Kchan, You are asking good questions. However you are not going to find anyone on this forum who will be able to design the ducts for your new house and gurantee you will be comfortable. You stated your general contractor will do the design work based on some courses he took. Is he a qualified HVAC installer? The installer needs to do a load calculation (Manual J), and a duct design (Manual D). Ask the contractor if he has the software and is qualified to do this. If the answer is no, then I suggest you find a reputable HVAC installer to size the installation properly. This sounds like a beautiful new home, and I would to hate to hear you are unhappy with the heating and cooling.

I posted a follow-up on the other thread where I commented and decided to post here for anyone else who does a search for problems from the green reflected light from Low-E glass. This is a long post but it captures the relevant information about what I tried to eliminate the green. PART I: Our great room faces west and has three large patio windows (8' tall and 12' wide) made of Low-E glass which cast a green light inside the house. The ceiling height in the dining nook and by the patio doors is 10', and with the vaulted ceiling is app. 13' at the highest point in the middle of the room. Outside the great room, is a covered patio which is about 10' high. Since I know how hard it may be to track what I described, I included our floorplan showing where the sun is in the afternoon. As the light enters the room the color changes. In the morning, the great room looks grey and dingy so I leave the warm 3000K LED lights on. In the afternoon, on the wall with the door to the laundry/garage (yellow arrow), from floor level to about 8', Creamy is light creamy yellow with a greenish hue. And then, from 8'-13' it looks less green and has more of a sickly grey tinge. On the wall in the kitchen (the other yellow arrow) the color is darker but has the same green look to it. I invited our new painter over so that he could see what I've been talking about since I'm trying to decide which is the best color for this space. I showed him the wall directly across from the patio doors (yellow arrow). He said he could sort of see what I meant about the wall color looking like it has a hint of green Then I opened the patio door, all the natural light flooded in and the color was much brighter - the way that I expected Creamy to be. He was shocked, saying he'd never before seen the color of walls change as much. So, it's not just the paint color. It is the color, the light(s), the direction of the sun and, in our case, the Low-E glass. PART II: So now that I know that the Low-E glass we chose is definitely casting a green on our rug, furniture and walls. I've been trying other colors that are still light and bright without picking up the green. I tried SW Panda White, but it still had the dingy green/grey. Then I tried SW Downy and it is nearly identical to SW Panda White but has a bit more pink or peach. But it doesn't look pink/peach. It is also not nearly as muddy, dingy or green as Panda White. And it actually looks Creamy!

Thanks for feedback- we have a tub in the guest bath on current main level. For the pop-up we can put a tub in the kids shared bath. They are getting to an age where they probably like standup shower like our current 3x5 but can do combo for family bath on resale if that is better for families to bathe younger kiddos down the road. I think it is a 50/50 mix in our area (NoVA/DC metro). The really small remodeled homes don't have them. The ones we may 'compete' against would be new builds which are larger square footage. So if no tub (which we are fine with) is to find a design for a really nice shower but feel airy and spacious in the room. If we go no tub, should we reduce space and widen walk in closet or do something with laundry closet? Or just make shower a little bigger - if shower at entrance would that be a wall or just go with frosted glass? Our master bath had entrance adjusted so DH could get his 'sitting space' and place a TV or something on a wall there (also to avoid door to door direct line Feng shui with opposite bedroom. Current laundry is in basement so we thought we should at least have a mini w/d upstairs. We are blowing out some walls on main level so don't want to lose storage space on main to place laundry there as a compromise option that had come up.

Liane there’s brands like mocket that make counter outlets and some make gfic counter outlets too. I just thought you were against the idea is why I didn’t mention it. Anyways, they pop up out of the counter so they aren’t just exposed sitting upwards. On another note, I assumed if you put the outlet on the wall you’d be doing them sideways...I should’ve been more specific and clarified that I think sideways would be best. It just doesn’t look like they will totally fit even sideways, correct?