I agree on having our kids appreciate what they have. They really don't know how good we've had it! We have 1 incredibly small bathroom we are sharing (that right there has been a growing experience for me - not loving that nor the lack of water pressure - ack). It's an old home - as in no outlets or switches in one of the bedrooms upstairs. They were sharing a room but they've already rearranged. The room without any outlets also doesn't have a heat vent so I don't see my oldest staying in there come winter - but it is also the largest of the 2 rooms. :) We also have no dishwasher and no a/c. Those are basically the comforts that we had that we are now getting used to being without. I keep reminding myself that there is no perfect home and surely there will be things after living with it that we might think are too large, too small or a little off one way or another. Our pantry is pretty sizable - fits our chest freezer which I'm excited about but the doorway is off the kitchen, not IN the kitchen proper. That bugged me for a while but I think it's going to be okay. I was off a bit on my $250k number - dh informed me that it's more like $280k. :( Besides the roofing the other number that came in considerably higher than we thought was lumber. It recently took a jump so that was a bit disappointing. We are hoping to get all of our quotes by the end of the month so we can lock in our I/R before it also takes another jump. We will be doing all priming, painting, laying wood floor, tile, setting cabinets, some trim work, putting stone on fireplace (we have done that before and it's actually a very rewarding project but took way longer than we thought), hardware on doors and cabinets, lighting, ceiling fans. We too will be doing some of those very things you mentioned after the fact. Definitely closets and even the small office we have will be done after we are in. With work schedules and keeping timing on track it may come down to having to hire things out that we originally planned on DIY. We are not moving communities or school districts and are paying rent so time is money to a certain degree. For now though that is what we hope to do in sweat equity. I think you are wise to start working through house plans now. There are certainly many details to ponder. We were hoping to be about 2000 sq feet total for the main and upstairs but ended up at 2400. We don't feel the rooms are excessively large or that we have rarely used rooms so we went ahead with it. I had a few things that I really wanted configured a certain way and made sure they were laid out accordingly. After those boxes were checked I really didn't feel so picky about the rest. Hopefully they will live how I feel they will in my mind! :)

So if we were to do a 1.5 story with the master on the main level, where would you put that, behind the garage then? My thought process would be to first determine priority of room placement in the most ideal location for the use of the room and then if conflicts between room placement develop then rank by how much time is spent and how time is used for each room as well as the importance of that use compared to the importance of the uses for the other rooms. If watching the sunrise from your bed pays off with more enjoyment than having the sunrise and morning sun striking your kitchen, then plan accordingly. For instance, do you plan on using your master suite as a parental get-away from the kids, using it during the day or will your non-sleeping uses be restricted to evenings only, meaning that any views from the rooms would be lost to the darkness of the night? If the views are not important, I'd bury the master suite near the garage in the above sketch. If however, views and day time use are important, then I'd move the master to the east/south/west walls, perhaps right off the entry or in the back off of the kitchen. I'm not necessarily saying to put the master off the entry or off the kitchen, though you could, I'm just using these as examples that reference the above sketch. The way I'm designing my own home is to use a very self-reflective process which tries to understand how I actually live my life rather than trying to contort my lifestyle into architectural trends which presuppose how people SHOULD live their lives. So, to continue on the questioning, why exactly do you appreciate a main-floor master? Is it so that you can avoid stairs? Is it so that you can hear the comings and goings of the kids at night as they try to leave the house, is it because you don't want the kids too near your bedroom, is it because you don't want noise transmission from the master to be easily heard by the kids, and so on? Once you can articulate to yourself why you want something then you can find the best solution for your plan, rather than adopting a cookie-cutter approach. For instance, what I found amusing in some plans was a main floor master with a child's bedroom directly over it on the 2nd. Now, to me, if the goal was to reduce noise transmission from either the child's room to the parent's room or vice versa, the separation by floor, while having intuitive appeal, would fail to achieve the mission. The example I used in an earlier comment was to have a master suite separated by a stairway corridor AND a children's hallway which together create a 7'-8' dead zone, possibly with some walls other than the master and child's bedroom walls also added in between. There are no common walls shared, there is a huge dead zone in between and the goal of reducing noise transmission is, I believe, better served than a downstairs master with an upstairs child's bedroom directly over top, sharing common ceiling/floor as well as sound transmission paths down the walls. Of course, if sound transmission has nothing to do with the appeal of a downstairs master suite, then what I've sketched out is a solution to a problem which doesn't exist, or doesn't matter. I was thinking the master/office space on one side and then the kitchen, dining, great room on the other. That makes sense to me. Would you move the great room from the center of the house below to the front where the dining study is and move the study to where the great room is? Lots of configurations can make sense, but they must make sense in relation to how you envision yourself using the space and the particulars of your lifestyle and preferences. I'd say grab some graph paper, or even blank paper, and just block out the rooms and see how they interplay with each other, note how you foresee traffic patterns within and throughout the space, imagine daily routines taking place within the space. Once you have an idea of how you live, or how you want to live in the new space, then get the graph paper and try to get a better handle on size and furniture placement, and traffic patterns and by the end of this process you should have a very good understanding of how you want the space to be configured. I did the same for my house and this has resulted in me doing away with a formal living room from the now traditional LR/FR combo pack and reallocating the space elsewhere in the home, such as combining the entry with the LR space in order to create a larger sense of space/volume, has led me to create a larger kitchen than would be warranted in relation to the size of the informal living room, has led me to other design changes that likely violate what trained architects use as benchmarks for how homes should be designed. Thank you for the garage tip also - I thought 24x24 was rather large? We will be getting an oversize door for sure. I'd say measure your cars, block out a 24 x 24 space on your lawn, use cardboard boxes or something else to fill the space of your cars, then throw in the other junk you're likely to store alongside the walls of the garage, and see how much space you actually need. Try to get out of your car and see if the door bangs the wall or the other car. A 24 x 24 garage is actually pretty good considering that many designed give a 20 x 23 or something similarly ridiculous.

