Have you checked out countryplans.com? They have neat small and affordable designs, and there is a great forum with friendly and helpful people. I've gotten a lot of ideas and inspiration there. It fits in nicely with the true DIY (like me) with a limited budget. Even if you design your own place, which I'm doing as well, there's a lot of good info there, and you don't have to buy their plans to post on the site. I've thought about building our place in stages, but decided I'm too old. Once my place is done, that's it! Our needs are quite different- empty-nesters nearing retirement.

Are you sure you have an ARCHITECT working with you and not just a draftsman???? An architect should listen to you but he/she SHOULD have ideas - LOTS of ideas - about how to make your desires/dreams into a reality. On the other hand, a draftsman is someone who merely takes your plan and creates a clean, properly scaled drawing that can be used as a building guide. If your "architect" is expecting you to have all the ideas right down to the placement of closets, doors, and windows, he/she is NOT providing you with the architectural services that you are paying for. You need to fire them and get someone else. If you are actually working with a draftsman and want/expect to design your own home, please be aware that while it is not impossible for a non-architect to design a beautiful, functional home, it does take a lot of study, a lot of thought, and a lot of work to get there! Unfortunately, it looks to me like you're trying to START at the finish line...which is fine IF you have a good architect. Not so fine if you're correct in saying that the person you're working with just "does what YOU say." I'm sorry but the plan you have sketched above is simply not very good. Among other things, the way it is laid out forces you to waste far too much of your available square footage on hallways. You've sketched a masterbath with a garden tub (whirlpool tub) and no windows to look out of while enjoying a soak. You've got a powderroom opening directly off of the kitchen so that anytime the PR door is left open, you'll be staring at the toilet. You've also obviously given no thought whatsoever to what the exterior of the finished home would look like. And, given that in a previous post you mentioned that your husband wanted something a bit different and not just a plain box, the last thing I would think you would want to do would be to build a house with no style. Have you given any thought to what style you would like your home to be? Do you already own the lot where the house will be built? If so, which direction will the front door face? Where are the best views? How wide and how deep is your available building area? Do you have room for a side load garage or must it be front facing? Are you in a cold climate or a hot climate, a wet or dry region? Is the land essentially flat or sloped? All of these things should be taken into consideration when designing a home. If you don't already own your land, you're probably getting the cart before the horse anyway because, what if you design a house that is 85 feet wide and wind up with a lot that will only allow you to build 70 feet wide? Before beginning to design a home for you, an architect should know how many people will be living in your house and what kind of lifestyle do you have. Are you formal or informal? Do you entertain a lot or almost never? What do you like about your current home (even if you're renting) and what drive you nuts there? What are your MUST HAVES and NICE TO HAVES? How many bedrooms? How many baths? So you dream of a big whirlpool tub or a huge shower? Do you lust after his/hers vanities? How much closet space do you want/need? Do you want a formal living area or an informal family den? (or both???). So you want a formal dining room or would you never actually use one? Does your family gather in the kitchen while you cook? Do you need space in your kitchen for multiple cooks? Do you want the kitchen/living area to be open to each other or would you rather be able to hide the kitchen mess? Do you lust after a kitchen island? Will you be unhappy if your kitchen sink isn't under a window with a view? Do you need a large pantry? How many garage bays do you need? What size cars do you drive? Does your husband want space in the garage for a "shop." Do you need/want a mud room? Do you have pets and need a space for number of garage bays? attached/detached garage? porches? office? playroom? bonus rooms? Do you need/want a spacious laundry room or just a small spot for the washer/dryer? Is it important to you that certain rooms get lots of natural light? If so, which ones? Is it important that some rooms be tucked away where they'll be quiet even if the rest of the house is noisy? Do you and your husband tend to keep similar hours or is one of you a night owl while the other is up at the crack of dawn? Does your family all tend to gather together in one room or does everyone scatter to their own space? Is it important to you that your home impress visitors? Do you want soaring lofty ceilings or cozy nooks? Do you drawn toward traditional decor, country chintz, clean modern lines, Victorian froo-froo, or some other decorating style entirely? All of the above (plus more) is the kind of information that a competent architect would get from you so that he could help you put together a "program" that would then guide him in designing your home. If your person hasn't yet asked the questions above yet, RUN. Based on what I've seen you post thus far, I honestly think that at this point, you would be better off searching through all the plans that are available online and finding something there that you could live with. (I'm not saying that most online plans are great - and certainly they aren't "custom" - but it doesn't look to me like you're getting the kind of custom help that you have a right to expect from an architect. If nothing else, searching thru the online plans would help you to begin thinking about how you want your home to LIVE and what you do and don't like. After you study about a thousand online plans and try revising them to be closer to what you would like, you'll be much better prepared to start trying to sketch your own from scratch. Or, come back here with several that you "kind of like except for..." as well as answers to the questions I listed above, and perhaps some of the folks who frequent this site will be able to help you put together a workable plan. In the meantime, invest a couple of dollars for some graph paper and do your sketches on that so that various rooms will be at least close to "in scale."

