Where is the forever home? If you are in a hurricane area, then hipped will save you mucho dollars on insurance. In FL I don't think anyone even builds gabled anymore.

We are in the mountains of central PA. Wind and hurricanes are not an issue here.

In that case I prefer a gable roof and I think they are more common.

I agree. Gable looks better to me too,

Thanks for the input. Making every little decision can be paralyzing sometimes. Which is why we are taking it slow and trying our best to think everything through.

Neither perspective shows any roof overhangs, either eve or rake sides. I don't know what architectural character interests you (you may want to do some research on historical styles), but in rain and snow country where you are you may want to consider overhangs for protection from the weather you will be getting.

I would use gables for the house roofs and a hip for the porch roof. The small second story seems a bit randomly placed. It needs to relate better to the lower parts of the house.

Sanford W, any input on how we could make the second story better relate? It will be significantly smaller than our main floor. It is really just three kid bedrooms and a full bath. The pic below shows a different view that perhaps might help.

To explore the design we would need to see all of the drawings.

How big is your lot? Is there any way to make the garage less prominent? Right now, it looks like a garage with a house attached. It's hard to make a traditional style house look good when the biggest feature is the garage.

The house is neither a partial 2 story nor a 1 1/2 story with a dormer. Placing a small upper level in the middle of a larger lower level would require a lot of beams or interior bearing walls.

The lot is 4 wooded acres, and we will building in the middle for complete privacy and there is a spot relatively more 'flat'. The lot is sloped downward from N to S. We will be building with the back of the house facing E and the front W to maximize our view of mountains in the back. The builder and excavator we met with gave us a few options, and we opted to plan for front entry to save big dollars in excavation required to cut and fill a much larger space and driveway that would be required for side entry. Also, we want to limit the trees cleared and maintain as much wooded area as possible. The builder gave us a recommendation to keep the width of the footprint under 70' or we would get into larger dollars for excavation and possible get into needed retaining walls, which I want to avoid. I will post our floor plan once my husband finishes it from our handwritten sketches. We took a plan we found online and tweaked the inside to our liking, but the exterior wasn't changed much at all. I have attached the pic of the original plan house. We need a 3 car garage for sure (in fact we probably could use 4, but we'll settle for 3) and the house should ideally be no more than 70' wide. This one below fit the criteria.

If anyone has ideas on how to make a side entry that wouldn't require as much excavation we would be open to it, for sure.

The photo seems to be of a 2 story central element with 1 story wings. In the sketch up model the ulpper portion appears to be set back.

Might I suggest you also post the kitchen plan in the kitchen forum with your needs for your business? I am sure you'll get some excellent advice. I know personally I hate a corner sink.

Oh yes, corner sink was moved to the middle of the wall. I hate them as well!

I would work on getting the garage to not be so dominant. The garage is forward from the house which draws attention to the garage but the large gable over the garage just draws MORE attention to the garage. I'm having a little trouble pulling my eye away from it. In the photo below what's the first thing that we're focusing on? In the photo of the actual house above it's the front elevation's main feature. In the two views in your initial post it doesn't look that bad but it appears like that's not going to be the approach to the house. It looks like the approach will be straight up to the garage?

Maybe try to rework the plan so it's forward of the garage.

But good luck in your adventure. Exciting times!!

architectrunnerguy, Thank you for your input. The approach to the house will actually be a lane that goes past the house and then snaked around to come up at it, so the initial view of the house will be the south side then curved around to come at it head on. We need to snake it around to minimize the steepness of the driveway. As for the view, both the east and west (and the south to some extent) have at least some mountain views, so the bedrooms in front won't be completely lacking, but we actually haven't settled on the arrangement of upstairs rooms and windows yet, so everything is negotiable there. We actually did consider shifting the right side of the house forward as you suggested, but we weren't able to come up with a good plan that still kept the large kitchen/dining/great room as one large area, which was more important to me than the exterior design of the house. I make decorated cookies as a side business and spend quite a bit of time working on them. I also cook 90% of our dinners and weekend meals so I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. In my current home, the kitchen is separated from the areas most lived in by my kids and husband and I hate feeling isolated. We aren't completely set on this particular plan yet, but the longer we search the less we find anything even close to fitting us as well as this one. Trying to find the balance between form and function is a challenge for me, that's for sure. A big part of why I am here! :o)

Katieebs: A good design solves ALL design constraints so there's no having to choose between, for example, the plan and the exterior design as you are doing. Both would be accommodated.

In lieu of copy and pasting the thing let me just point you here:

http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/3178541/question-for-architectrunnerguy-or-others?n=24 Look at my post 11 posts down, not the one at the top with the colored drawing. Read the part about internet plans (spoiler: Very helpful) and the part about bags of $100 bills on the table. Sometimes I think I take the owners hard earned money more seriously than they do!

I only point you there because since posting it, I've gotten some private notes, none of which I'll be doing the designing because they aren't local but all of which are looking to spend some six figure number of their hard earned money the best way possible in an endeavor in which there are no "do overs". Especially when that huge amount is weighed against the fee for a morning of conceptual design work by a creative thinker. So there has to be some interest there and may be you might too in getting someone creative that's local to look at improving the design.

But good luck!

EDIT: My crude red box was meant to illustrate a diagramitic concept (moving house FORWARD of garage), not moving those exact spaces IN the box forward while leaving the kitchen where it is. Sorry, that's me thinking conceptually!! No, the kitchen would relate to ALL other spaces the owner wishes. That's what separates great design from average design, both of which cost the same.

architectrunnerguy, Thank you again, I did see that post you were referring to and we have every intention of using someone much more skilled than we are to finalize our plans. I hesitate to really get that process started until we figure out exactly what it is that we even really want first.