This is confusing. Is this a remodel/addition? What's new vs. remodeled?

So we're keeping the foundation footprint, the turret is original and the angled wing on the East side is just getting lightly renovated. But the main floor is basically all reconfigured, the living room is an addition to the foundation. The whole second story West of the turret is all an addition. So it's technically a remodel but we're taking down about 60% of the house. Here's the original footprint. But my main thing is getting all these features but in a more compact layout. There is a staircase in the turret leading to one bedroom/bath just above 2 bedrooms in the wing to the right of the turret.

Hopefully this clarifies a few things...Summit Studio Architects

Why are you asking us when you have an architect

Pretty & a lot of house! Don't expect costs to "dial back" as I've only seen that 1x in 30+ years...the end of 2008. The current lumber spike will hopefully soften a little, but there are scheduled increases (letters from suppliers) in other materials. On average, home building costs increase over time above the inflation rate.

On the plus side, you already own your property and don't have to purchase it at 2018 prices.

If you go back to the drawing board looking for a significant reduction in costs, reductions to size, level of detail or complexity, and/or level of amenities, all contribute to the final cost.

Projects like this have a combination of fixed costs & variable ("per foot") that we combine to get that magic "cost per foot" clients like to hear, but it often leads them in the wrong direction. That carport has a significant fixed cost no matter the size of your home, as does the turret, stairs, master bath, etc. There's a lot of wet rooms in this home. Big appliance package.

Thank you Jeffrey R. Grenz, General Contractor. Very good input. The "dial back" to me seemed a stretch. But my husband thinks waiting would work. Obviously, very unlikely. I think we need to address all these items you've mentioned. But the thought of it is exhausting. I'll have to consider losing that carport. I hadn't even considered what a significant cost that was, Maybe just to a farm awning over the mudroom door?

I'm still confused! You said "But my main thing is getting all these features but in a more compact layout."

If you are keeping the foundation footprint, I don't understand how you would make it more compact. To me, compact means smaller, so you want to reduce the footprint?

What do you mean by "on a more modest scale"?

You can have a large house, but keep the finishes simple or you can have a small house and go all out with high end finishes ... the final cost could be the same.

Hmmm... It's really hard to gauge the scope of this project. From what I see it looks like whoever you're working with is doing a good job with what you've given them.

At 60% re-build you're awfully close to why bother keeping anything. Sometimes it's easier to start with a blank slate than to work around 40%.

I do see a few rooms that are oversized i.e. the girl's room is much longer than it needs to be; however, I think that's a conversation to have with your designer. Take your concerns about overall scope of the project to him or her.

Do you need three different eating areas? Since formal dining is important to you maybe just have the island seating and the formal dining room. I'm thinking if you did that, you could instead move the living area to behind the kitchen or turn the dining room into the living room and make the eat in area in the kitchen just a bit larger. There are ways to separate the space with things like french doors that can separate the space when you need to go more formal.

Bring in a builder to have cost discussions with....its not a commitment, but a consult... "for X budget, what would you suggest?"

Try working within the existing footprint.... that's a remodel.

Eliminate some rooms/combine functions.

Will you really use the formal dining or could it be the guest area? Is it worth building a new grand family room on the back side as shown or does it get built off the turret in the existing foot print?

Bottom line... those kids are home for a short period. Get something built & live in it!

Talk to your architect. They know more information than anyone else. Any advice you receive here will be given with a degree of ignorance and potentially misleading. Talk to your architect.

It sounds to me as if your needs vs. your wants are not reconciled. You want everything, but you want to scale back and reduce expenses. Too big is...too big.

You can look at generic floor plans until the cows come home (Texas expression: translation is "forever"), and you will never find what you are looking for.

What you need is an experienced and creative architect. What you need is a written and mutually agreeable list of needs. And a separate list of wants. Plus a site plan. and a budget.

Take those to your architect, have a discussion and let the architect do what good architects do.

You need to get real. Sorry, but that's the situation. Unless you have unlimited money or time on your hands. Start fresh. You'll be glad you did.

Yes Virgil Carter Fine Art, you're right. The only thing is that the architect actually had our house about 1100 sqft bigger than it shows now. He seems to plan and design big. I had to do a LOT of the redesign and reducing to get us where we are now. He said before he could see how we could make the floor plan any smaller. I feel bad, because we haven't really kept any of his original ideas, they were even larger! I guess I'm questioning whether he can design any smaller. But I'll take your advice to heart. We need to regroup and assess the needs.

You have I-want-itis pretty bad. Sell and move to something you can afford to do. Or live in it in It’s current configuration.

