I am curious how you coordinated your dining furniture with an open floor plan, assuming this opens to your kitchen. I am having a challenge visualizing our options. Pictures would be very helpful especially if the picture shows a bit of the kitchen as well. Many thanks!

There are just a couple uppers where there will be UCLs: flanking the range and to,the left of the sink where the base cabs turn the corner and form a peninsula seating area. Ooo, I,didn't have a light over the sink, whoops! Should I put 3 total over that cab run so there is one over the sink? In that plan I aimed for 10 pots. Questions (I appreciate your patience!): Will the pot closest to the question mark provide enough light in that corner? Can I still eliminate the pot in the middle of the kitchen? Do I need the pot nearest to the range hood? (I'm,guessing not, there are,lights in the hood) Should I remove the eyeballs by the brick fireplace wall and do something else there? Thanks!

Benjesbride, what you say regarding dining/island makes sense, but unfortunately I have ~11'x16' space to fit in the kitchen. If I decide to rotate the kitchen the way you say it, then my kitchen island will be quite small. I too started out thinking of a longer island and thus came up with option 2, and am not able to find pictures to tell me if that would look ok or not. Secondly, currently the plan is that the Great Room will be mainly conversation area. TV will be in a separate room, so no need to consider TV-watchability. Mama Rachel, your idea of spice kitchen is great! That's the kitchen I started out "wanting". I had to abandon it halfway, however, because of space constraints. My whole house is ~2200 sqft, therefore allocating disproportionately large amount of space to the kitchen would have meant I gave up on some other priorities. Mama Rachel : regarding powder: we decided to ditch the powder because of the availability of full bath on that floor, which otherwise will be guest bath. We also wanted as much storage as possible, therefore decided on having a storage rather than powder. Anyway, here's the original plan. Note that we added ~5ft towards the courtyard and some square footage along top wall (which is facing backyard). I am working on sizing of the entry right now, because I think it's a bit too big for the house, but that space will NOT become available to the kitchen again due to the building rules.

Lucky, as you said, you're getting older and if you want to still have a two story, then I would do so with the idea of putting in an elevator. I'm in your age group (well, you're actually my youngest sister's age), and because we're on a smaller lot, we had to build up. We're putting in an elevator just in case, and because we're in SW FL in what is primarily a retirement area. Our thinking was, by having the elevator, if we ever decide to sell this house, we haven't limited the pool of buyers and if we ever can't maneuver stairs, it's there for us. Additionally if you don't want to put one in now, you can always have it predesigned so they can just come in and add it at a future time. For now it could be closets. We are on a corner 9100 square foot lot and were limited to a footprint of 35%, which is the other reason we built up. We were also limited because the driveway had to be in the upper left corner and we weren't allowed to change it at all. All red lines are changes I made. And frankly if people have coats, they can put them in DH's study, not on my bed. Since you're also getting to "that age" I would definitely think in terms of how to make it elder friendly. My Mom did so in her house back when she was your age and because she did, she was able to spend all but the last 6 months of her life in her beloved house. So be sure to think in terms of easier egress such as from bedrooms, wider bathrooms or ways to make them wider (such as my master, if I need more room to use the toilet, it's an easy fix to remove the walls surrounding the toilet or if I need easier access to the shower, I can just remove the tub), no curb showers, wider hallways, etc.