Post your kitchen over in Kitchens! I'm trying to imagine how you will clean the left side of the wall oven.

That's an awfully big snout garage out front, which dominates everything from the front view. Is that what's important to you--three car garage?

If you don't mind losing a window in the laundry, you could push the third bay back. That's where the snowblower and skidoo are anyway, right? So maybe it's not as important to clear that side immediately?

So, why not move the garage over to the right and shift it back as far as the toilet in the master bathroom (you may lose one window) and then you can have a gracious entry and still have the garage easily accessible and less shoveling?

I'm trying to imagine how you will clean the left side of the wall oven.

Bpathhome, this is a great observation .... one that I did not think about at all :( We like cooking and hate cleaning so I guess we were trying to ignore this part. Off I go to the kitchen forum and to test if I can wipe out ashes after self-cleaning cycle in our current oven without being able to stand on the left side of the door.

If the lot won't allow you to move all the garage over and back, can you move it over by one bay, and tandem the third bay behind the others? That allows you a more gracious entry, and less driveway! And, you could have the tandem open to the rear, handy for mowing and stowing patio furniture.

I think the long hallway to the master bedroom, and then another long one back to the master closet and bathroom would really bother me--that's quite a hike. I can't quite read the dimensions but there's a lot of (wasted) circulation space, and it's 10-15 ft to the toilet in the middle of the night. I don't think the layout makes good use of space nor will it "live" very well. I think that whole section of the house could work better. So, my answer to what to do with the hallway is to see if that can be reworked to better use the same and decrease the circulation space. Is that something you can talk to your architect about?

I second the kitchen forum recommendation. One option is to put an oven cabinet at an angle for that corner, avoiding corner cabinets (which don't bother me but some people hate them). That's not even a complete recommendation, though. Post a closeup of the kitchen (plus access to the entire plan) to the kitchen forum.

Ah, that garage... Interesting suggestions. Some are new to us and some we've already discussed.

1. move the garage over to the right and shift it back as far as the toilet in the master bathroom. We are not 100% sure on location of septic yet ( just 95 :) but it would most likely require us instead of moving garage back, move house forward (east) and down ( south). If we do this I could probably relocate laundry closer to the main entry and get east window there - I would like that even more. What I do not like about this option is bigger north lawn and smaller south one . I really wanted to plant some fruit trees on the south side of the lot. The other negative is longer path from the media room to lounge area in the basement. But we'll have to look at it again.

2. Is that what's important to you--three car garage? For us third car bay is not really important. What is important is to be able to easily take out snow plowing equipment without banging it into cars. That would mean some kind of front door in addition to the 2 bays. I have not seen any ideas like that around us probably because it's almost an expectation that any house above 100-150K has 3 bays. Do you have any suggestions of what we could do?

3. If you don't mind losing a window in the laundry, you could push the third bay back.

This one is new to us. I do want window but I probably could give it up if the look improves significantly and if septic allows. We'll try to model it. Do you think it'll help lot?

Also, I just realized that it would mean that width of media room shrinks by 3". I do not know how my SO would react to this :)

4. move it over by one bay, and tandem the third bay behind the others.

New again. Not sure if we can do it because of the septic - we'll have to look into that. Also we really need easy front access for snow equipment. I do not worry too much about lawn mower access. If we are not completely out of money after the build we want to buy this guy: http://www.husqvarna.com/us/products/robotic-lawn-mowers/ and watch him work while we have some wine outside :)

I want one of those for snow removal so I can watch him work while I drink my coffee inside!

Me too!!!!!!! Somebody really need to start making those. Of course there is a question of sun/power during winter but maybe one of those https://www.smartflower.com/en can take care of it even in Wisconsin. Btw, this is another dream of mine if there are any money left :)

Bethohio3, you've found one of my compromises. I also think that there is too much circulation space in bedroom section. We have discussed it with our architect and builder but did not find solution that I would be happier with. I really want bedroom itself to be the "end of the road" area in the master suite. In current house to enter closet and the bathroom we need to walk through bedroom itself and I really dislike it. I want to be able to get to the closet first, bathroom next ( but not through the closet itself), then bedroom. Hence the current plan. If somebody has suggestion on how to change it while preserving the order of the spaces I'd love to implement it.

You are right that there is a long way from bedroom to the rest of the house but my justification of the compromise is that most of the time we'll be making the entire walk once in the morning and once at night so I hope it's not going to be too bad. If i had to wake up at night for example to take care of small children it would bother me much more.

