Nice plan but a few things you might want to think about before finalizing: 1) This is a very complex shaped house design (i.e., lots of exterior corners). Be aware that the least expensive home to build is a basic rectangle and that every variation from the rectangle increases costs. All those juts in-and-out increase costs per square foot because they result in a higher ratio of exterior walls to interior square footage which means more framing material, more insulation, a more complicated roof-line and foundation, etc. Not saying you should change a thing... just thought you ought to be prepared for the sticker shock you may receive when you start getting bids. 2) You kitchen island is positioned so that any dirty dishes in the sink will be on display to anyone in the Great Room. No problm if you're the kind of housekeeper who keeps the sink area spic and span at all times. Me? I would want the island turned so that the raised section helped to hide my sink from the great room. But that would pretty much require an entire reshaping of the kitchen and thus the rest of the plan. So, you will probably want to keep it as is. 3) No windows in the kitchen itself? Patio deck doors and great room windows may be rather far away to provide much natural light for kitchen. You don't mention the direction your house faces and, if the wall that the fridge is against is a north wall, you might not want any windows there. But, in that case, I would question placing your screen porch on that side of the house. 4) The laundry room and mud room seem a bit cramped...especially for a home with three kids. Since the garage juts forward anyway, unless you're already running up against lot-line setbacks, consider pulling the snout of the garage forward another couple of feet and then extending the mud room and laundry room forward an equal distance into the garage to enlarge them. The cost to do so should be relatively minor compared to overall cost to build because, although you would be adding a bit of square footage, you would not be increasing the complexity of the design in any way. 5) Make ABSOLUTELY certain that your pantry is wide enough to accomodate the freezer you want to put in it... not just the one you have already. Measure the depth of the freezer you want to purchase and then add about three inches. A freezer can't sit right up against the back wall. You have to leave room for air circulation and you don't want the freezer sticking out so far into the pantry aisle that you can hardly squeeze past it. I thought I had left plenty of room for a freezer in our mudroom/pantry but freezers today are bigger than my old one. Our new one just BARELY fits. I have just exactly enough space between the freezer and the counter across the aisle to fully open the freezer door... nor an inch to spare. It works - but if my pantry/mudroom were 6 inches wider, it would feel a whole lot more spacious! Also, speaking of freezer doors, you probably don't want to put the freezer right up against the side wall or you may not be able to fully open the freezer door. It needs swinging room. Finally, make sure that at least one of your pantry doors is wide enough to get the freezer in and out of the pantry! We had to have the interior door of our pantry reframed to 36" wide b/c our builder installed a 32" exterior door on the mudroom/pantry instead of the 36" wide one specified on the plans... and we didn't notice THAT error until after we fired him and took over the build ourselves. (By that time it would have cost us thousands to reframe the exterior wall, get a new exterior door, have the cabinets on the exterior walls remade to fit the reduced space, etc., etc., etc., GRRRR!!!) 6) Similar issue to above...how much room is there between your refrigerator and your kitchen island? Unless you get a "counter depth" fridge, your new fridge could stick out as much as a foot beyond the edge of the surrounding countertop. 7) Have you thought about furniture placement yet? Bedroom 2 looks a bit problematic b/c the best position for a double bed seems to be up against the bathroom wall. But that would mean one would have to walk around the bed to get from closet to bath. Perhaps you could flip the bathroom vertically so that the tub is against the front wall and the bathroom door is close to the closet door. 8) In bedroom 3, would the door fit on that little angled section of wall? If so, I think you'd find it easier to place a full-sized bed and other furniture in the room. Besides, that would give you a nice section of wall space in the landing/hallway for a bench or maybe some book cases. 9) Not sure I agree with zookeeper93 about combining the closet and laundryroom (especially not if you can increase the size of the laundry room.) It can be nice to have a separate closet that isn't subjected to laundry room lint. And I definitely would not want my freezer in the laundry room area. Guests helping me cook sometimes need to access the freezer when my laundry room is simply not presentable. LOL! 10) I do agree with zookeeper93 tho that the angles in your master closet are going to limit the actual useable hanging space. Unfortunately, I don't think you have room enough for a door into the commode room if you try to just straighten out the wall by the commode room. I can't tell what those two little niches are between the master closet and the master bedroom (seats?, inset bookcases? art niche's?). If it were me, I would get rid of them and incorporate that area into my master closet. I would also swap where the shower and commode are. I think that would give you enough room for a closet with nice-sized USEABLE his/hers sections. Maybe something like this with a pocket door to the master bath: BTW, you need to be very careful when using pocket doors to make sure that you're not planning to attach closet rods or the supports for something like an Elfa closet system to the walls where the pocket door "hollow space" is. Remember, there are no STUDS in that space and you need STUDS to support the weight of clothing hanging on closet rods.

Still need help pretty please! Lavender lass-No I am too afraid to continue on to the site. When I click on it there is a warning about StopBadware.org. I haven't changed my settings and this has never happened before. The only thing I can think of is when the computer updates itself mabey it is installing more secured software, if that makes sense. I just want to find colors she (Candice Olson) uses in smaller basements for the walls and couch. I am not sure what paint color would look good with the Oat microfiber couch from Pottery Barn. The color of the couch above is not accurate. It is about 2 shades darker in person. More like this. Sorry for all of the pics but if anyone else could give me feedback on paint color that would go with this couch. Three that I am concidering are BM Muslin and BM slate or silvery blue. Or do I keep it monochromatic because of the small space? Interesting how the couch color changes with not only lighting but surrounding wall color and accessories. Thanks for looking

Hi Rob, Not much to add ... and hope that you're back at least part way out of your blue funk. Brother, retired farmer who lives 1600 miles way, has one son, only child, in a city 100 miles from here, a couple of small grand-daughters from son's second marriage, and comes to visit them a couple of times a year. He'd called to say he was to be in the neighbourhood, and we got together on Friday, I called son and he and his partner were there for lunch, as was brother and wife ... and a couple of favourite cousins were, as well. Brother spent a few years when he was very young with the family of our Mom's brother and their two children when she was ill, so he considers one as almost a sister: the son, a local farmer, died several years ago. The other cousin lives locally and I see her at church fairly often - she, who had voice training, has sung in the choir for 75 years. The brother and I went to deal with some complications over inheritance of cemetery plots that Dad owned ... and it looks as though resolution is to be easier than we figured. Then we sat and had a chat ... and he's rather worried about future viability of his son's marriage. We don't see one another often, but we've been close, over the years. Our brother died over forty years ago, when his kids were in their teens, and our ready-made sister that came with our stepmom lives near brother in Saskatchewan. It's a red letter day when we get together. ole joyful

Thank you for the feedback, yes, definitely food for thought. When you say "range", do you mean "range top"? That's a possibility. It would restrict my cooking choices, though. I use the oven all the time (both cooking and baking), and in fact I feel limited by the fact that I only have a single oven. I can almost forgo the microwave. I really only need it to warm up milk for the kids or to thaw ingredients from the freezer without having to wait for a long time. We currently have a 42" side-by-side fridge/freezer, and the limitations for our family are painful. I am constantly running down two floors to go to the fridge in the garage. We really hope to eliminate those trips. That's also the reason for the trash compactor. We have one right now, and it's amazing how many annoying trips up and down the stairs it saves me. It would be painful to give up. Counter space is probably OK, as it is actually an improvement over what we have right now. But you might be right, that this unduly biases me, and maybe more counter space would be appreciated, if I had it.