What do the elevations look like? I can't lay my finger on one thing at the moment but it just seems a little disjointed and all over the place as in no flow. Just my opinion but would like to see elevations. Who drew the plans?

This house was designed using the easiest way to design that there is: Bumping everything and not aligning anything.

With all those bump outs it's going to be expensive to build.

The kitchen is going to be dark.

Let me guess. This was designed using a CAD program. :)

Eh, lots of space, but it's kind of sprawling without any rhyme or reason; that is, the rooms don't seem to have any connection to one another.

I don't think this would be a very good house for kids (not sure if you have any, but buyers someday might). The bedrooms are kind of all over the place. The laundry room is really tiny considering the size of the house! I think a bar by the front door is a bit odd.

I think for 3900 sq ft you can do a lot better!

Thanks, everyone, for the responses thus far. It's helpful that many of my concerns are being echoed here.

A little more about us: couple, no kids, no plans for kids (though things could change and we are trying to consider the wants of potential buyers). We entertain a lot, want to entertain even more, and frequently host friends from out of state and other countries. No elevations yet because the designer hasn't done them and I don't want her to start until I get the floor plan just so.

Jannicone—you're right on the money about the second master. My husband put up a fight about the elevator for a long time so I insisted on a second bedroom on the main floor because I have a disabled brother and our parents are aging. Suddenly, in a meeting with the designer, he acquiesced much to my surprise. So now I also think the second master is overkill. I'd like to get the sq. footage down to under 3500 to do away with the need for a whole-house fire suppression system. Jannicone, why do you think the kitchen has bad flow? And is a 36" fridge small? That's the width, not the height, JIC. And there will be a sink and DW in the scullery behind the kitchen. I'm not too worried about the kitchen being dark, but if we remove the second bedroom there would be a lot more light.

Moving on, I agree that the downstairs laundry is small, but it's just the two of us and I fold clothes in my room, not in the laundry. We added a laundry upstairs for guests/future buyers.

The second bedroom on the right (looking from above) will be my husband's office. We did it that way so he could have the view he wants and so he could work up there when he has insomnia (which is often). The master suite is also designed with that in mind, along with my working shift work. We wanted to be able to leave the bedroom and not disturb the sleeping partner.

I concur with adding a 1/2 bath in the basement—there won't be a proper gym down there, just a place for me to do my videos and a spot for the treadmill but it could potentially have a pull-out couch for overflow and the bathroom would be nice.

I would cut the main floor guest bath to a half bath and do away with that room, as well as sucking in the main living area to get closer to my 3500.

So... if we take out the second bedroom, then what?

Sorry but you're going about this the wrong way. A good designer doesn't design first the interior, then the exterior, but creates the whole at once. Both influence the other. You need a person of design talent and if your designer is working only with a CAD program, I'm guessing that isn't the person you need.

You have a huge disjointed house for 2 people, and this plan if designed by a true designer, is just bad. Sorry to be so blunt.

Here are some excellent threads I suggest reading through. In many of them you'll see how the architects on this forum work and it's not by designing the interior first and then seeing what they can stick onto the exterior. They are in no particular order:

Designing a Custom Home

Book Suggestions

How to Design Your Own Home

What Makes a House Have Good Design?

5 Rules of Thumb for Better Home Design

House Plans Using Bubbles

I Just Read This On Sarah Susanka's Blog

Hiring an Architect

House Design-Good Info

Questions on Changing Around a Floor Plan

And this post from architectrunnerguy with some good links:

Get somebody CREATIVE to sit down with you for a design session as CP described above. Doesn't have to be expensive or time consuming. Here's a link to one: http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/3887104/what-should-i-expect-from-my-architect-long?n=17 Scroll down to my 5/12/16 post. And there's a photo there of what one of these sessions looks like. It's not a bunch of hocus pocus "man behind the curtain" stuff. And while you're here, scroll down 2 posts to my thoughts on trusting a CREATIVE designer and the place for preconceived ideas. My guess is, and I'd agree if you said it's pure speculation, with all the cutting and pasting you're doing you haven't realized that a leap of faith is required on your part for the best outcome.

And here's another link from someone on this board who did exactly that: http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/3598813/we-fit-an-architect-into-our-budget-and-it-was-so-worth-it?n=17

And, for a little self education, here's a list of great books on good home design: http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/3281434/book-suggestions?n=10

And last but not least, here's a great thread on what makes for good home design. Get a cup of coffee, a comfortable chair and spend some time going through it. It's long but worth the read. All of us design folks chimed in there (along with many others) so you get all the great thoughts and ideas in one convenient location http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/3285825/what-makes-a-house-have-good-design?n=39

I can't figure out why so many doors are out swing, yet some are in swing.

It appears you have a large, rambling sort of "ranch" house for your large property. Is this your goal? Whatever you do, design it for the next ten years of your life, since there is no such thing as a "forever" house. Good luck on your project.