As far as walk to the toilet goes. I did "walk study" - engineer :) - the distance from night stand(s) to the toilet in our house is about 15" and 25" and it works fine for us. With new plan we are adding about 6" . So it will be 21" and 31". Is it getting too far?

Here is the closeup of the master.Hopefully with more readable dimensions:

The master bath bothers me. I usually want a separate toilet room, but I have seem some nice layouts lately that hide the toilet at "the end of the road" and make it without a door, but maintains privacy.

I simply can't see how you'd want to be in the bathroom doing anything else when the other was using the toilet. Brush your teeth, uh, no. Shower? Nope - that either.

Can the toilet be moved so that it's not part of the traffic patter to the shower and not so close to the sink area?

I'd also ditch the double doors. Opening them once with a flourish is all it takes to get over it, and then you just end up swearing about turning on / finding the light switch after that. ;-) I honestly don't understand the fascination with the double door.

Add me to the list of people who don't like double doors into a bathroom or bedroom.

One of the best ideas that I have seen on this forum is to rework your master closet to allow for a doorway into the laundry room. This way you aren't walking halfway around the house to get to the laundry room. I think it could be easily incorporated into this plan. I vote for getting rid of the double doors to the bath, too.

I also like the idea of sliding the third bay of the garage backwards to reduce the impact of such a huge wall of garage view. I've seen where Architectrunnerguy did this on a couple of his plans posted at this forum. It addressed this issue with a good result.

I think the front elevate could be made better on the left half (the house portion) to pull out the front door and make it more of a feature. I personally lack any creativity for suggestions in how to do this, but feel certain that one of the architects could spend 30minutes and have 10 ideas. :)

Determine a method to handle the snow that will collect on the roof and slide off onto the ground and turn into a compacted snow mountain.

Mark,

this is quite a snow bank! We have not had them so bad for a while but it is probably just matter of time :)

We certainly will need to discuss roof construction with our builder, snow guards and such. Are you saying that we are making a mistake with design of the roof though? Will material ( planning for standing seam), pitch, or both give us potential problems?

Thank you for the garage concept - we'll need to discuss this. We did not want to have many windows in garage and we certainly did not want anything but short windows positioned pretty high off the floor ( similar to the windows on the top of the garage doors). If we stay with that, do you think we could do something with the front/east wall to make overall structure look better? Or will we need more/lower windows?

As far as bedroom goes, are you recommending bedroom switch so that master can take advantage of more light and better view? If so then position of both was intentional. We do not like having too much light in our bedroom. We do not read ( except for may be 5 min before falling asleep)/watch tv/work/socialize in the bedroom. Majority of the time light is blocked with heavy curtains/blinds. For the guest room it is completely opposite. First of all our guests might be spending some day time in the room so it would be nice if it had good light. Also, when nobody is visiting, we'll use it as den or maybe sawing room. Or was you recommendation based on something else?

Jannicone,

the toilet on the way to the shower is actually leftover of a wet room idea that got nixed but we never revisited toilet location probably because it does not bother us much at all. I do not like separate toilet room unless it has sink inside but that starts to complicate everything. If one of us is using toilet then door gets closed and entire bathroom goes into single user mode :) We have guest bath and powder not too far so that could be used if one of us is in a shower, tub, etc.

I know that I do not want toilet next to the tub and too far from sinks . Also I do not want it on the bedroom wall because of noise and at the same time too far from bedroom so that midnight walks are not too long ( what bethohio3 was commenting on above) . Also do not want it to be seen first entering the bathroom. So with all that where do you place that darn toilet ?

Maybe we could look into option of moving it to the wall across from the sinks, sort of where linen closet is now? Would love ideas for that.

As far as double doors go - I do not like them in general . Initial plan had pocket door to the bathroom which I did not want. Then we looked at a regular swing door. I was not sure about how to best locate the door to minimize impact of the swing. So double doors were suggested as an option since space needed for swing is much smaller and could just align with sides of the linen cabinets. The responses here confirmed that we should go with the regular door. I will post couple of placements I am considering hoping that I'll get some help in choosing the best one.

Thank you

Snow falling of roofs just needs to be addressed where it is an issue.

The garage wall that faces the street is opportunity for some sort of architectural statement, which could be dramatic or simple elegance.

My suggestion on the placement of the master bedroom was based upon the assumption that the view is better from that location.

