I commented earlier, did you delete the thread? :-)

Which direction is north? How much land are you building on?

What happened to the other thread and the comments?

I did delete on accident when I was trying to edit plan. The opening of the garage will be north. We are building this house in relation to our current living situation(i.e. Barn). It will be on the last remaining tract of my family farm( 80 acres)

I wouldn't love the long walk through a hallway and past and around into the kitchen carrying groceries from the car. The living room is also a major traffic thoroughfare which may make furniture placement difficult.

If you want an attached garage (I personally love detached)... Any chance you can orient the garage to face west, to shield the house? We're renting now, and our dining/patio/master bed faces west, and holy smoke is it HOT.

Who came up with this floor plan?

It's a combo of things we have seen and ideas that my wife and I like to have in our forever home

I think you need to consider passive solar heating and cooling. You have your rear porch facing west which means that for at least 7 months of the year where you are, the porch will be unusable for all but early morning.

We are currently working with one, these are only preliminary drawings. Hopefully we will get to the final result that we are satisfied with.

Did the architect come up with this because normally an architect works the interior and the exterior at the same time and takes into consideration things like passive solar heating and cooling, etc. A good architect if there's enough land, I don't think would willingly put a back deck or porch facing west in Arkansas.

Okay, so, are you having trouble identifying *why* you don't like the master bath/laundry/mud area?

I
really like the movement from master closet to laundry (is that a
pocket door?), so if you can keep that idea, great. The vanities are a
bit unorthodox (and small), so I would want to change that. The laundry should be reworked/expanded to vent the
dryer directly to the outside, which will also permit you to have a
window in there. The mud hall is narrow-ish, for sure, but there's only
three of you... How do you want that space to work?

I
assume, since you already have an architect, that you have a strong
reason for preferring the garage where it is? And the western patio? I
have to constantly hose the patio down, to cool it off for the kids to
play on it, from April to September -- you totally don't wanna see my
water bill, lol. Do you have a really pretty view to the west that you
don't want the garage to block?

Oh, and where is the barn? Is it by the garage? Is that why the garage is there? Your barn looks cute, I don't think it would necessarily need to be hidden, if that's the case!

I should mention that the actual orientation of the front to back will be Northeast/Southwest. The back porch will be completely covered. The attached image will give you a sense of direction of how the house will be. We want to use the current drive as the entrance to the garage "hence the layout of the house"

I think everything in the laundry/mud room area seems to be squeezed too tight. I don't know if it would fit with your lifestyle but maybe you could eliminate the hallway and make one big shared laundry-mud room with bench and cubbies on that outside wall. Then you could possibly fit a freezer in there also. A door near the dining room could close that workspace if you had company. Just a thought. I would also be tempted to move the kitchen up by the windows by the porch.

The back porch will be completely covered.

It will still be extremely hot in afternoons in summer and the light coming in will be blinding. The sun is lower in the west and it's the hottest sun of the day. Combine the lower angle of the sun plus the heat and you won't be able to use the porch no matter how covered, unless there are no windows or openings to the west.

Passive Solar Heating/Cooling

Siting with the Sun

Designing for a Warm Climate