basket go? Where does your toilet paper holder go? Where do the towel racks/hangers go? What is the prominent pink arrow? What are the blue and white dots in the wall by the heater in Plan A? Why is the wet room in Plan B larger than Plan A? Plan A has a black area in the upper left corner of the wet room. What is that? And is that a tub to the right? I don't get that room at all. Do you have ventilation in the wet room? What is the symbol in the middle of the right hand wall (I assume the pinkish thing outlined in dashed lines is a wall), back of the toilet, and back of the sink? If your shower is really six feet long, you can easily keep the towels inside the room with you and they should not get wet. My parents used to have a 5-foot long shower and much of it stayed very dry. And if that is your shower and some of those ovals are faucet handles, that means you have to walk all the way in to the shower, right under the shower head, to turn on the water to heat it up. If you put the faucet handles near the door and the shower head on the far wall, then you can reach in, turn on the water, and not get wet. Is your wet room completely sealed by the door?

To piggyback on Virgil's comment...could you design the empty nest space on one floor with separate climate zones so that later on you can completely close off part of the house unless you have guests. This makes perfect sense. Specifics I'd care about: - Place everything you and your spouse will need once you're "empty nesters" on the first floor ... and make sure it's elder-friendly. - This is an ugly thought, but it's realistic: It's easy to consider you and your spouse living in this 4000 square foot house together as empty nesters ... but one day one of you will be widowed. Will 4000 square feet still feel okay then? - Put the kids' bedrooms upstairs, but make sure you can close off that space when no one's using it. Be sure you have at least one bedroom that can hold at least a queen bed so that visiting adult children (who bring along a spouse) can be housed comfortably, and think about a room that could become a grandchildren's room. - This upstairs space might one day be needed for a live-in caretaker (who could be a child or grandchild, or could be a paid caregiver). - Lose the loft and instead make the basement a kids' hang out space. - A completely different thought: Design the house so that you have two bedrooms upstairs for your younger children ... and a one-bedroom apartment (with a separate entrance PLUS a lockable connection to the main house) for the older boys. My mom has this set-up in her house, and it has proven itself very flexible over the years. In her case, the one-bedroom apartment is connected to the main house with a breezeway. Initially an elderly relative lived in the apartment. Each of us kids took turns living in that bedroom. It's been temporary housing for a number of people. Now my mother lives in the apartment, while my brother and his family have the main house. Heck that double bedroom might not even get a year or more out of it before the boys are off to college. I say that because it may be another year or two before the house is built. Yes, realistically, the oldest boys will barely ever live in the house ... but assuming they're going away for the traditional college route, they'll be home for holidays and summers. They may or may not come home after college, but they're not likely to stay long. My oldest has been out of college two years now, and as I think about her high school classmates, only one is still living at home with her mom ... and it's because she is a single mother. I know plenty of empty nesters living in 4000+ sq.ft. houses and none of them are overwhelmed. Eh, I bought my current 2400 square foot house from an empty nester who was overwhelmed both with the upkeep and the cost of the home. I know a couple other people who would like to downsize ... but they can't unload their large houses and/or can't find something small and manageable for the same cost now. I do know one retired guy who stocks grocery shelves part-time literally because he can't afford his oversized house ... neither can he sell it. As for maintenance and upkeep, well, if one can afford to build such a house, they will probably still be able to afford it 30 years later. And also afford the help to clean it. Totally disagree. Speaking hypothetically, definitely not pointing at the OP, whose financial situation I don' t know: pretty much anyone can borrow to build a big house ... but that doesn't mean the individual can afford to retire AND maintain the big house. No one wants to discover too late that he cannot afford to travel, etc. in retirement because of the necessity of maintaining a big house. I have always told my husband that I wanted a home where all the kids would have a bed to sleep on when they chose to come back home to visit. Yes, I always want to have a space for my kids ... but at 4000 square feet, you have space for other people's kids too. Remember that an average house in America today is 2400 square feet; you're looking at practically double that size. I agree that's important too, but a few thoughts on that. How many will be moving far from home and how many will be staying with you at the same time? This is more unpredictable than your own health. With four kids, will they live nearby and visit but never stay the night? will they move far away? will they likely come back to visit at the same time? will they send their kids to stay with you two weeks every summer? Other thoughts: - That's a lot of garage for anyone. - I like the connection between the laundry and the master closet. - The master bath could use improvement. - You're devoting a huge amount of space to bedrooms ... but not nearly as much to eating space. Fast forward a decade or two: imagine four children, spouses and grandchildren ... you don't have anywhere to feed even half that group! And, in my experience, you're more likely to have family for a day /a meal than for overnight. - The placement of the toilet in the shared bathroom seems to be very much "out in the open". I get that this bathroom is designed for sharing, but it could be better.