I've not seen anyone post their floorplans the way you did and I found it a bit difficult having to open several tabs and then flip back and forth among them to look at all the elements of your design so I hope I don't leave anything out that I saw and meant to bring up. Conversely, it was nice being able to focus in and see all the dimensions and not just guess. Here were my thoughts: 1) On your elevation drawings, I don't see the chimneys for either of the fireplaces? 2) If you plan to get any real use out of your front covered porch, you need to make it deeper. If you only intend to set a couple of rocking chairs out there for "show" then 5ft depth is okay. 6 to 8 ft deep would be much better. 3) If you want to maybe occasionally picnic out on the back deck, I'd make it 10 ft deep. Big enough for a picnic table plus room to walk around it. 4) I'm curious what furniture you plan to have in the "hearth room". It seems a bit small for a sofa and chairs - especially with the fireplace taking up a substantial amount of space in there. 5) Once you get rid of the side porch, your kitchen may seem a bit long and narrow. And, if you plan to keep a side door opening into the kitchen, I'm not sure how you'll gain much, if any, additional countertop or storage area in the kitchen. 6) The "eating area" seems a bit small. Okay for two adults and 2 kids but not so great once the kids are a bit bigger and maybe have some friends over once in a while. 7) The kitchen seems to be designed for use by one person only. Even if your spouse never helps with the cooking, as the kids get older, you'll want to teach them. 8) Cubbie area is too small to accomodate cubbies for four people but will be okay once you extend the laundry room out. Wish there was some way you could also make that area WIDER tho so that you had more standing room in front of the cubbies that wasn't in the "swing space" of the door out to the garage. My mud room is about the size yours will be once you extend the laundry room out and, even with just DH and myself, it feels tight when we come in and both of us are trying to take off our coats and hang them up. With 4 people it would be unmanageable. If that space is going to work to corral all the junk everyone has to have room to "unload" before they move on into the hallway. 9) I'm okay with your master bath design. Your vanities are 4 foot wide so I don't think they'll feel too cramped. If you were envisioning a "garden tub" where you could sit in the tub and look out the window, you won't be able to do that with the tub window facing the front of the house. I'd probably try to turn the bathroom 90 degrees so that my tub was at the side of the house for more privacy. LOL! 10) If the corner "shower seat" is really just a place to prop your foot while you shave your legs, it's fine. If you want to actually sit in comfort, I rather doubt it'll be big enough. Better to have a bench seat along one side of the shower. 11) The entry way closet looks awful small. Down where I live in the south, where folks only wear light jackets a month or so out of the year, we often dispense with entry way closets entirely but your designer is in New Albany, Indiana so I'm guessing you're building someone fairly close to there and that snow is a reasonably common occurance. If so, you'll need plenty of closet space to stash guest's coats, hats, umbrellas, galoshes, snowboots etc.... especially when your kids reach their teen years and have friends coming over. 12) I'm not a fan of J&J bathrooms (too much potential for one sibling to "accidentally-on-purpose" lock the other one out) BUT, if you want one, how about something like this that gives both sides their own toilet and vanity so that just the tub is shared? You would have to use a slightly smaller vanity (maybe 28" wide) on the bedroom 3 side but DH and I shared a 28" wide vanity for 25 years. One would be fine for a child. I know you will have a sloping roof with only a 6 ft height along one side. But, it is better to have the toilet and sink ON the short wall so that the space where you walk has a normal height ceiling rather than the other way around. Biggest concern would be whether you could make a pocket door fit with the sloping roofline. If not, you could have a door that swung into the powderroom side (in front of the toilet) or use a bifold door there.

The same thing happened to me yesterday. Similar gap at the foot of the bed. When I rang the store they tried to bully me into accepting that this was standard and that the doona (some call it a duvet, it's doona in Australia) would hang over and fill the gap. Well, for the doona to do this on the 35 cm thick mattress, it would have to be 2.2 metres long and standard doonas are barely two metres long. One kind salesperson suggested that their handyman could shorten the rails for me, which I originally thought would solve the problem, but then I was told by someone else that that sort of work is not in his duty statement and legal action could arise if anything happened when he was doing a job he was not supposed to. Tomorrow I will spend an hour dissembling the bed, shortening the side rails, shifting the connecting brackets along a couple of centimetres each end and then reassembling. A fairly simple job but the shop refused to take any responsibility. The man I spoke with even went so far as to try and tell me that he was doing me a big favour if he took the bed back and refunded me my money because I HAD CHANGED MY MIND!! What a bully! None of my friends will be going to "40 Winks" after this.