Hello everyone, I've gotten my updates back and I think everything is much improved! Please note the Laundry/Mudroom which has some much more efficient space. Still thinking about what will be what in there (may stack washer/dryer, like I have now), need a shoe storage closet, etc.. Also, the kids bedrooms have been reconfigured so I now have a window in the kids bath (yeah!). My daughter gets her walkin closet and the kids furniture fits nicely in their rooms. I just tweaked the kitchen island. Recommendations from the kitchen forum is for the fridge to go at the end of the long row of cabinets, but I really would prefer to have it closer to the deck/living/dining area, even though I have to 'minor-ly' cross through a walkway to get there. I would really like the exterior to be all stone in the front- see 'inspiration' pics with the exterior shot. I think the exterior needs a bit of work too... Thanks for your opinions! Walkout basement will be what I tackle next.

I do agree that it's an excessive amount of space for two people, but most of the houses proposed on this board are too large. The oversized garage facing the front will set the tone for the whole house -- and it's not really the house's best feature. The footprint is pretty complicated, which adds to the cost without adding any real benefit to the house. You have nice sight lines throughout the house. I do like the garage entry and the pantry. I agree with the poster who says do away with the double-doors between the kitchen and the pantry. A sudden set of double doors that don't match the other doors are a bit odd. Since this door will probably be open most of the time, I'd go with a pocket door that can disappear. I think the kitchen island ought to be turned -- it seems it ought to be parallel with the living room. Your door to the backyard opens from the dining room. Once you place a table in this space, the door will be cramped -- if it can open at all. You can move the door just around that corner to the living room. I'm not loving two doors in Bedroom #2's modest bath. If you feel that bedroom MUST have a private bath, I'd consider putting in a pocket door that could block off that small hallway. When you have guests, they could close off the bedroom /bathroom . . . without the extra door in the bathroom. I like the connection between the utility room and the master closet. I don't like the master bath's cramped, dark toilet closet. I'd go door-less on the shower, which would allow you to avoid the shower door and the closet door bumping against one another. I'd give up the excessive vanity area for a linen closet. I clearly see a fireplace in the basement rec room . . . but is that a fireplace upstairs in the living room? If you're having two fireplaces, it will save MEGA BUCKS to "stack them" so that you only need one chimney. Of course, I'm assuming that you're looking at masonry. You do have other options. A wood stove might suit your purposes in the basement, and it's both cheaper and more efficient. Downstairs, I hate three-doors-in-one-bath thing. The two bedrooms are already set back in a small hallway, so one door from the hallway is plenty. This post was edited by MrsPete on Fri, Dec 5, 14 at 22:20