I like your exterior elevations and all the windows which will make your house light and bright. The breezeway is a nice touch too. Lastly, it's nice to see a house that isn't "open concept."

But . . . . the dining room might be a little narrow. Even though you will have a banquette type table, you will still need to squeeze between the table and the kitchen counter to get out to the screened porch.

If this is your forever home, you might want to think about putting a bedroom on the first floor. It looks like the upstairs is the master suite, but what would you do if you couldn't make it up the stairs anymore?

Your dining area is very tight. It's 9' 1 1/2" or 109.5" A bench is 18" deep which leaves you with 91.5". A small but usable table is 42" wide so that leaves you with 49.5". To have seating at the peninsula and on the opposite side of the table, you ideally need 60" of room between the two.

Additionally you mention this is your forever home. How old are you both now?

Also why is the upstairs office larger than the master bedroom?

You should probably label the bedrooms, bedrooms (if for nothing else than appraisal purposes).

Why does the walk in closet open to the hall? Which bedroom is it supposed to serve? The laundry might end up being a giant pain to get to from the downstairs... but then again - the location might be perfect! :-)

I'd consider a nicer bath for the downstairs - you may end up living here. Once you have one floor living, I think it's hard to go back. Also - if this is going to be "forever", I don't think that shower works that well.

I think the biggest issue is with land / location. You have all this acreage but you are siting your home near the road and where you can be negatively impacted by neighbors that are too close.

Realize that everything is more $$$ when you go further off the road, but if you are looking for privacy, views and controlling your own destiny, I'd consider moving the house. This is unless you have further plans for the acreage - but even then - usually barns are closer to the road and homes sit further back. I worry you are not utilizing all the room and you won't get to enjoy it.

Love the elevations and the breezeway. Definitely cool.

Thank you both!

Good point about the dining room. We can make it a bit wider.

If this is your forever home, you might want to think about putting a bedroom on the first floor. It looks like the upstairs is the master suite, but what would you do if you couldn't make it up the stairs anymore?

We would move the bedroom to the first floor office.

Additionally you mention this is your forever home. How old are you both now?

Late 30s

Also why is the upstairs office larger than the master bedroom?

The upstairs office will be secondary guest space - with a futon or space for blowup mattress. We only need a bed in the bedroom. Most clothes will go in the WIC.

I like it overall. Two thoughts:

1.) The fridge location next to a wall may prevent you from opening the door on the right fully. There are lots of threads about this so I'm sure you can find examples of what I mean (I'm currently typing one handed due to injury, or I'd search for them for you.) I also wonder whether it might be better to flip the fridge and pantry locations but haven't thought through that one all the way.

2.) The laundry entrance makes more sense to open to the closet, and that would give you more room in the master bath by closing off that wall.

I'd also layout furniture in your living room to make certain it all fits the way you want. I'm not sure that the TV and fireplace locations will work with furniture placement.

Good luck with the house!

@just_janni - thanks!

Why does the walk in closet open to the hall? Which bedroom is it supposed to serve? It serves the adjoining bedroom. We have different schedules, so wanted the closet and bath separate from the bedroom so one person can get up and get ready without disturbing the other. Since it will just be the two of us 99% of the time, we don't mind walking across the hall to get there.

The laundry might end up being a giant pain to get to from the downstairs... but then again - the location might be perfect! :-) Second floor laundry was on my wish list - that's where we generate most laundry. If it becomes an issue as we age, we'd have to move it - maybe stacked in the bedroom.

I'd consider a nicer bath for the downstairs - you may end up living here. Once you have one floor living, I think it's hard to go back. Also - if this is going to be "forever", I don't think that shower works that well. By nicer, do you mean bigger? The first floor bath is a bit tight, but we'd like to avoid increasing sq footage if at all possible. Any suggestions for a better layout within that space?

I think the biggest issue is with land / location. You have all this acreage but you are siting your home near the road and where you can be negatively impacted by neighbors that are too close. This was a big discussion for us. Currently we only have 1 neighboring house (to the west) and they have a large shed right on the property line. That's the biggest issue. We either have to locate the house north of his shed (as planned) or move about 300 feet south to get past it. Downsides of moving south: $$$, views aren't as nice since we've moved downhill, need to hire someone to plow our driveway in the winter.

The nice thing about the current location is the patch of pine trees to the west adds privacy. We also have plans to screen the neighbor's shed with landscaping. Even if the farmer to the east develops his land, we feel OK about our buffer. It does look close on the overhead view, but to put it in context, we have about 200 feet of frontage along the road. Best case scenario, we could purchase the land to the east in the future. :) In the future we might build a rustic (no electricity/plumbing) guest/camping cabin in the southwest side of the field.

Your neighbor to the west has a Huge shed, and what looks like a work yard around it. Does he run machines there?

I haven't looked carefully at this plan because I don't understand why you'd build a two story house where you have room for a one-story house. This is also NOT a 'forever' house.

Seniors don't want stairs or bedrooms 'up'. They want a MBR/MBA on the first floor. They want an attached garage, especially in an inclement climate. They don't want to pay taxes on a too-big house on too much land.

How far is it to shopping/library/medical? Who maintains the road into the property?

How high is this 'hill'? Might you build more 'into' it -- less exposure to weather?

@bpathome-o-my - yes, they have a masonry business so sometimes there's a bobcat running around. The area behind the shed is pretty well screened - they dug down and created a retaining wall so it's about 6 ft lower than our land. Plus there's a fence. See my previous comment to @just_janni about how we're working around it.

