Well, although I am single. I do have a little boy to help take up some space and I entertain friends a bunch. The house is measured at around 6,500 sqft in the plans but I feel it's a sneaky 6,500. I currently live in NYC in a large loft and really like my space (indoors that is). As for the 5 acres, living in NYC may due that to you after awhile. Plus I have some plans for the land and it requires some room. I have looked into a bunch of sub-divisions but I'm not to big on having a bunch of rules and what you can or cannot due. Plus, the land is very cheap to begin with! I did find one sub-division I really liked but the list of rules they sent me was crazy for building. Plus I had to use their builder and it seemed like they had more say than I would for the house design colors, placement etc.... I wanted to ask if they were going to pay for some of it? Could I put it on 2 or 3 acre lot, yeah! But I will have to give up my plans for the outside due to lack of space. If you can have everything I want and not compromise and still cost the same why not? I will have the home for awhile since my son is very young and he is not going anywhere in the next 18 years or so. I guess plan for the future!!!

It seems there's a universal dislike of architects among builders in this area. We have interviewed several in depth, talked to several others less formally, and not a single one thinks that working with an architect is a good idea. The common complaints are They're too expensive. They don't respond in a timely manner. They do what they want, not what the client wants. They don't know how to design a house for a specific budget. The plans they provide aren't any better than what you could get from just telling a draftsman what you want. I do like an architect's process better. The builders ask, "Which plan of mine can we alter to do what you want?" The home designers ask, "What rooms do you want, and how big do you want them?" and the architects say, "Tell me about your family and how you live." The question for me is, will the architect's process actually result in a better plan? Will it be better enough to justify the higher price? Given the amount of problems that people point out here on the forum with floor plans, even architect designed plans, I wonder if the best bet isn't just to post here and keep refining the plan until all the kinks are worked out.

Lastly let's talk about the light or the lack of light. Since you said you're on the water, I'm assuming you're either facing east or west which is the worst direction you can face. With the exception of early morning (if the rear is east facing) or late afternoon (if the rear is west facing) you won't have much light entering the house. If your house were designed more to be an L shaped house, you could have your fabulous views and also get great southern light into the house to help not only keep the house light and bright all day but to also help with passive solar heating and cooling. Passive solar heating and cooling is what keeps the utility bills down. As for storage, I hear you since I'm in FL too. However do you really need 4 bedrooms and a study? Wouldn't it be better to have a house that conforms to your needs? For example, when we were figuring out our needs (we're a retired couple with a dog and sometime visitors), we decided to combine rooms to do multiple purposes. We wanted good entertaining space so our largest space is our kitchen/dining/living area. DH wanted an office that no one would use so he has his facing the rear and side of the house. I needed an art studio. My art studio can also double as a third bedroom since it will have a pull out couch. Our guest bedroom also doubles as our exercise room. We can do that by installing a murphy bed so when we don't have guests we can use the room to exercise. We managed to put our laundry downstairs by our bedroom which means we don't have to carry laundry across the house like you have to in yours, yet it's still only about 20 steps from the kitchen. I'd rather walk across my living room to change laundry than carry laundry across the house. And we decided we only need 2 1/2 baths. Master bath of course plus a powder room downstairs and upstairs is a bath for my studio/bedroom and the exercise room/bedroom. Our house is filled with light and is oriented north/south to get the best passive solar heating and cooling. My point being, design a house for the way you live and not for a generic builder family. If you do, there's a good chance you'll wind up saving money because you won't be putting on an over blown roof that costs extra and you won't be designing a house with rooms you don't need and extra bathrooms to clean.

It would help if you posted some inspiration pictures that you like and some examples of inspiration pictures that are not what you want (I'm sure there are many others like me who do not know what distinguishes "woodsy" from "rustic"). And if you have you made any other finish decisions (floor, walls, etc.), please post pictures of those too. It's hard to recommend a cabinet decision in a total vacuum without context. As it is, the only somewhat complete information you have posted is the floor plan. Do you want feedback on the floor plan? There are many aspects of it that are not ideal. For example: This is not a home that is set up well to allow for cross breezes. The bedrooms could easily have windows on two walls but do not. The doors/windows in the living areas are not remotely aligned with openings on the other side of the house. Your dining area is unusable. To begin with, it is a tiny dining space (8' x 8.5'), which is too small for all but a 30"-36' bistro table in the center on a good day accounting for adequate space around the table for chairs, bodies, and scootching (scooching?) in and out of the table. But then you have to factor in the huge bite the inward-swinging french doors take out of the space and the fact that the dining area is also where traffic will be going to and from the main deck and to the pantry and to the closet, which means you have to allot at minimum 3' of that dining area for a walkway for that through traffic and the pantry/closet door swings. Even if you just had the walkway issue and not also the giant french door swing issue, your dining area would only 5' wide in practice at best. A five-foot-wide dining area will fit a small two-person table shoved against the wall only. Except that two of the three walls in that dining area have doors in them, so there is only one wall to shove your dining table against, and in that spot, one of the two people at the table will be hit by the french door swing. The kitchen is going to be a major bottleneck. It is only 8.5' wide, which means the walkway through it will at its narrowest be less than 42" wide if you get a standard fridge and account for the oven handle sticking out. 42" is the minimum space, really, for one cook to move around. It is not enough space for someone to be cooking plus space all through traffic to the bathroom, bedrooms, and outside. Both bathrooms, the kitchen, and the washer/dryer are landlocked (meaning they are not on exterior walls). This is not ideal for venting or light purposes. You'll have to vent through the roof in all cases, but that is a longer HVAC run (which vents less well) and makes it much harder to clear out the dryer vent. And without natural light and air, the bathrooms will likely always have mildew issues. Not to mention the fact that natural light is generally pleasant. You are losing a lot of square footage to super long, inefficient walkways. The kitchen sink should be shifted away from the range to maximize the size of your prep counter between the two, and the dishwasher should be moved to the other side of the sink so it is not in your prep space. This allows someone to load/unload the dishwasher while someone else is cooking. There isn't much in the way of closets/storage outside the bedrooms. In a small place like this where clutter would really cramp the space, you're really going to need good storage for linens, extra supplies, lake gear, etc. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason with window placement with regard to the view. I would assume the best view is on the side of the house where the living room and master are facing. But if that is the case, why block half of that view in the living room? And why doesn't the dining area have a window on that side too? Is there a nice view on the main deck side as well?