The windows need work. Don't think of them being placed, think of them being orchestrated.

Just pretending that I moved into this house, first thing would be to add a pocket door to the guest bathroom in the master hall. Then, when no guests, that would be "his" bathroom....or mine in alternate years (like tax prep). Best part of our empty nest is NOT sharing a bathroom. My husband would say (often!) that with plenty of house, why does he have to share a closet w/me and all my !@#$! shoes?

And I would also immediately add a similar pocket door from master closet to laundry room...for streaking after shedding gardening/jogging clothes. Maybe other couples don't have that issue?

I like the entryway to the master suite and can easily imagine a dozen living room things that could be stored there. But I would move down the door to the bath (not double doors) in order to get a pretty corner to view on entry to master area. Probably for a big piece of art. But of course the downside of that long route to master, besides general issue of circulation space, is aging-in-place considerations. That's a loooong way on a walker.

I cannot envision the stove in LR and how furniture would be arranged there. Where would be cozy together time for a couple? If the answer is downstairs, where would cozy space be come the years when those stairs themselves become a problem? I visited my elderly parents today. Their matching lift recliners by the fire (which is still cranked up high even on a warm spring day) are ugly, not to mention their many necessary accoutrements, but they very much enjoy sitting there together in their nest. And yes, their nest has a huge tv, also ugly, but at 90, two infirm old ones sitting all day happily together trumps aesthetics.

(Oh, and Jannicone, the reason two people might need to be in a toilet area together is that one of them needs a little help. My own very proper & dignified old ones joke about it, implying some kind of sexual interlude. I hope the shoe antagonist and I should be so lucky when we are 90.)

Sam

I agree about ditching the double doors into the bathroom. One door, regular style, perhaps 36 inches wide. Have it open inwards left or right, whichever way is more comfortable for the both of you. (Which may depend on handedness?)

I'm fine with your bathroom as you have it -- works for aging in place! Samarnn makes a good point. You'd have to make the bathroom much bigger to house an enclosed toilet, if you ever wanted it wheel chair accessible. Plus, I'd still want a sink in with it.... I know there are work-arounds, but. Anyhow most couples I know are fine with showering while someone else is, um, sitting. They may not want to brush teeth at the same time, but that's quick enough to wait for.

Does your pond already exist, or are you planning on building one?

I do like you are thinking about the landscaping and other exterior needs early on.

I just wanted to say how much I appreciate all the comments! I am reading through all of them and will be back with answers and more questions when I digest it all!

THANK YOU!

Hi Mark,

I am sure I do not really understand what it means to orchestrate windows but I can share what we were trying to achieve and would appreciate if you have any thoughts.

In the public spaces we want to let in as much light and view as possible. I think I've mentioned that our best view will be southwest/west. If there were no budget and climate constraints I would love to have uninterrupted wall of glass wrapping around southwest corner of the dining room.

In the kitchen I wanted to have light from east, south, and west. I call it my 3 meals a day windows - breakfast, lunch and dinner :)

Since guest bedroom on the main floor will be used a lot as den/reading room I wanted to have good southern light there as well.

In the rest of the spaces ( master bedroom, bathroom, laundry , office) we wanted adequate light and ventilation but no special requirements.

As far as basement goes it was important to us that we could have an easy way to access lower patio from lounge room and have reasonable good light in basement bedroom. We do not really need a lot of light in the dance studio.

So the 4 things that we were asking for were light/view, access to the outside, ventilation, and some interest/symmetry in elevations.

Which marks did we miss on or what opportunities do you see that we are not taking advantage of?

As far as garage wall goes do you have suggestions on how we could make architectural statement? What tools are available to us? Color, type of wall cladding, landscaping, windows? I would prefer simple elegance :)

Thank you

I also wanted to share earlier elevations with different windows. We've changed them because looking from dining/living area the outside view felt to chopped up to me. What do you think, are we going in the right or wrong direction with windows?

There were also some changes done to this old plan mostly to simplify the roof line.

It is the right direction.

One thing that is good to have in architecture, much like music, is rhythm.

Mark, and everybody else,

Trying to prioritize here, can you list our elevations in the order of " needs the most work" to " needs the least work" as far as windows are concerned?

We are still waiting on septic location in order to figure out if something/anything could be done with the garage.

And I would love to hear anybody's ideas on what can be done with the blank garage wall that would face the street if we try to implement Mark's concept?