I'm more concerned about the noise, since you work from home.

@chisue

I don't understand why you'd build a two story house where you have room for a one-story house. This is also NOT a 'forever' house.

Let's say forever with an asterisk. We want to live here as long as possible, but at some point if neither of us can do stairs we would have to sell because we wouldn't be able to maintain the land either. We're in our late 30s now, so trying to balance what we need now with future needs. We want a 2 story to minimize the footprint/cost. And we like the look of the 2 story farmhouses that are common here. The first floor office could be converted to a bedroom if needed.

How far is it to shopping/library/medical? Who maintains the road into the property? It's rural, but not remote: We are 5 minutes from a small town with the basics, 10 minutes from several other towns, 40 minutes from the city of Madison. The road is maintained by the town.

How high is this 'hill'? Might you build more 'into' it -- less exposure to weather? I don't know how tall, but our property is at the top and it slopes gradually down. We could do a partial walkout, but don't like them. I want to walk out the first floor and be at ground level and keep the basement is for storage, mechanicals, and tornado shelter.

@bpathome-o-my - The shed went up after we bought the land, unfortunately. The noise will be a minor nuisance. But it's not constant, stops by 5, and isn't loud enough to seriously disrupt our work anyway. On the bright side, they go south in the winter, so it will be very peaceful then!

I wanted to ask why you dont want to make the house bigger? If you enlarge it a little, you can get a bigger dining area and a nicer bathroom downstairs. I would think the cost would not be significant given the cost of the whole project. I also like the elevations.

Sarah, my DH and I built a home in western WI for weekend use and then moved ihto it full time 7 years ago. Let me just share a few observations that may or may not be helpful. I can't tell which way your house is facing.

Our road is gravel, maintained by the county. We located our house close to it, maybe 50 feet in and above it on a slope. Although you'll have minimal traffic, the dust from anyone who drives by is something we maybe should have thought about more with our windows. We were also trying to save money, maximize views etc. Our house is narrow with windows on all exposures which is great for avoiding air conditioning and bad for avoiding dust.

I'd also seriously think again about moving the house past the shed. When it's quiet, noise can be more nerve wracking because it stands out. Just don't talk yourselves into something on this issue. Our driveway must be 200 feet long and we maintain it ourselves with a large tractor and if you work from home, I wouldn't base the siting decision on driveway maintenance and I'd be really, really sure about that shed. Your neighbors could sell to someone.

Will you ever want an out building? Are you sure? Where would it go?

One last thought, my DH and I are both in our 60s. I'm retired, DH works in the city. Our house has 3 stories and I was worried about the steps, too, having moved from one level, but they've been a nothing burger.

One thing we really needed was a mudroom. We have horses, but yard work, gardening, walking down the gravel driveway, life is just messier in the country. Our coat closet for going into towns coats is not the same as the one that houses our wear around the farm coats. And you need smelly boot storage, lol.

@chicagoans - I have a thought: would you have enough room in that front hall if you moved the closet down? The only issue is we want a bench next to the front door. We currently have about 4' 6" between the bench and closet. If we bump the closet forward 1' 6" as suggested we would only have a 3' walkway. I worry that might be tight. Curious what others think!

@rockybird - I wanted to ask why you dont want to make the house bigger? If you enlarge it a little, you can get a bigger dining area and a nicer bathroom downstairs. We will expand the dining room based on comments here. We could also make the bathroom bigger, but trying to think through all alternatives before increasing the footprint more. Every little bit helps save $. :) What is the main problem area that you see in the downstairs bath? The 3x3 shower?

@barncatz - Good food for thought. Maybe we'll swing by during the work week a few more times to gauge the noise situation. Our house faces north (the road) but luckily our road is paved so dust won't be a problem. Glad to hear the stairs are working for you!

@Laurie - Thanks! Good call on the fridge. I like the idea of flipping them.

Re: laundry, we did talk about connecting it to the WIC instead. My thought was I'd rather have easy access from the bathroom sink to the laundry. In the end I think I'm more concerned about having enough WIC space since ALL our clothes will go there. The master bath seems like a good size to me, not sure what we'd do with more space.

Re: furniture in living room, we actually talked about this earlier in the week because I was getting nervous. We came up with this arrangement using floorplanner:

In my sixties, I lugged around two heavy bags of samples of tile, etc. while we built our present home. Now I am 77. You can't imagine how aging WILL change your body, or how it accelerates WITH age. It's been surprising, but I think we have at least five more years in our one story home, one step up from the ground, with 36" wide doorways.

Medically, Elderly is 65 and up. Old is up to 85, which is the Old Old.

How is the house coming along Sarah?

Thee are plenty of solutions that make the second floor accessible for elderly and mobility impaired people. I really love the overall design of the house from the exterior! It really captures the farmhouse look very well. really like how the garage relates to this house and is tied to the house with a breezy. Cool. Overall floor plan is well laid out and functional. Few things could be tweaked, I supposed. I agree that the dining room looks to be just a bit to narrow.

Studio285, this post is a year old. Updates, OP?

So what is your point? An old post, house most likely already built. But feedback offered up is not solely for the poster's benefit but for whomever may be 'grazing' through these feeds. i like to encourage and affirm this really is a sweet design. Love it. Even . . . if . . . the . . . post . . . in nearly a year old. ;-)