I would suggest a 24-36 inch wide commercial metal shelving unit, floor to ceiling, behind your current ladder location. Adjust one of the shelves to approximately counter height and house your coffee pot, toaster and other small appliances on it. Use the lower shelves to store your heavier kitchen items - canned goods, pots & pans, etc. Use the higher shelves for lighter items - trays, cookie sheets, paper towels etc. I've been using a shelving unit in this capacity for the past year and it works quite well. I bought some metal S hooks to hang my untensils - ladles, spatulas , spoons as well as smaller skillets and frying pans. If you don't like to see all of these items you could easily incorporate bin and box storage.

@Columbus Custom Design Thank you for the feedback! You do raise a couple of important points. First, sorry for the resolution of the pictures. I tried a different PDF to JPG converter and I can read them fine. But when I upload to Houzz their compression is making it undreadable :( I will figure out a way to get better pictures in the thread but will look up your profile and e-mail as well. I agree the great room is a bit small. It's actually only 18 by 18. We modeled the size based on the room that we have right now, but it is not a main traffic area, like this one would be. We are definitely thinking about increasing it to 20x20. Perhaps also getting rid of the bottom walkway. Red-faced to admit it, but we never host dinner parties and the like, so dining area is used once in every 6 blue moons :/ We do however, for some reason (cough wife), have nice dining room furniture, so that's the reason for the dining room. With two kids, I agree that the mud room/drop area could be bigger. Right now the built ins have space for 3 slots. This home will be in the south, so thankfully coats are less of an issue and could perhaps be stored in the closet by the master. I did have that debate about merging the powder room and guest bathroom with my wife last night. Her point was "how soon till either of our parents come live with us?" In that sense I can see using the guest bedroom as an in-law suite would mean the powder room needs to remain. For the kitchen, the designer mentioned maybe shrinking the size of the hood, and getting another set of cabinets in. We are also debating the following: great room is vaulted, breakfast nook is vaulted, and kitchen follows the great room vault. This is creating some weird ceiling lines (maybe it's just the 3d software being used at the moment). We are thinking about maybe keeping the vault in the great room and breakfast nook, but doing the kitchen regular ceiling height (10 feet). This might give us a more intimate kitchen with the varied heights? As a bonus, it would allow us to make the 2nd floor BR4 a bit bigger too. The breakfast area, for us, is the actual gathering area. We have a large granite table (seats 8) that is our meal, homework, crafts, talking, etc table. Currently our morning room is 12 x 15.5 so this is a little smaller but I think still works. I agree, the sitting area in the master gives the house a lot of visual appeal from the outside. It would also have terrific views as it will be surrounded by nearly 120 degrees of lake view. For the foyer, we are thinking about dressing it up with wainscot on the wall that will carry on into the dining room area. It will just be a 10 foot ceiling. Maybe a coffered ceiling as well. I believe both the walls of the stairway up are load bearing, so I'm unsure if any 2 story features are possible. Thanks again for all the feedback!

Kind of difficult to tell without knowing the rough length and width of the living room overall (and the width of each wall since they're broken up into little sections). the way this layout looks right now, I don't see how you could possibly fit a couch in there without it looking awkward. I've lived in a couple of studios that were roughly 500 sf. the living areas were long, so the bed and couch could be side by side, with the TV across from the couch. but my floorplan was really different from yours.

Would it be that we all aged at ninety plus to this?: Yes....... the wonderful lady, client and now dear friend is one whose apartment at senior living i remodeled, and also " mini re created" her former address. Will be 93 this summer, and she is INCREDIBLE. She doesn't shuffle, has no mobility issues..........however. Note no thresholds, area rugs that can come up. A kitchen with her favorite place to sit -at the counter on a Serena and Lily stool . We should all be so damn lucky. She wishes she had made the move SOONER and is enjoying the heck out of her busy life there. ( she's yapping on the phone second pic.... hard to catch up with her. Swim, bridge, duplicate bridge........"dinner with the WIDOWS" LOL " I have accepted that this will not be MY old age conditions, unless I cease eating and drinking.... and a lot of other stuff too : ) Folks? Go before you need to go. Don't cling to junk. Your kids don't want it. Or want a miniscule fraction of it. Whenever I read one of these "age in place" dilemmas? I think.....yeah.............right. You need friends, community, and spur of the moment help. Or as a doctor said to me: "At a little over eighty, your physiology balances on the head of a straigh PIN." Memorize it.