Turn the garage into some attractive and appealing, rather simply a box in which to keep the rain off the vehicles. Olsen Studios project:

I understand the goal of making it attractive :) The question is how to achieve it while keeping windows and roof budget in check :) Could we just paint big "welcome" sign with smiley face on the wall? Just kidding ....

" The question is how to achieve it..." As the Olsen project illustrates to make a bulky garage attractive one has to "break the box" and treat the garage as if it's as important as the house and an integral part of it. Otherwise, it might as well be a metal shed with overhead doors.

Good work, Brother I'm coming over with an entire roll of paper towels...! :-)

I am back after some thinking. I certainly do not want to present unattractive facade to the world but beyond attractiveness there are other things that I care about: usability, cost to build and maintain, energy efficiency. With the majority of the suggestions so far, it seems to me that improving appeal of the garage is done to the detriment of usability and "total cost of ownership". Longer and costlier driveway; additional windows that are purely decorative which means again higher cost to build and also more cleaning without the benefit of bringing light and views into the living spaces; longer walk from parked cars for us and guests (we usually do not park in the garage during summer); less sun on the driveway which means we have to scrape more ice or use more salt; game room too far from lounge area; more complicated roof; etc. The one exception is Janicone's idea of shifting garage right (north) and back (west). I really like it but I do not think location of the septic will allow us to do that .

Virgil, I really liked what you said about making garage into something appealing which is also integral part of the house. That is exactly what I would love to do. I do not want to hide it - cars are important part of our live , at least outside of urban areas ( I would love to see better public transportation in US but ....) , so I do not want to pretend they do not exist. Ideally, I would love to use functional features that are required (garage doors, outdoor lights, siding, ...) , not purely decorative, to make garage interesting. Is it not possible with the original plan? I know I sound stubborn but even after all the pushback everybody is giving me I still think the original layout gives us the best functionality. Or am I just slow and missing something? It happens more often than not :)

Mark, it is interesting that I was thinking to use garage doors with glass panels to achieve something similar to what you did in sketch 3 or 5. I'll attach some inspiration pictures when I have better connection. Of course now, that I saw number 4 (over the limit one) I am really thinking of doing exactly that. Our neighbors will love us ;)

On the windows and rhythm - I think right now we have Piazzolla. Not very danceable but I love to listen :)

On a serious note, I've already confessed that functionality is more important to us but if we can improve the looks without losing functionality and adding to the cost of the build I'd love that. If any of the greatly talented architects here would consider working with us, please message me privately. If not , I think we are getting ready to commit a sin of building another snout and rhythmically challenged house :)

Artemis_ma ,

Double doors - gone. I am still playing with location of the swing door. Need to post here for advise.

Glad you think bathroom is ok. I very much agree with you on having sink if toilet is in the closet.

No, pond does not exist but I am really trying to keep house in budget so that we can do my dream swimming pond. It would be so good for dips after hot sauna session!

Sam,

First of all thank you for making me laugh!!!

"His" bathroom is an interesting idea. It would certainly have to alternate though :) DF is dreaming about good soak in the new deep tub just as much as I do! And you know what's funny? A lot of my shoes will be kicked out of our closet and sent to the basement.... but then of course they belong in display case right by the dance floor - they are dance shoes after all :)

I also like connection from closet to the laundry if it is done well. With our plan I would have to move cleaning closet to be across from washer and dryer and I am not sure how I feel about that. On one hand it would make hamper area under folding counter closer to the entrance which is a plus. On the other hand in am concerned that closet will somewhat block the light and make the aisle in front of the w/d more narrow .... Any thoughts about that? Of course may be I should make pass through from laundry right into shower - that would be so handy :)

The stove is one of my challenges. I am torn between 2 locations. One is as shown on the plan now and second is in north- west corner of the living room . I think second location addresses your "cuddling" concerns much better. But then I really wanted to have stove to be sort of "warm heart" of the home and be able to enjoy view of the fire from multiple directions since stove allows that. Here is the link to the stove we want to get-http://jotul.com/us/products/wood-stoves/jotul-f-370 

Also I think this central location is better for where chimney would have to come through the roof. Any comments that would help me decide ?

If you sent a message to ARG, ArchitectRunnerGuy, he has done a number of great projects for posters on this chat board. I would suggest you contact him. He hasn't commented on this thread, so I don't think he has seen your dilemma. I like his work. I suggest you take the step to contact him. It's a simple phone call to see if there is a better way before you drop huge sums into a permanent project.