Heck, I don't know what I want anymore. We've been through two designers and really liked the first one, but he just got harder and harder to pin down on meetings and stuff. The second one isn't doing much for us. I think you folks have convinced us to meet with an architect. I'm gonna start drinking now. Cheers!

I think you're making a wise decision. Best of luck and take your time to find one who will work well with you. Your best bet would probably be to find a small or single person office.

The fact that elevations are not being considered is a huge red flag. I am a modernist and I could see this being cool in a very modern form, but not so cool if you were going for a federalist style, etc.

i think what you have does check some of the boxes (nice spaces for guests) but may be shorting YOU!

Do you have any Houzz idea books started that show what style you are looking for? Based on your family guests, I would think that an aging in place specialist could help here too, in order to make things easier for your brother and your parents.

as for the kitchen, think about taking something from the fridge, washing it, prepping it, then cooking it. Oh, and then clean up. The natural space for ALL of that activity to happen based on the layout is that space between the sink and the cooktop. Cooks crossing oaths, bumping into one another trying stake claim for the same real estate. It also renders that large expanse on the oven wall unused.

for an entertaining and hosting house, there are some good ideas here, but they are not put together all that well and none of the spaces are really dual purpose, making you build ore square footage.

lastly the depth and layout, unless this is a flat roof, could drive a behemoth roof structure that will be insane to build and even uglier to reroof!

architect... and I'd highly recommend ArchitectRunnerGuy on this site. Cpartist has a great reference list but search for PensicolaPI and his saga on his "original" plan and what happened after he engaged someone with talent. It's recent, relevant and a fun couple of posts. You may see yourself.

good luck and just remember it's a heck of a lot cheaper to change things on paper...

Once again, thanks. Jannicone, yes, I have multitudes of ideabooks started. I was dismayed that the 2nd designer took what had been started by the 1st (and that met a lot of what we wanted, at least style-wise) and changed it to go very modern. I'm not opposed to modern, and many of my ideabooks have modern structures in them, but I'm after more of *something like* a English/French farmhouse. With modern elements. Anyway, it doesn't matter.

I'm now asking this question: I'm weary of paying thousands of dollars in retainers and "deposits" on designers and designs that fail. How do I find the next person? Does anyone have a suggestion for someone in the Portland area? Or at least within the PNW?

I couldn't find the PensicolaPI posts. Do you have a link to them?

Here are the pensacola threads:

Building and Where to Save Money

The New Plan From the Man

I believe arialvetica found an architect in the area you are looking in to do a charrette. Here are her threads:

We Fit An Architect Into Our Budget

New Plan Idea

Ask your drafter to please not try to cover all of the 63 acres with wings and jut outs and dollar bills.

Haven't been here for a while but do you have a site plan?

Always think of the house and the site as one. For an idea of what I'm talking about I put four examples in an "ideabook" a long time ago. It should be a critical design criteria in any house but more so in yours with all the entertaining you do. For Pensacola's house down in Florida the pool is suggestive more than literal as there are dozens of ways to get connectivity of the outside to the patio/veranda and the inside and I wanted to show I was thinking about it.

And in all the links CP posted above go to this one http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/3285825/what-makes-a-house-have-good-design and read #'s 4, 6, 9 and 22 in my post there.

ARG, no site plan. We did with the first designer—it was extremely limited. I, too, feel that it's important because we have nearly TOO many choices about where to site the house. Being limited to a 100' lot would make this a lot easier, at least in some ways, not all. I looked at the ones in your ideabook a few days ago and wished for something similar.

Anyway, I copy and pasted your list to a document so I could print it. I would like to see the other 220 items on it :-) It echoed many of my thoughts that have been bumping around in my head, wondering why this process has been so heart-rending.

I also enjoyed reading the ensuing "argument" (debate, really) over mudrooms, back halls, and walk-in pantries. I can say, with great certainty, that we fall in the camp of having a legit need for a mudroom. It's Oregon, after all, and we live and work on a farm.

I look at the plans we have now and feel no joy—only a sense of loss over how much we've compromised on. I'm excited to build *something* because we live on a noisy highway with the threat of a semi coming through our bedroom window any night now, but I'm afraid we are becoming #53 and I don't want to be #58 from your list.

I don't suppose you ever find yourself in rural Oregon, do you? :-)

@Sophie: ha. We did ask for a separate master *wing* because we had seen something similar in a house we toured, but nothing like this behemoth. And trust me when I say that we're still a loooong way from being within budget. I laughed in our last meeting when the designer asked us about our budget (fully disclosed at the start) again, and only mentioned the number at the very tippy-top of the budget that we gave, and then added 50K to it, thus creating a new "range."

I would get in touch with arielvetica and ask her who she used.

Just looking quickly it looks like Cella Architecture in Portland may be a good starting point. Cella architects