Turn off the TV. https://www.curbed.com/2018/3/7/17087588/home-renovation-unnecessary-mcmansion-hell-wagner

I feel this pain. It is hard to find a large family house plan that doesn't also blow up every other room unnecessarily.

You have some hard choices to make as you've realized. You have five kids so you know about making sacrifices and making do. Here's what I would do:

Use the "Guest Suite" and kids' area (which is too small for a playroom for five anyway) as your master suite. It will be nice to have it on the ground level. You'll have more privacy from your littles. And it will be convenient to the kitchen and the office without rustling through the whole house. My kids wake immediately if they hear me get up, no matter the time! Guests can sleep upstairs in the Spare Room. They won't mind. That eliminates the need for the upstairs master which will save a ton of square feet. It will be a little smaller, but a lot of the space in your proposed plan is given over to transition areas like hallways and such that just aren't needed.

Extend the kitchen nook by a foot or two in each direction. Use it as your formal and everyday dining. Use the Dining Room as a playroom for now and a formal Living Room as your kids get old enough to appreciate that. You can add a desk or two to one of the walls for their homework time if you want. You'll really like having that space as all your kids become adults, trust me! That eliminates the need for a living room addition.

You don't need a nursery. Really. If you didn't have one for your first five babies, you'll survive without if and when you have more. And if you find you really really really do need one when the time comes you can give up the office for a year or two.

What’s the space just inside the turret/entry? Wasted. Pull the bedroom wing in. I like the idea of making that wing the master bedroom. Move the front door from the side to the front of the turret, then lead guests straight into the house from there instead of off to the side into that strange waste area.

Do you have to have an office? (You could put the office in the kids room. It’s too small for the kids anyway.) Move the kitchen and pantry into the office space which will give you room for a workable kitchen. As it is now, you have no workspace and heavy foot traffic coming through it from everywhere.

Is there any way to stack your staircases?

Do away with the nook. You already have 2 eating spaces. Pull your living room over toward the old nook spot.

With remodels scope can be at least as much the culprit as size is. This project seems to have a lot of both.

If budget is your concern you will need to reduce the scope by keeping more of the existing than you are, do less to it and reduce the size of the additional space. Or, scrape it down to the foundation and do much smaller. Right now you're in a bit of a no-mans land.

Without seeing scale drawings of the existing it's impossible to tell where the design can be optimized. I'm guessing some spaces are bigger than they would otherwise be to try to fit the existing foundation.

It might not hurt to bring in a local builder to get a handle on costs and ideas to make this a viable project.

"...The only thing is that the architect actually had our house about 1100 sqft bigger than it shows now. He seems to plan and design big..."

Are you sure you are working with an architect? An actual architect? Doesn't sound like any architect I've ever met or known...

Sounds a lot like some sort of "designer" or "drafting service" to me.

3500 sf should be more than adequate to serve a family that size. If you’re working with the right professional. You’re obviously not working with the right professional. And you have grandiose expectations out of scale to your budget. That is a completely deadly, bankruptcy ahead, recipe.

I agree totally and why I said at the beginning to talk to your architect and if they don’t get the concept of smaller and better get a new one. I do not find the kids bedrooms too big since they are sharing. A pantry a mile away from the kitchen makes no sense. BTW architects are usually very poor kitchen designers so you need a KD for sure

You say you need a large formal dining room, yet to get to the dining room, your guests need to either walk through the kitchen, walk through the office or use the door by the carport. To me, that defeats the "formal" of a formal dining room. Just my thought.

I'd consider a prep sink on the island and locate the larger sink and dishwasher elsewhere where it's not in the middle of the kitchen.

Other than that, I like everything that I see!

@Patricia Colwell Consulting

The girls' bedroom is not necessarily too large, more poorly organized. There's 10 feet of wasted space at the foot of the beds. In fairness to the architect this is probably the shape he's working with.

I think architect and client are both going to have to give up something to make this work. For the client that means giving up some of the wish list. You don't get back on budget by nibbling at the edges. You have to give up something major. For me the two prime suspects are the amount of tear down/re-build and the new living room.

If you want a good sanity check, bring this to a builder or two.

The one thing that hasn't been mentioned is that you are building a Spanish style house. I think they are a more expensive stye to build because the details that make it Spanish add cost to the build (beams inside, beams outside and as window headers, arches, bullnose edges, stucco outside, etc)

I have a Spanish style house, so I know how some of those details are harder to repair and the costs that go with it.

