I suggest you post your kitchen layout and questions in the kitchen forum, a lot of expert help can be found there.

Shouldn't you be asking your architect these questions?

Yes, of course I will be speaking with the architect, but the architect has--up to this point--working for the builder and investor, so I haven't been in contact with him yet. Like I mentioned in my first post, I'm meeting with him next week. I would just like to be prepared with any suggestions going into the meeting. Thanks

" . . . the architect has--up to this point--working for the builder and investor, so I haven't been in contact with him yet."

That is a poor way to design a house or addition. Those "preliminary plans" look like construction drawings. The architect should be working for you and be paid by you.

What Mark said.

What I see is someone (your architect) who placed rooms willy-nilly without thought to flow. Someone who is claiming 4' wide is a walk in closet. It's not. A closet needs 2' for clothing which leaves you only 2' for walking space. Hardly walk in.

Are you ok with having to walk through the dining room to get to the family room?

I would hate to be the child stumbling to use the bathroom in the middle of the night.

2'6" doors for doors leading to bathrooms etc are too narrow. 32" should be the minimum nowadays.

Your laundry closet is barely large enough to turn around in.

Honestly, I think you need to find yourself an independent architect who can come up with a plan that will work well for your family. This looks more like what I'd expect a draftsman to come up with, not an architect.

I doubt if your architect cooks, that's a big work triangle.

Wow, okay...so like I mentioned in the 2nd sentence, we are meeting with the architect next week. We became involved in his project a mere 5 days ago, so I don't see how it was unreasonable for the architect to be working with the builder up to this point as there was no one else involved in the project.

Cp--thank you for the suggestions. I will mention the door width in my meeting with him next week.

The bathroom situation is one thing I brought up in my original email, as I would love to be able to work another bath onto the 2nd floor for the kids. Right now the 3 kids share one hall bath in our current house, but I have visions of teenagers fighting down the line and think another bath might help alleviate some wars!

I am okay with the kitchen/dining/family set up, as we wanted an open floor plan (we are going to do everything in our power to see if we can get rid of that little partition wall, so as to make it more open). The dining won't be a formal room...I more envision a big farmhouse table for our family and friends to gather.

I will bring up the closet size. I think they were probably trying to maximize the size of the bedrooms given the fact that we can't extend, and so maybe the closets suffered!

Thanks again!

"his project"

Isn't this your project, or is he going to live there?

The work triangle is the sum of the distances from the sink to the refrigerator, Refrigerator to the stove, and stove to the sink. Each leg should ideally be a straight line forming a triangle. In your kitchen one has to walk around the island to get from the sink to the refrigerator and from the refrigerator to the sink. This adds to the inefficiency of the kitchen layout layout to the point where it will either keep you physically fit or send you searching for colorful adjectives to describe how tired you are after using your kitchen.

It was supposed to say "this", but that snarky remark is incredibly helpful, so thanks for that.

And again, I mentioned in my first post that I thought the kitchen needed to be re-worked. I thought the fridge was too far away. I agree with you. I was looking for suggestions as how I can make that happen, given the space we have to work with.

I think you need to take a step back and get the plan working right. Right now it's a series of connected boxes (rooms) with nothing unifying it. A GOOD architect will connect the boxes but in a unifying way.

Are you sure this person is a licensed architect? When I started, my builder talked about his architect. Turns out the person was just a glorified draftsman with a CAD program.

His plans have AIA after his name, and he has his NYS license number on the plans? I mean I guess he could've had someone in his office draft it, and maybe he didn't do it personally, but would his info be on the plans then?

I am not trying to be snarky here, I honestly want to know--how do I know it's a good vs bad architect? I've never done this, so I just don't know what to look for or how we know when plans aren't any good? I didn't think these plans were so terrible, but based on the feedback so far, it appears that they are...clearly I have a lot to learn!

I think you need to buy a different house entirely. Working with a flipper builder and investor (?) who has an architect working for HIM means you don't get much you actually ask for. Not without paying some incredibly inflated change orders.

This is a spec house, and the end result will have Very Little to do with how you want the house to be done other than the A/B choice of beige or gray. They have already chosen the plan and materials that they need to use in order to make money.

It's all about the cheap marketing buzz words checked off and popular fads to appeal to the immediate NOW buyer rather than what would actually work long term. Like the actual home's infrastructure of the plumbing, electrical, insulation, HVAC, and other non sexy stuff that you bet will be paid scant attention to because it doesn't photograph well.

You either hire a team that reports to you, or you give up and let them do the cheap Reno that they've planned. There isn't another course that will be anything but completely frustrating. The muddled pedigree of this project predicts a complete horribly expensive disaster. The writing is on the wall, whether or not you choose to read it.

Hi Sawyer - your plans are not terrible - I think they just need a little work in a few areas. As you had mentioned in your first post, adding another bathroom on the second floor is crucial. The three kids bedrooms are fairly large - I would suggest that you decrease the square footage in the bedrooms and work in a second bath. You may even be able to pick up some extra room for the master bath and closets. I don't think the laundry room needs to be bigger, but it may be able to be reconfigured a bit.

You really need to get the furniture drawn in all of the rooms to see how all of the spaces work. I would suggest allowing for a possible future queen size bed in all of the kids bedrooms and maximize their closet storage to eliminate dressers in the bedrooms.

I'd be happy to help you tweak the kitchen and the second floor a bit. Do you have an AutoCad file of the home or just PDF files ?

It's not horrible, but it could be a lot better.

Do you have the current house plans?

Do you own the house? Or is it a flipper as Sophie suggested?

How old is the house?

If it's a flipper, I'd be inclined to walk away for all the reasons Sophie stated. They are in it to make a quick buck, make it look pretty for those who don't know better and then get out. While we all love the pretties, (and I'm thrilled to be getting to that stage now in my new build), the shell and systems of the house are really what are most important.