So plaster on day 8 (04.06.12) Awesome. They came by and started work immediately to avoid rain on their parade (my parade actually). They got through the first coat and then second perfecting and smoothing the shape and finishing off the coat and it started raining lightly on and off, but these guys were prepared. They set up a tarp and continued under the rain and finished it off. It soon looked beautiful and the walls were white and clean. Then it started raining really hard, but it was okay since they were doing their acid wash and stuff and off they went. Then they set up hose and let it sit and said to just watch it and it should be done in about 20 hours or so. To my surprise, indeed it filled up overnight and finished at 4:45 am. Wow. Sooner then expected. Good water pressure I guess. My pool looks GREAT. Filled to an ugly green but after Bob, my PM, came the next morning and cleaned up and started the pumps; Voila - THERE WAS MY DREAM POOL. A couple hours later another guy (maintenance) passed by and cleaned up my leaves and checked my pool out as well and we were good to jump in. Yeayyyyy. What a difference. FINALLY GOT MY POOL. Now all that's left is my sod, my lights and decor and my pool is nothing but enjoy and relax. LOVE it. Spitters (sprinklers), umbrella and the sunshelf make all the difference of a look. My turtles look awesome creeping into the pool on the steps and as for my dolphins..... they look nice but you barely see them because of the returns running and movement in the water. I guess they are also too light in color. So my suggestions for those going with mosaics; go with dark, bright, strong, colors. And big if they will be in deeper then 4 feet. But it looks great and doesn't beat the deal. As for the water temp, it is colddddddd as can be, but hoping that it will warm up, otherwise I will for sure have to get some kind of heating set up. Thinking of solar panels, so it's absolutley free after initial cost. I truly want to swim most year round, especially here in South Florida. Also my standard 100w light will have to go, after seeing what a beautiful pool I have and how awesome it looks, the light just needs more wow. I now want the LED light changing thing. My Xmas gift list will have to come earlier. Maybe mothers day idea. ??? :) Thank you to my saviors at Cliffs Pools. No messing around or delays. True and followed everything. Wow. Finally I made a right choice. I remember starting this post and doubtful with who I should choose. And not trusting anyone after my horrible experience. I am sooooo happy I am writing a happy story and ending it full of joy and good stuff and not what I was used to at the beginning. THANK YOU GOD. Plaster work. Sunny as can be and to me it looked beautiful. They knew in the forecast to expect rain so they prepped up with a tarp. Raining as they finish acid wash. My beautiful turtle mosaics. View from side of my dolphins and turtles. Fill up. Check out the color. Wow. Greeeeeeeeeennnnn. OMG, I think that is a frog on the right side swimming. Already visiting. I need to buy the Froglog asap. PM shows up to check the pool and put in chemicals and start my pumps off. Yeayyyy. Soon after chemicals are in. My pool starts turning blue. Ahhhhhhh, niceeee. Cleaning up, checking levels and picking my neighbors leaves from the bottom of the pool, and soon we get the okay to go swimming. Hope you enjoyed and got some pointers and ideas. As I did with those others who did the same for me. And if in South Florida and want to do your pool, you now know who you can trust and who is out of business.

First of all, thanks to all of you that responded. Im going to try and answer all of your questions and hopefully the design will make more sense.  rob_p "Presumably the wall behind the cooktop is high enough to protect from inadvertent hands going over it from the stairs and touching a hot pan?" ---Yes, thatÂs why we placed it in the middle. The stairs going down are steep and by the time you get to the cooktop area, not even a 6 adult can reach over. The ½ wall is 3/4s of the way around the basement stairs and itÂs 42" tall. "The only thing I'd change is to go to a standard fridge rather than the french door, and move it left next to the pantry. This would give you a landing counter between the fridge and the ovens to drop groceries and or hot stuff from the oven." ---I had it that way in the original plan, but I had concerns about entry into the kitchen. There are two ways to get into the kitchen: (1) through a narrow passage immediately next to the stairs and through a doorway size opening into the DR. If we move the refrigerator from the middle of that wall to the left corner, it will block traffic coming up the stairs into the kitchen as well as traffic coming into the kitchen from the front door and the hallway (behind the pantry) that leads to the bedrooms. ---I figured that if we have it in the middle of the wall and it was FD, the refrig would not eat up a lot of floor space when open and wouldnÂt eer block the entry. I was hoping that it wouldnÂt be that much of a pain to have the "sink wall" behind the oven be my landing pad for hot stuff. Is that a bad idea???  rosie Hi, Capesunseting. I miss those kids-all-over-me days. They used to follow me everywhere, even into the bathroom, a lonely place these days. :) ---Hi Rosie. I hear you! My kids are 5, 3, and15 months. The MAIN reason I wanted to do this renov is b/c I feel trapped in the kitchen and disconnected from the kids when IÂm trying to cook or clean up (which, as a stay at home mom, seems like more than ½ my day!) "You have what looks like a nice setup for a very pleasant compact place to work. I notice that your sink counter is a bit longer on the dining room end than the stove counter. Would it work to extend the stove counter just that much longer and wrap it around the end of the stairwell as shallow lower storage and food serving area? Just those few more inches on the stove run would be very nice to have." ---I totally agree with you and that was my initial design, but after a lot of