I like the plan, but if it is over your budget, or you just don't want to spend that much, then you need to start over.

What area are you building in?

Well...when it comes to "Spanish"...there's Spanish Colonial, Spanish Eclectic, Monterey Colonial (a personal favorite), Pueblo, McMansion Makebelieve, and probably several other "Spanish" derivatives.

The point being that it's challenging to talk about "Spanish" per se, without more definition. Sorta like talking about "modern farmhouse"...

It could also be a house in Spain, which would be a Spanish house!

My comment still stands, some of the elements that make most of those Spanish styles look Spanish are things that add cost.

It could be a spanish home if it was supported on the left and the right but not in between.

^^ *groan*

Oh my lord Mark made a dad joke!

Groan is right!

Where will the 5th child sleep? I see 2 beds in the boys' bedroom, and 2 beds in the girls' bedroom.

That’s probably the nursery.

OP, I feel for you. In our case it made more sense for time, money, and design to just build for our big family. Remodeling extensively was too many trade offs for the enormous cost outlay. I agree with some of the comments about too much redundant space, but ultimately I think you may be better off leveling it and starting over from scratch to get what you want without the constraints of the existing footprint. You should be able to build more efficiently than that plan, but only if you’re not stuck with existing structural oddities to work with, that might not really be working for you.

Which codes require basement fill if the walls are designed properly? I spent my formative years in Cali and most of my family is still there, but we have never had issues with basements and permitting. It just has to be up to snuff for waterproofing and seismic.

A new build definitely has some tax implications there, if nothing else. And different communities have different idiotic zoning issues. Real estate is a local game for sure, and one of the reasons I don’t live in that state anymore ;)

I have six kids, I really do feel for you on the space issues of trying to make it work without busting the budget, and existing home layouts just don’t work well for maximizing what many larger families need in how we currently live. It’s a challenge but you won’t regret hammering this all out now, when it is just paper, than down the road when you have to live with it.

More comments from CA. It could be structural retrofit requirements in CA earthquake areas... but I'm not in those areas. A mass "remodel" won't save you from the property tax reassessment in my experience.... they aren't that dumb anymore.

@partim I just assumed that one or two of the beds shown are bunk beds.

Wow what a lovely plan. You must be very excited.

Must the entire house be done all at once?

I believe everyone who has done a minor update in their home (half bath ) to a giant full home renovation has to go through the dreaded Want vs Need list. Each person or corporation doing a renovation must figure out their budget and what they want to spend on their project.. Some people have unlimited funds but even those folks put together a plan.

Do you have a General contractor or is your architect doing both? Sometimes a GC can really help control costs and help control the scope of a project and stay within budget.

With that said, is your scope itemized or listed in sections per price? Your contractor/architect could probably help you figure out how to trim costs and to even do things in sections. What has your architect suggested? I would go through your list of wants vs needs and see which falls into place. Sometimes it is about deciding the structure (basement) of the house is more of a need while the La Cornue Grand Palais range is more of a want. I wonder if filling in the basement might end up being the cheaper option in the end? With a smaller basement you could make your entire project smaller.

So much to think about but I am sure you can do it! You are on your way to making your dream home a reality.

I am in So CA and I don't understand your basement problem. Why would they make you fill your basement? Most new construction and remodels in my area are having basements added on. They sell the basement at the same sq.ft cost as above ground space.

We built a guest house on our property and we added a basement under it. Yes, we had to have extra steel beams installed with a crane. We did 10 ft ceilings and it gets natural light from the large light wells.

If your house was old, how well built is that old basement? Is it a walk-out? If not, does it have emergency egress through large light wells? Not sure I would want to build a new 2 story house over an old CA basement ...

When you look at how smaller well-functioning homes are are built, they allow for some flexibility in how a space is used.

For example, where your current plan has a play room, guest room and bathroom, could this be a 2-bedroom suite for 2 of the children? Or better yet, could this be a master suite with a large walk in closet and room for a desk, and a mobility-friendly bathroom for future use. Many people would be looking for that when you resell, if you don't stay until you need it. Instead of a separate guest bedroom and children's play room, the space would be used constantly.

Then the space currently shown as an office could be a single child's bedroom, taking some pressure off the upstairs. The children's bedrooms could do double duty as play rooms or can be
adjusted when guests come to stay, including children sharing a room
while giving up one for guests. I recall fondly sleeping on sofa cushions when we had guests to stay, when I was a child.

Do you have a pic of the current elevations of the home? What you have designed here looks like a grand home. Could you post both the proposed plans and the current house plan in one post so people can compare them?