Hello! My husband and I are looking at building the Markham by Donald Gardner but unfortunately I haven't been able to find any interior pictures online. If anyone has any pics they can share of the Markham that would be very helpful! I am having a hard time visualizing the plan but I think it may work well for our family. Also if you have built the plan and have any helpful tips or suggestions please comment.

I like the Birchwood plan a lot. No "keeping room" but you may not really need one since, in addition to the Great Room, it has a study AND a nice sitting area in the master bedroom AND a screened porch with a fireplace AND a huge bonus room over the garage that could be turned into a children's play area, a mancave, a game room, a media room, or just about anything else one can imagine. How many different "living areas" does one family really need anyway? LOL! The various ceiling treatments and varied ceiling heights should give you the drama you want and the plan is pretty nicely organized. There are a couple of things that I don't like about the Birchwood tho. They are: 1) the kitchen design with it's barrier island smack dab in the middle of the paths between sink, stove, and fridge; 2) the lack of a powder-room near the garage entrance; 3) the lack of a "mud room" or unloading area at the garage entrance; and 4) no powder-room easily accessible to the bonus room except by going into one of the two back bedrooms. I would either get rid of the kitchen island completely or make it a whole lot smaller. Or, alternatively, you could move the sink to the island, make the island a whole lot wider and get rid of the entire wall of cabinets next to the great room and open up that wall completely to get an "open floor plan." In fact, in the house they photographed of the Birchwood kitchen on the Gardner website, that is exactly what they did. (If you look closely, you'll see that the photographed kitchen is very nice but is definitely NOT the same as the one shown on the floorplan.) The folks over on the kitchen forum could probably give you some other suggestions for making the kitchen more user friendly. As for the other issues, first off, I'd turn the e-space into a mudroom/drop zone. Every family needs somewhere to drop coats, hats, bookbags, etc when coming in or that stuff always winds on the nearest flat surface! In this case, the options are: on top of the computer, on the kitchen counters or the breakfast table. So, I'd move the computer to the library - out of the way of traffic and where it wouldn't constantly be covered with dropped off junk and where I would have room to stretch out and get comfy when working at the computer. Then, I'd probably have the two back bedrooms share a single but slightly larger bathroom opening off the hallway. (I.e., incorporate the closet on the right side of that hallway into the bathroom on the right and make it a shared bath.) Then I'd use the space dedicated to the bathroom on the left and that left-hand hallway closet for a powder room and a pantry. Put the pantry in the half nearest the kitchen so you go right past it when traveling from garage to kitchen. That'll make dropping off bags of groceries convenient. Then, I'd take the original pantry area and e-space area and combine them to make a nice-sized mud-room. You would have plenty of room for half a dozen 18" deep cubbies which will help keep junk from landing on your kitchen counters. With a powder room opening off the mudroom, whatever you eventually decide to do with the bonus room, you won't have to run down the stairs and clear across the house ...or through one of the kid's bedrooms to reach a bathroom. Otherwise, you should probably plumb now so that you can easily add a bathroom upstairs someday. And that bath still won't be very convenient when coming in from the garage. Note also that by moving the pantry out of the kitchen, you can wrap cabinetry around the corner of the kitchen... which, if you look closely at the pictures, is what they did in the house that was photographed. You should also make sure of exactly how deep the garage parking BAYS are. If the 24' depth measurement includes the storage area, the actual parking bay may be less than 21 feet deep which could be a bit tight for parking a larger vehicle. You'll also want to verify the dimensions of the two master closets. To hang clothing on parallel walls you need a bare minimum of 6 ft which gives you 2 ft for each hanging rod and 2 ft for the aisle space down the middle. A two foot wide aisle in a closet with clothing on each side feels claustrophobic so for real comfort the closet needs to be 7 feet wide. Those closets look like they're maybe 5'6" wide. If so, be aware that you'll only be able to hang clothing in an L shape in the smaller closet and on three walls in the larger closet. That is still a lot of storage space but not nearly as much as the drawing suggests you'll have. In fact, with any internet plan, it is always a good to verify the actual wall-to-wall size of every room and closet before you buy. Some of the designs get pretty skimpy in rooms where they don't show dimensions. And, where rooms are not perfect rectangles, one can never be sure without asking if the listed dimension include the little bumpouts or the actual "useful" floor space. With those caveats, I think the Birchwood plan could make a very very nice home. As for the Betz Magnolia Springs, I can't say I like it at all. About the only thing about it that I like better than the Birchwood is that you have access to the outdoors via the laundry room... that can be nice for letting the family dog in/out of the yard when you don't want muddy paw prints on the living room floor. But you could easily add an exterior door in the laundry room of the Birchwood if you wanted one. Furthermore, the rear elevation drawing of the Magnolia Springs doesn't correlate to the floorplan AT ALL. Either the artist added a full second floor (complete with 2nd floor deck!) instead of the single bedroom and bonus room shown on the plan OR he added in an entire walk-out basement under the main floor. In either case, without extensive revisions to the floor plan, you rear elevation would not wind up looking anything at all like the one shown with the plan. It's misleading enough when sites post photographs of houses supposedly built from the plans but where so many revisions have been made to the original plan that the built house is a TOTALLY different house. But, when the artist's conception is this misleading, it is inexcusable.

OP - I'm no architect, but we did once build a house on a sloping block with views. It was not a simple process because of the slope, I can tell you! It can be complicated putting a two-dimensional floor plan on a three-dimensional slope. So just bear that in mind. We in fact used an architect because there was no way a standardized plan would have worked in our specific location (it really was a very steep slope). Things that had to be taken into account included that doggone slope, and the views of course, but also orientation. The house was planned so that the windows and main rooms - dining, living, kitchen, more or less lined up with the trajectory of the sun, and were bright and well lit throughout the day. The kitchen which faced east, got the morning sun, the rest of the living areas got sun a bit later. Our back deck faced west, which meant blazing late afternoon sun - fortunately, the deck got reasonable shade from the forest behind us, or we'd have fried. The house also took advantage of the sea breezes coming up the slope in the afternoon, so great cross breezes which meant less (actually in our case no) A/C. Just things for you to bear in mind. You want to benefit as much as you can from all aspects of your location, not just the view.

You would be better served searching PICTURES of the facades you might like on Houzz and putting them in an idea book to frame, pictorially, what you like. Then use that as a basis for the conversation with the architect. For example, bring a house like this and say "I love the tons of the glass and the long / low / linear shape of the first floor." Then - have a list of your needs (3 bedrooms, 2 baths, inlaw suite in the basement with elevator, and a conversation pit") And it's your architects job to make all that work together. Your searching of floor plans and exteriors are not allowing to your adequately explore the art of the possible, and you will find yourself "settling" for a floor plan that is less than ideal because you like the exterior DRAWING.... Go for real images - and talk about how it makes you feel.