Sorry for the hiatus. Moving and working and kids - well it's a bit inconvenient. Hahaha! Appraisal today. Now the only thing left is the health department to check the drain field and water. I hope we have a closing date soon. momtoblondie-*LOVE* my doodle. :) She by the way is having the hardest time out of everyone with all of the house showing/packing/routine changing upheaval. ;) We are not fans of that funny little angle by the front door either. We will be addressing that and the windows when we meet again on Monday. I am still trying to figure out the front laundry closet area with the windows pushed together-it is a struggle. I am also pondering the kitchen layout. The mudroom however, we like. I asked for a place for lockers, a separate closet, a small 'pocket' office and to be able to close the dog in. This is what we got and I do like it: The doorway off to the right by the closet goes outside where we will have a covered porch for grilling and also where we will let the dog in and out. The doorway by the 1/2 bath leads into the kitchen area. The square footage - hmmm. It is about 300 sq foot over what we were hoping for. So we need to look at that. Likely the mudroom is a little big because I don't feel like the actual rooms are too large. But we don't have any 'extra' rooms that I feel we could ditch. We are not including the screened porch (to be finished later) and the basement (also to be finished way later) in our sq. footage 'wants'. It's about 1700 on the main floor and 550 in the upstairs. I also need to having things figured out - this has been driving me nuts. I wouldn't say you are starting to soon but yes I concur it is overwhelming and sanity breaks are needed (chocolate also helps). We didn't think our house would sell so early. Happy it did so we can start this fall BUT the plans aren't ready and so now I feel rushed which is not what I wanted at this stage. :/ I too like watching every size build. It sometimes causes my eyes (dreams) to be larger than our budget but it is exciting to watch nonetheless! I can't wait to watch your build progress as well. When are you hoping to list your home? It kind of sneaks up on you so hang on to your hat! Thank you for your kind words and blessings - right back at you. There are a few kindred police/fire spirits on here. :)

How many shelves are you putting up? Up to you. I guess the 1st and 3rd questions are related. The position of the lowest shelf and the spacing is dependent on how many shelves you can fit. As far as question 2.. If you are making the shelves yourself, you would need to connect to 2 studs anyways...so that's 16-18 inches so would make it at least that wide.

hi mara! Unfortunately, I think laundry in the basement is the only option for this house unless we want to give up one of the second floor bedrooms (which I don't think makes sense and would entail WAY more intrusive construction than we want). I agree that it's not ideal, but it is what it is. I sketched out a couple of ideas for the basement space...would you mind taking a look? Here is the current basement overall. The door on the right by the toilet leads to the new part of the basement under our kitchen addition. That space is already finished and is what I'm calling potential guest room/man cave. It has outside egress through a pair of "Dorothy doors". So the way it is now you come down stairs from the breakfast room into an unfinished basement with a cement floor, low ductwork and rubble stone walls and wind your way past open laundry, furnace, a non-functioning toilet in a tiny wood enclosure to reach the nice finished space. It's a pretty odd setup. The black dots in the sketch are steel support beams. We had an HVAC guy out yesterday who can fix most of the ducting issues. Our thought is to drywall the whole left section of the basement, adding lots of lighting and tile or pergo floors. This will give us a 12' by 24' rec room (we currently have a smallish living room and no family room upstairs, so I think this space will be important to future buyers). The plan is to use the upper right quadrant of the space for the utility functions of the basement: laundry, bathroom, furnace room. Plumbing and gas lines are already there, so I think this makes sense. It also has to serve as the hallway to the new portion of the basement. My husband's beloved workshop would get drywall and a door, but would otherwise be untouched. Here is the idea that I think I like best so far. A stacking washer and dryer and the laundry sink would be behind double pocket doors. The pocket doors would open all the way and stow in the wall by the shower. There would be a cabinet with storage below and space to fold laundry just opposite the laundry. There could be an upper cabinet or open shelves above. Access to the storage closet (which will have pretty low headroom due to ducting) would be from the rec room. Here is the other idea that I'm also considering. The stacked washer/dryer and sink would be behind double doors that swing open on heavy-duty hinges. On the inside of the left door, I could hang my iron and ironing board. On the inside of the right door would be a fold-down table. The right door would open all the way against the wall backing up to the shower and the table (I think it could be about 3' by 2') would unfold into the hallway space. In this plan, the access to the storage closet would be across from the laundry. If I wanted to keep the washer and dryer side-by-side and still have a sink, I'd have to put the sink where the shower is in the sketches above. I think it makes more sense to stack machines, keep to a smaller laundry footprint, and have a full bath with shower. So what do you think? Are either of these pretty decent substitutes for a laundry room? Thanks so much for taking the time to look and to make it through all of my rambling!

Thank you all for the comments. The entire right wall of the master bath is an open closet with a built in dresser, hanging rods and a bench. I think a deluxe walk in closet would be useful to store extra clothes and whatever else to help keep the open closet neat and tidy. I think it would add to resale value more than just extra garage space. A second master closet with a wow factor would be a nice bonus and hopefully seal the deal for new buyers as they went through the house and discovered it. Good guess that the rec room is used for storage now. When we bought the house we thought it would get more use, but we were not aware how hot it is in summer, and how cold in winter, or of the roof leaks. Our stored items are out of the way of the leaks we know of :) I am trying to get rid of things we truly do not need. Replacing the roof would be part of the job. A complete roof rebuild, not just the roofing material, since it is not built to be indoor space. It is built with plexiglass sections which magnify the heat..........and have deteriorated. We are aware we may need new walls and trusses to support the load of a real roof vs the plexiglass sections. I have had an architect look at the space :) But they are not signed on to do the drawings. I wanted to get other ideas first. I would like space to hold our safes and file cabinets not in the garage so they are more hidden. We were robbed once so I keep checkbooks and any personal financial documents in locked file cabinets and a freezer sized safe. I store old papers such as tax returns in a locked metal cabinet that I would want with the other papers. I know it would burn in a fire, I am more concerned about it being stolen and compromised. Do I need a file and safe room as one of the spaces? Perhaps. Or just in the big closet. I have also considered making it all or some of it a hidden room with a secret book case entry. It could be hidden from the garage, and by the time you walk around to the bedroom, you would loose track of where the walls are and it would be hidden :) The current double doors and single door at the top of the rec room are frosted glass French Doors. I like the light through them and would like to keep them. I like the idea of a new master closet more than I need it. Due to the firewall issues. I need to decide where the interior/living space ends vs garage. That is one reason I wanted to create this closet space on the interior side of the fire wall. Even if it ends up being just an unfinished not leaking storage space. lafdr