Floor Plan Review Please
lindavana
6 years ago
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Floor plan review please - Almost finalized - Yippee!
Comments (22)Hi everyone. Momto3 - This floor plan is indeed beautiful, as the pictures of the finished house show. And some of the suggestions given by others were little nuggets of gold to keep in mind! MyDreamHome, I love your laundry room - I have not come across one that is in that small a space and yet works as efficiently as yours does. The garbage bins for laundry are a wonderful idea! I too fold in my laundry in the laundry room as soon as items come out of the dryer - otherwise they need ironing, and I am not into that (unless it is part of my quilting - that is a different story). For those many people who were enquiring about how to make this large house smaller (I believe it is 5,000 square feet, give or take a couple hundred): some great suggestions were made about making some rooms smaller (ie - do you need a 30+ by 15+ playroom, and a 16+ by 14+ breakfast area? We would all like it, but...). However I have two other suggestions as well. This house, built as a single-story home, has a huge footprint. That means a huge basement or slab, and a huge roof surface. Furthermore, the roof will be quite high, simply because of the area it has to cover. So... You could consider moving some or all of the bedrooms upstairs, and while this may not reduce the square footage of the home, it will reduce the cost of building significantly (the cost per square foot will go down significantly because this area does not need its own basement/slab or roof). For example, if you put 1500 square feet of bedrooms/bathrooms upstairs, you will reduce your footprint and roof area by that amount - the size of a small-mid size house! With some interesting jut-outs, dormers and some sloped ceilings, you can make a very interesting as well as a light and airy second floor. In fact, a friend of mine did just this - they planned a large single-level house, and the architect suggested that with almost no changes to the roof other than a couple of dormers, they could put in a large master suite and two additional bedrooms and another bath on the second floor. They agreed, and then re-envisioned the main floor to keep the footprint the same size as before, giving them about 1/3 more living space for very little extra money. Just one word of warning: it will impact the layout of the roof trusses, and perhaps even the type of truss used, so that you have full use of the available height. So include this in the plan before you start building - even if you plan to finish the space later (another advantage of reducing the footprint - you can finish off the other levels later if money is an issue and yet you expect your family to grow). Similarly if you build the house with a basement and your land has just a bit of a slope to it, with some forethought you can have a walk-out basement with large windows and French or sliding doors...or at worst, finished rooms with large windows. Then you can put some of the bedrooms and the play room downstairs and still have them bright and airy. If you live where you have to do a basement anyway, you double the size of your (single story) house by utilizing the basement. A current trend in my area is for builders to use 9-10 foot ceilings in the basement to ensure that the area is not claustrophobic (and it allows for bigger windows if the house sits a bit higher). Often with a bit of landscape planning, enough of a slope can be created when the footings and the basement are laid down. Again here, if you plan to finish the basement (now or later), give it some thought so that you do not limit your options when you do finish it. For example, you may want to use longer or different types of beams to support the main floor to reduce the number of posts in the basement. And you may want to ensure that your posts are no closer that 12 or 15 feet apart - so that you likely won't have a post in the middle of where you would like to have a bedroom. It is also important to have a plan so that you can make the best use of windows, and put larger ones in if possible. Every bedroom must have an egress window (which is not very big), so don't plan on sticking a bedroom in the front of the house unless you are prepared to have windows at the front, etc. Plumbing is easier if it is roughed in now as well, although if you change your mind, it can be moved easily enough (but it costs $$). Has anyone tried either of these options? I would draw out a sample, but I don't currently have a couple of free hours - sorry... PS - sorry for the length of this post......See MoreFloor Plan Review Please!