If it is a flip situation, I'd suggest you find another house that can be reworked and then hire your own GC and your own architect.

Don't do the two story foyer. Use that space to create a bath or move the laundry there and put a smaller bath where the laundry is. It looks like you have plenty of space to do what you want.

I would work on getting better closet space in the bedrooms too. They appear small for the size of the rooms and house in general.

The other thing that jumps out at me is that the proportions of the rooms on the 1st floor look very off. I would have expected the family room to clearly be the largest. However, the dining and kitchen looks to be almost the same size. Have you tried figuring out what to do as far as furniture placement to see how things would really work for you?

Thank you, thank you, thank you--I appreciate the suggestions Columbus/Cp/lyfia, and will try to answer the questions.

So first of all, we do not own the house (yet). The builder owns the house, but he doesn't typically flip homes. This house is next to his parents, and his sister (my friend) lives on the other side. I'm not saying he won't expect to make a profit (obviously he will), but it's not some sleazy builder who does like 60 of these a year.

We also agreed that we would have a list of interior/exterior specs before proceeding, so I will know the brand of everything he plans to put in given my price. Again, I'm not naive to think that nothing will come up and it will all be smooth sailing, but I'm a lawyer and like contracts and hope to alleviate as many issues as possible by spelling it all out beforehand.

Columbus--I only have the PDF of the plans. Is there a program you would recommend to add in furniture and whatnot? I thought we could probably decrease the size of the rooms slightly, as well. I would even be willing to give up some of our master bath if that would help in any way. I also think if we add a bath upstairs, we can make the existing hall bath smaller and save some room there. I would probably have my 2 girls share the larger of the two and give my son his own.

I might be able to do just a closet with washer/dryer upstairs, and put a full laundry room down in the unfinished basement (which we will finish at a later date). But where would you suggest I do that? I also realized he didn't include a linen closet upstairs either.

lyfia--I think the family room is a similar size (roughly 17' x 17'), it's just that it goes kind of "behind" the stairs (does that make any sense? I don't know how else to describe it). The dining area is about 16 x 16, and the kitchen is 19 x 17. We wouldn't have a formal dining room...I'm just planning on just getting a long farm table, and keeping it otherwise open.

I don't have the plans for the current home, but its dilapidated. Apparently there was a 90 year old living there alone, and he went into a nursing home. I'm guessing there has been no work done in the past 50 years! I think the only thing that is going to remain is the footprint.

I should also mention that getting to build a house in our neighborhood is rare. We live right outside of NYC in the most desirable school district within our town, so finding a house or land here isn't easy. It isn't like there is a ton of acreage and we can just move onto a different location. I would really like to make this work if at all possible.

I hope I answered most questions--thank you so much for the suggestions thus far!

Sawyer, I'm on Long Island in the summertime and grew up there. Understand about school districts and desirable land.

Nice cp! So you feel my pain :)

What size is the living room? I'm wondering if you could use the living room as a dining room and reduce the kitchen size a bit and have the extra space from the kitchen and the current dining room as your family room. It is a bit more open concept that way though with the kitchen and family room in one area, so that may not fit your needs. Then use the current family room as a flex room. You can use it as a play/game room depending on the kids ages and it can be closed off. If that would be good use for you I'd see about getting access to the guest bathroom from there too so it could have lots of uses as your family grows.

Can you make the laundry room a bathroom and move the w/d into the other bathroom. You'd have to walk past them to get into the bathroom though. I'm not sure if there is enough space, but maybe it's worth looking into. You could put a pocked door on the bathroom to separate it.

Rockybird--thanks, I'm going to look into that. I wouldn't mind having doors closing the W/D off if that could work. That bathroom is oddly shaped, but the place where you drew the W/D is 6'5", so I'm guessing it could fit there. Would have to check the depth.

I think that laundry area as drawn was roughly 6 x 6, so it would be a small bathroom, but we could probably make it work (especially if we were able to steal a bit of room from a bedroom).

Still not sure where a linen closet could go?

Lyfia--thanks for the suggestion, I will play around with it a bit. I believe the living room is roughly 13 x 19.

Of all the things on these plans though, I don't necessarily have a problem with the open layout in those 3 rooms. I'm worried about the kitchen layout and the Windows being in the "right" spot and whatnot, but I kind of like the idea of having everything open.

My best friend has her kitchen open to an informal dining area open to a family room, and my husband and I love it. It is kind of hard to see from these pics, but this is her house...

This is from her dining area looking into the kitchen

From her living/family room

A little further to the side so you can see it all

When I saw these plans, I kind of envisioned something similar...

I can't tell what is going to remain of the original house. Is this worth 'remodeling'? Are you prohibited from tearing it down?

We bought a home, intending to extensively remodel it.

Then we considered what that entailed, how long it would take, and what the value would be at the end.We would have an old house with 'improvements'. It would cost more to 'remodel' than to start over. It would take *ages* and have lot of 'surprises' as we dug into the structure.

We did a teardown. The city considered it 'remodeling' because we used the existing basement and kept the chimney and part of the garage.

In our area, our land is worth more than the 'improvement' (the house).

Nice cp! So you feel my pain :)

Yes when my son was 4 going on 5 and my daughter almost 1, we moved from Long Beach to Glen Head because of the school districts.

We aren't very far from Long Beach! My husband is a surfer and spends a good deal of time there!

My son lives in Long Beach now.

Nice! And you are in Florida?

Actually right this moment I'm on Long Island. North shore. We spend summers up here and winters in Florida. Unfortunately most of this summer we've been in Florida because of the house build. I understand I missed a delightful summer here.