One more comment, and a question: Note that your plumbing is strung from one end of the house to the other. Downstairs you have the kitchen on one end and the bathroom on the other end. Upstairs you have the master bath on the far left and the other bathrooms and the laundry on the far right. You will save significant money on plumbing if you scoot these rooms closer together. For example, upstairs you have two "back to back" secondary bathrooms. This is economical because the plumber will run water through that center wall, and it'll serve both bathrooms. The laundry room is close to these bathrooms, so a pipe'll have to run across the hall, but that's still cheaper than running the pipes across the whole house. You'll save on installation, and you'll save on materials. Consolidation of plumbing also saves in two other ways: A wall that contains water must be 6" thick, whereas other interior walls may be only 4" thick. Thus, a non-water wall is cheaper to build and allows you a few more inches of interior space. Any pipe is subject to leaking sometime down the road -- perhaps because you accidentally cut into it or drove a nail into it, or perhaps because it grew old and rusty. If your pipes are shorter and more consolidated, you have less plumbing to potentially go bad. This lessens the potential problems you might have to pay to fix, and it lessens the number of walls that might one day have to be opened up to look at the plumbing. And the question: Since windows matter so much, and since a pool is involved, where's north on your plan?

Thanks for your input Ingrid. After Celebration's comments, I went out on Google and searched for "Old World" floor tiles. I found sites where you could purchase reclaimed tiles or new imported Italian/Spanish tiles. I noticed quickly their tiles are not the large 18+ inches tiles, but smaller, uniform tiles as you suggested or are random mixed sizes as Celebration suggested. I guess I need to rethink my direction and not get caught up in size recommendations that seem to be popular in this country.

"...need a decent amount of pantry/storage space..." If the current pantry is eliminated, consider putting one somewhere else. What is the current "closet" being used for? Pantry? Something else? If pantry, is it big enough? I'm thinking you probably don't use it as a pantry, though, since you also said you have things scattered throughout the house that you want to store in the kitchen. Regarding the tall cabinets flanking the sliding doors, remember there's a 5'+ aisle there...that's a lot different than the 36" aisles you often see...it's pretty open. In addition, you have the 6' wide window on the left wall...and that will also give you a feeling of openness. However, if you can move or eliminate the pantry, that area can be opened up even more. But, what you don't want to do is create a large open space just for the sake of "openness" and then short yourself on storage and/or workspace. I'm not saying eliminating the flanking tall cabs will short you, I'm just saying be careful what you do in the name of "openness". The peninsula, btw, is not only creating the two Prep Zones you need, but also protecting the Cooking Zone. As you can see in Layout #3 above, an island probably won't work unless you eliminate the pantry. We had the same goal, btw, when we did our kitchen...get all the stuff out of the DR, Basement, and Library (yes, Library!) and into the kitchen where they belonged! So, how much storage space do you need? Personally, I would want a pantry somewhere close by...

I would like to thank everyone who took the time to read through these posts and to post advice and suggestions and constructive criticism. I am taking all of it into consideration and some of it was not what i wanted nor expected to hear, but what I needed to hear. I feel as if a little more explanation is needed. We found a builder that we really like and everyone that he has built for has been really happy. He had several plans that we could look at or if we had any plans he could build whatever we liked. He has a gentleman that could draw and customize a home for us. We thought it was architect at first and the price was so good because we were going through him and he would then be able to have our house plan to use in the future. Upon our first meeting with the gentleman that was going to draw up of dream home so we could make it a reality, we learned that he was not an architect, or designer. He's retired now from 40 years of experience woking on/building homes and is good with the software. He is very kind and has been very patient with the many changes we have made along the way. However, we soon discovered that he really has no design ideas or suggestions. He just draws whatever we ask him to or whatever I draw to send to him. If we wanted something a changed, the standard procedure was to just make part of the house bigger, we had gotten up to almost 4400 square feet! If we didn't like the way something worked and asked for a change, he would fix that issue and cause 2 more. I got so frustrated that we are trying to build our dream home and pretty much the only person I had for design help was myself. Uhm, I really want someone with much more skill and talented and better taste to design my home. I know what I want, I just do't know how to get there. We have been working on this for 8 months. I got so frustrated that I gave up for 3 months. Our neighbors are using the same builder and they had difficulties getting their design as well. However they had found a floor plan that they liked and just had him make changes to it and add a mother in law plan. I firmly believe that we are his first truly start from scratch home. Again, this is the guy the builder sent us to to have plans drawn, not our builder. Giving him credit he has taking my very very basic sketches and turned them into something the builder can build from, but pretty much the design is about 99% me, not that I wanted it that way. Here is where I'm at, so you can see that he is doing all the builder type stuff. We don't want to be difficult, but we want a good design. We don't want the builder to think that we are difficult or indecisive because we just can't get there with his guy. I'm at a loss! Several people wanted to know the lot dimensions. So here they are: It is at the top of a ridge, has some slope to it and has a nice open are in the middle. Of course we want the house to sit about at the arrows part of the lot. There is an utility easement of 20 feet on the right side of the lot, but the utility poles are more like 30 feet inside the property. I really do appreciate all of your insight. It has been eye opening. I'll make another post addressing questions and comments. Sorry to be so long winded.