Comments (8)Thanks, everyone! @neroselover, that was a concern of mine initially as well. I was convinced by others that there are very good baby monitors now that would put my mind at ease...I guess we'll see when we get there. ;) We are thinking that initially the baby will be in our room (We don't have much bedroom furniture) then move to the nursery. @motherof3sons, thank you! I would like to eventually turn the kitchenette area into a bar that opens into the living area. (We will frame for this, but cover it up for now.) We've actually talked with our builder about moving the laundry hookups into the unfinished space next to the kitchenette where the utilities are because of the dryer venting. @bird_lover6, thanks for the heads up about the dining space. I am a bit concerned about that as well. I'll talk to our builder about what it could cost to add space on to the back of the dining room. I am thinking it may be better to have the sliding door open from the left pane instead of the middle, to allow better flow around the dining table. Would it be weird to have the chairs come out even with the doorway to the bedroom hallway? There is still space between where the chairs would end and the island would begin...? @zone4newby, thanks for your input. I totally agree. This is my biggest dislike about the plan, but I don't know how to fix it without starting over (which isn't an option for us now). We changed the kitchen layout earlier in the process, which moved the hallway up, making no room for bedrooms in the back of the house off the hallway. I don't like the layout as much, but was worth the trade off for the kitchen. In the edited version of the hallway, we enclosed the mudroom/laundry room and pushed the bedroom back into the garage about 4 ft to hopefully make it a little less awkward. We plan to put a sliding barn door on the laundry/mudroom which will probably stay open most of the time unless VIP guests are over. ;) If anyone has any other ideas I'd love to hear them!...See MoreFloorplan review please
Comments (25)If you play with your design and configure in the form of a short, stubby T, then you have a form which gives you the long axis, the top of the T, and now allows you, at the ends of the T, to have windows from two sides, possibly even 3 depending on how stubby the stem of the T is. Your architect's plan has the LR, DR, MB + sitting on the east side, so the DR + sitting room only get East light. Your kitchen is going to get West light in the afternoons, just when dinner activity is ramping up in the kitchen. The best location for a kitchen is on the east side, morning sun comes in to brighten your day just when you're still groggy, and then by evening the kitchen is in cooling mode. Decking is more maintenance intensive than other aspects of a house, so all of that decking, when the time comes, is going to require upkeep and effort. A patio, if you have the flat ground, is less fuss. As we discussed yesterday, you can stretch your budget further by going to a squarer design, and what this means is that, for a fixed budget, your choices can lead to more interior area or less, it's a matter of trade-offs. If I were in your shoes, I'd be trying to emphasize southern exposure, have some western and eastern window exposure, and hardly any windows on the north. That's just a general principle though and should be modified depending on what you have on the land. You note the terrific views from the east so definitely modify to take advantage of those views. Do you have a garage? If so, where is it? The best place would be to have in on your north side, blocking the north wind, sheltering your living area. Again, that's just a general thought and your site dictates what works best. Have you thought of a porch on your west side? If you do that, go with a deep overhang. In fact, why don't you play around with these solar calculators to figure out how much sunlight will grace your rooms from every direction at various times of the year. http://susdesign.com/tools.php...See MoreFloorplan review please!!
Comments (16)Yes, that one is better, but I'm concerned because it's significantly different from the first one in terms of # of rooms and basics. This makes me think you haven't yet clarified what you need your house to do. I'm a teacher, so here's your homework: Together with your spouse, sit down and brainstorm what rooms your "forever home" needs to have ... and then for each room, write down all the functions that room needs to provide ... and your must-have details for each of those rooms. If we all did this, we wouldn't agree on what we want our rooms to do for us, so it's important to think this through and clarify it for ourselves. Take your time doing this -- don't jump in too fast; right is better than fast. For example, if I were to make a list for my master bedroom, here's what I'd say: - Must be on the first floor - Space for a king-sized bed, but no wasted space -- this isn't a splurge room -- prefer that foot of bed faces the doorway -- prefer bed set back into room /traffic pattern passes by the foot of the bed /not by a sleeper - Built in unit: Cabinets on bottom for storage of hobby items /bookshelves on top, space for a TV mounted to the wall (need cable jack) -- simple, inexpensive, paint-grade stock cabinetry - Room to be placed at the back of the house /doorway to back porch - Windows on two walls for cross-ventilation - Flat ceiling -- not a place to splurge / must have ceiling fan - Large walk-in closet to hold all clothes and shoes (no dresser in bedroom) /must be convenient to laundry / Elfa shelf storage /good lighting /electrical outlet for a hand-vac /storage space for suitcases /include step stool - Light colors, restful, plenty of natural light - Re-use our current bed /paint white /add new, sumptuous bedding with plenty of layers and pillows - My grandfather's cedar chest is to remain at foot of bed for linen storage - Swing-lamps attached to the wall on each side of the bed / think about reading in bed without disturbing other spouse - Bathroom and closet doors placed so light doesn't shine onto bed /waking sleepers - Outlets placed at "nightstand height" -- four on each side, to include USB outlet - New nightstands w/ open shelf for books - Wooden steps so dog can reach the bed Now, I'm in no way suggesting that your idea of a "perfect bedroom" should match mine; rather, I want you to think about the kinds of things you should be considering. Looking at my list, you might say, "No, I don't want cabinets for hobby storage -- we're going to include a craft room, and our junk will be stored in that room." Or you might say that you want a bay window with space for two comfortable chairs and a table so you can have coffee in privacy when you have company. You might say you don't want a TV in your bedroom, or you might want a desk in your bedroom. You might say you want your bedroom to be connected to a study or an exercise room. You might need storage space for special medical needs. Note that I don't care whether I have eastern light for the morning -- you might. The point is for you to really dig down and decide what YOU WANT from each room. Don't bother with how the rooms will connect yet. Instead, focus on what rooms you want and what would be ideal in each room. Do this for every room in the house (I chose the bedroom as an example because I thought it'd be the shortest list). For each room, consider how you'll use the room, what you want to store in the room, what activities you want to happen in the room. THEN you'll be able to look at a floorplan and say with certainty, "This can work for me"....See Morelindavana
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