I wish I had pics!! The kitchen cabinet-carts were in a rental house built by a retired carpenter; apparently his own idea. The counters were standard height, each unit immediately beneath the counter had a shallow drawer. Below that was the cart, an open wood frame with one end that looked like a cabinet-style door with a toe-kick but off the floor about ¼". When the cart was pushed under the counter, all you noticed was the "door" which matched the other cabinet doors. I remember there were wooden plinths which actually looked like the standard vertical cabinet dividers; the plinths acted as a stop so you couldn't push the cart through and smash the wall at the back. Most of the carts had adjustable "shelves" (shallow baskets actually) and two had a countertop for the top shelf -- I really loved those when I baked. I liked another of his ideas for some of the wall cabinets. The door of the cabinet was actually a shallow box with shelves (facing the usual shelves) that were just wide enough to hold cups or canned goods. I've haunted websites and carpentry info, and haven't found anything really close, although there are lots of cart plans available. So now I'm looking for a carpenter! Depending on which sort of crafts your DW is into, also consider adapting stackable shoe drawers -boot size-, maybe hidden behind bi-folds. I use these for storing sweatshirts in the BR as well as hold yarns in the craftroom. Sweater size hold flatwork. Link is to the ones I use -- I've got them stacked 9 tall with no problems. Here is a link that might be useful: all-purpose storage drawers

If I'm understanding you correctly about the "back of the house is buried in rock up to about 5 ft up the wall" then everything your builder shows as 1st floor addition is really going to be pretty much underground. That's why that whole space is being given over to "mech room" instead of living space. Is that right? I think you're right that an L-shaped staircase would work better. But, unless you want to lower the slope of the roof over your kitchen and living room area, there is not a whole lot you can do that would result in upstairs windows being "closer to the floor." The roof height of the lower floor pretty much dictates where windows that face the lake on the upper floor can start. You don't indicate how you access the deck on the lake side of the house. Is there a sliding door or something leading from the living room? In addition to the things you mentioned that you didn't like on your architect's first draft, I don't like it that taking half that interior wall down leaves you with a view from your kitchen straight into the bathroom toilet. And, you don't mention where you keep the washer/dryer. If you don't have one currently, I would think that at a lake house, getting a laundry room to deal with wet towels and swim suits would be a priority. Here's what I came up with. (It really is pretty much what you suggested re L-shaped staircase and putting bathroom in the back right corner where the closet was; and from the exterior would look pretty much identical to your architect's plan. First floor: Second floor: The dimensions of the upstairs addition is 18' x 22' (since you didn't specify, I used those as the outer dimensions) and I've drawn the current plan as accurately as I could based on your sketch. The two closets upstairs closets are admittedly very very small but for a vacation house, small closets might be okay. And you don't have to go thru one bedroom to reach the other plus both upstairs bedrooms have a place for the bed. This is sketched with a 42 inch wide staircase with enough risers to for a 10 ft floor to floor rise. The plant shelf at the bend in the stairs, along with windows allowing light into the staircase, should make the staircase feel nice and spacious. Downstairs, this gives you a nice sized laundry room with room for some storage space under the stairs. Unfortunately, given the slope at the back of your house, the laundry wouldn't get any natural light unless you could put in a window well or maybe install some solar tubes. I've shown a normal sized dining room table for six. The space around the dining table is pretty tight but I think it would work. In order to keep the path to the staircase open, you would not be able to center the dining table in the room so an alternative might be to have a bench seating for 1/2 the table built-in against wall next to the bathroom. That way the table wouldn't require as much width in the admittedly small dining room space. I went back and forth about where to put the door leading into the laundry. You'd have more useable storage space if the door were over next to the door leading from laundry to mech room. But then you would always have to be working your way clear around the table to get to the laundry room so I think this is probably better. An alternative design might be to switch the laundry and mech rooms which would allow you to have a window in the laundry room (nice) but would force you to access it via the downstairs bathroom which isn't so great. There might be another alternatives swapping the laundry and mech room AND putting in a hallway leading from living room to laundry room if you were willing to tear out and completely redo the downstairs bath...but I'm guessing that a bathroom renovation is not in your anticipated budget. Finally, I think this would allow you to have small pantry which you desperately need and it blocks the view from the kitchen into the bathroom. Let me know what you think.

That's a pretty vanity MClarke - but we'de really prefer separate his & hers pieces to avoid my 'counter creep'... Plus, having one long vanity on the left wall puts one person using a vanity under a lower ceiling. That's why I had to X out two of the 'why don't you try' options on the bottom. Do you think the two 5' vanities in the top left option are too small? What about the 8' + 5' vanities in the top right plan? That doesn't give me my FFP (which doesn't exist - the armoire does, but wouldn't be right for the bath) but the sight lines from the bathroom door would still be attractive (the main reason for my longed-for FFP).

I understand that you don't want the bedroom doors to open directly into the main room. Take some space from each room in the middle of the addition as an entry hall. One steps into this area and turns to whichever door one wants. Also have the doors open against the wall so there is more free space in the room. The small indented area in each room can be used as a wardrobe, or to hold a chest of drawers.As your floor plan shows no other doors or windows I cannot be certain this will work out. It was, to me, the obvious fix, but there may be some obstruction I don't know about.