Barb - I love your ideas. And it is so funny that you wrote about Powell Buff. I have about 5 samples of that plastered in different places in my kitchen. Also, I had to laugh about how nice you were with calling my foyer a grand foyer. :) I come from a 1300 sq. ft 1920's house (just moved about 4 months ago to PA from upstate NY). I call my foyer, a waste of space. I would much rather have another bedroom upstairs for a playroom, crafts, etc. Not that I'm in need of space, but I'm not one much for tall spaces. Small and cozy does the trick for me. Just weren't those kind of houses for sale where I was looking...at least not that we could afford. Anyhow - back to the task at hand. My house completely connects - the kitchen to the family (almost one room). The family has a back staircase (another silly thing), that runs to the hallway upstairs that connects to the foyer downstairs. So in other words, every room upstairs and downstairs connects. ugh. So my plan is that all trim in the connecting part of the house (minus LR, DR and bedrooms) will be Navajo White. Because that matches my kitchen cabinetry. And all ceilings will be Navajo White as well. This is being painted during nap times by me. (which is why it takes me too long to respond to the GW forum!) Yesterday, I managed to prime all of the trim in my foyer downstairs. Hurray! So, whatever is in my walls on the foyer needs to run to the upstairs hallway, which runs into one wall in the family room and will also be in the kitchen. blah. So I'm thinking of using Powell Buff for that color. I'm hoping it is a good match to Navajo White. Three walls in the family room will be SW Baguette. I'm very happy with this color. Just wishing that I didn't have the whole back staircase issue that makes everything connect. So Powell and Baguette, with Navajo will be the two primary colors in the downstairs. I could always consider Wilmington Tan for the LR/DR trim. Only issue is that it doesn't look quite as good with the Stickley furniture and sitll might be too dark around the windows. But perhaps you were on the right track by suggesting Powell Buff for the trim. Maybe something with that depth, just another color (because I will be using that in my other spaces.) OR I could just flipflop those rooms and use Powell on the trim and Navajo on the walls? Would that be strange, too? I'm not sure if any of this post will make sense. I'm sorry to ramble. Perhaps, if you are interested I can post more pictures of my space to help it make more sense. I've been working on this since I moved in, and now that things are finally getting primed, I need to make decisions so that I can get to the exciting part. In any event, thank you again for your advice and help. I am so grateful! Carolyn (aka repainting, again, and again)

I like your house! I love the sizes of your bedrooms - they are not tiny, but instead are really spacious. My last house had the smallest BR at 8 x 11, and that is really too small. I am not so sure I agree with Marti about moving the door so that the bathroom and hall door don't line up. Lining up as they do makes it much easier for a walker or wheelchair user to enter and use the bathroom. Do you have room to put a vanity stool and knee space under your side of the master vanity? You may find as you age that sitting to do your hair or makeup is easier. Also make sure there is room for at least a walker (and better yet, a wheelchair) in your bathroom. Making some storage out of removable cabinets or using removable walls (like the closet near the tub) would give you that option if you ever need it. At least you could build that smaller closet after you have the floor tiled. Then if you need to remove it for accessibility to the toilet and bathtub, you will have a finished floor underneath. You might even have room for a hoyer lift in that corner if the closet is removed. (Ask me how I know a Hoyer lift in the bathroom helps!) As a matter of fact, you can look into making the front door wheelchair accessible from Day 1. Have your concrete guys pour a ramp that goes across the front of the house up to a flat platform/ vestibule outside the front door. Make the flat porch large enough to make a vestibule and to open the door with a scooter sitting on the porch, too. You may want to have a porch roof over the whole ramp if you live where there is ice and snow. That way, you can get a wheelchair, scooter, or walker into the home unassisted. You never know when one of you may lose your mobility. You would hate to send one of you to a nursing home just because the house was not accessible! It just dawned on me that you could build a front porch OVER the ramp, giving you a porch to use now, but the option for removing the front porch and having a ramp there instead. Presto-chango! A transformer home for old folks!