So I've been searching that site for plans. I tried looking at some bigger homes. I found some great plans but the bigger they get the more "bells and whistles" they seem to have. We would like to keep the roofline as simple as possible for cost reasons and also we just tend to like a simple look. Similar to the plan you posted earlier in this thread Zone4. :) I don't want a bunch of turrets and special shaped rooms/windows. Is it possible to find a larger plan that would work and try to make it a bit more simple on the exterior? For example, I like the linked plan here quite a bit. I would nix the 1/2 bath by the garage entrance to get more mudroom space. We do not need two staircases though. There are several that have 2. Is it just to have that grand look in the foyer or what? Here is a link that might be useful: 99467

Sorry, can't help with the online sources. We bought through the same local dealer who sold us our Toto. We did pay less than the list price you see on the Kohler website. We priced it at the local Kohler showroom, too. It was a little bit cheaper there, but we decided to go for the convenience of buying toilet and sink from the same people. We bought the faucet pictured with the sink on the Kohler website. I shopped around a bit--hoping to save money--but places like Home Depot and Lowes didn't even have single-hole lavatory faucets. Some of the ones I found online seemed like they would be bigger than the Kohler one, and I thought the proportions might be wrong, so I went with the recommended one. That I did buy online, for a lot less than the list price, I think. I could dig up the name if you need it. Right now I have liquid soap in there. There is room on the sink, next to the faucet. You could put a bar of soap there, maybe on one of those little spiky "soap saver" things. There isn't room for a real soap dish. I know because I bought one that is the perfect color, and it won't fit. I've been thinking of putting up a little glass shelf to hold a soap dish, but I haven't gotten to the glass store to check the feasibility of getting a wall-mounted shelf that small. There are wall-mounted soap dishes, but it's impossible to find little shelves upon which can put a separate soap dish, if you see what I mean. The integrated towel bar is nice--at least you don't have to find one and mount it. Next job is to find a pretty basket or something to hold extra towels and toilet paper.

Yes! We got it sorred out. So it turned out to be a loose circuit breaker. It was the new sub panel put in for our kitchen reno. We had some electrical work done and hired an electrician tonadd some recessed lighting. He ran it back to the new subpanel and he comes up from the basement nd asks if we were having problems with the stove. I said yes. He said he noticed the breaker wasnt seated properly. It was making a connection but just barely. He popped it out and popped it back in and sure enough I went and ran that oven at 500 for an hour with no issues. The cause imo was the weak current was causing the computer to think there was a fan issue. An anomaly. Want to say we have since moved and it was a relief to be able to have that taken care of. I will buy Thermdor again! They did send us a new range (after repeated service calls). So would so donit again

To me architecture is as much an art as it is a science. However, some prefer one type of art over another...just like in genre of music. I for one can't stand rap music. I detest it. My dislike does not make it 'wrong'. Yet, I will not spend any of my money on anything related to rap. Many love rap music and it makes plenty of money. So...apply this to architecture. Do many architects prefer a certain 'type' of construction and disprove of 'fat' layouts or big roofs? This is obviously not my profession, but I do love learning about other professions and other perspectives. I understand your analogy, but the thing is, you're not talking about musical preferences here -- you're talking about misplaced notes, or a tempo that doesn't work with the melody, or instruments that don't blend well together. Even when you're talking about forms of art, rules still exist. You got it right in your title: This is a first draft. It can be polished and improved significantly, but -- for that to happen -- you have to be willing to listen to advice. And you're getting good advice here. I have actually thought about an L shaped house, but I think for us the flow of this works better. Let's test that theory and see if the house has good flow. The red lines represent the path you'd take from the various parts of the house to the laundry room. Note that EVERY ONE OF THEM funnels through the kitchen, one of the busiest rooms in your house. So while you're cooking, people'll be squishing through carrying large baskets of clothes to and fro. This is the exact opposite of good flow. On the other hand, let's consider getting groceries into the house, into storage and to the table -- this works! You bring groceries in, there's the pantry, there's the refrigerator ... when it's time to cook, you bring them into the kitchen ... then straight on to the table. I'd think about the sink location, but everything else is set up to run like a well-oiled machine. So the question is, how can you make ALL (or at least most) of your daily chores run easily like the food storage ... instead of horribly like the laundry lay out? Consider all the other things you do on a daily basis that could either run poorly ... or be designed well: Bringing in the mail, taking out the trash, taking care of the dog, managing the kids' homework, storage of sports equipment, wrapping a present, sitting down to read a book. Think through all these things, and then work on laying out the house so that everything you need is logically organized.