struggling, my architect helped me realize that it would mean the end to my "dining room" as a real room and would "force" an addition to correct the problem. IÂm a realtor and weÂre in a sought after area 8 miles outside DC. Even in really small houses (ours is a ranch with 1,440 sf on each of two levels), for some reason buyers here always want to have real DRÂs. IÂve seen properties suffer when people change their DR to an extension of their kitchen. So, my compromise is that IÂm going to buy a piece of furniture (may have one made by the kitchen cabinet maker and with same/similar countertop, at counter height) that is basically removable so if my DH gets transferred or we want to move up to a bigger house, I can stage the house with or without it, depending on feedback. "I'm also wondering if it were mine, I might like to switch the dishwasher to the dining room end and slide the stove down that way just a bit too to create a sort of dedicated prep triangle at the other, fridge-stove-sink end, and a cleanup end at the dining end of the sink. One thing I am really liking in my own for-real kitchen is a nice deep sink to drop used pots and dishes out of sight into until I can get to them." ---IÂm not sure I understand what youÂre talking about when you say, "slide the stove down that way just a bit too to create a sort of dedicated prep triangle at the other, fridge-stove-sink end, and a cleanup end at the dining end of the sink." IÂm certainly open to changing the position of the DW, but my thought was people walk into the kitchen, scrape their plates into the trash and hand it to Mommy to put in the DW. Did you mean slide the cooktop over to the right toward the refrig?  jberg "Without seeing how the traffic flows, I am wondering what the doors lead to on the side of the double ovens? I would be concerned with that side, you have a narrow passage, so I would keep the french doors or double door. Depending on how much baking you do, I would opt for a range, rather than a cooktop, slide the frig to the pantry and make the space to the right counter. You could also move your undercounter bev cooler to that wall or have a micro drawer, then you could have drawers for pans on both sides of the range." ---the doors, while not shown on the drawings, will open OUT to a large deck that can be accessed via the kitchen and the DR, so I can have circular flow. The deck may be a phase two item b/c of $ and we didnÂt want to prompt lots of questions when we submitted the plans for bidding w/o showing a deck. I hope that makes sense. ---I am in love with the Advanitum *speed cook* technology (IÂve got 3 kids under 5!), so thatÂs why I have it as a double oven. You are not supposed to put it under a countertop, hence the double oven set up. ---For reasons stated above, if I move the frig out of the middle spot, it severely interferes with the entryways. ---I was including a 2 drawer refrig on the cooktop peninsula b/c it will make the milks, juices, fruit snacks, condiments, deli meat for sandwiches and coffee creamer readily accessible w/o crossing over into the cooks work area.  palimpsest "I think a separate beverage cooler in such a small kitchen with a 36" refrigerator is trading storage space for something that is not really necessary." ---thank you for your honesty. IÂve been wondering about that too, as it could be a big savings on the appliance costs. My main reason is that I was hoping that it would make the milks, juices, fruit snacks, condiments, deli meat for sandwiches and coffee creamer readily accessible w/o crossing over into the cooks work area. And also compensate for the fact that I have to do a counter-depth refrig (canÂt recess it). ---I guess I could give it up, but I wonder, if for flow and keeping kids out of the cooking area if I should just sacrifice the storage???  rhome410 "Will you have enough wall, also, to keep spatters from going over onto the steps? The thought that you'll be able to overlook the stairs doesn't seem safe to me." ---Yes, I think so, the wall will be 42" tall. "Do you need the wall sections at each end of the stove run? They use space that could be cabinet space and block access to the counter, especially from the fridge/pantry end...But, again, it depends on the height of that wall. But if it's short enough so it doesn't block the counter, why have it?" ---great catch! Thank you. I will discuss getting rid of that with the architect. "Love Rosie's suggestion to lengthen the stove run counter and wrap around the front of the stair area." ---As mentioned above, I canÂt do that b/c it will eat into the very NARROW dining room that I have. "I would want to swap dw and trash." ---Why? Not sure I understand. DoesnÂt it make sense to scrape into trash first, rinse in sink and put in DW? "Also wonder about the oven opening into the doorway, but don't know where that goes, so if it's a real concern. Am thinking that with a French door fridge next to the oven, you could dent the right door on the oven handle. A fridge that hinges only on the left would suit better in that configuration. " ---Totally agreed. But, the drawings are not correct in that itÂs supposed to swing OUT onto the future deck. ItÂs complicated. ;-) "Like Palimpset, I would favor more storage to the beverage cooler." ---Would you still feel that way if youÂre trying to keep the little ones from crossing over to the other end to get something out of the refrig? If I didnÂt have little kids, I think maybe I would agree, but IÂm still struggling with that decision. Does that change your mind? IÂm sorry for the long winded responses, but I wanted to make sure I addressed everyoneÂs comments. This forum is so great, but I think b/c my drawings didnÂt show an overview of the adjacent rooms/spaces, it was hard for people to see why I might have made some of the decisions I had. With my answers, IÂm wondering if now you would agree with me or if IÂm still on the wrong track re: appliance placement and need for refrig drawers. Buel, if youÂre out there, IÂd really love to hear your $0.02 too! Thanks so much, everyone!!!