Hire a real architect. The kitchen as a major walk through corridor ought to disqualify whomever scribbled this from ever creating a house plan. Then there’s the silly nested gables for no functional reason whatsoever. That only adds expense. And the overbearing roof, with dark interior. Not at all well planned, even as an inspiration only.

Start over.

You need a serious led daytime lighting plan for the great room and kitchen to go forward. Or skylight/solar tube..

Which side faces south? Where are you located for climate considerations?

needs a TON OF WORK

I would definitely not be happy about ALL of the though traffic going through the kitchen.

I hate to say it but this is an awful plan. You need to be working with an architect not a designer. The kitchen is too big and has too many traffic paths. The master suite is wasting a ton of space (plus the whole closet through bathroom issue). The dining room is too isolated from the kitchen. The exterior is just overcomplicated and the home will be extremely dark to name a few issues.

This should be completely scrapped.

I'm sorry to have to agree with the content of the comments here, if not always the tone. Looking at additional issues:

1) The mudroom and laundry room make lavish use of space relative to the function they provide...the plan here could have been substantially tightened up. I question whether anyone will ever willingly sit at the desk in the dark, remote corner of the untidy mudroom with multiple hallways branching off behind their back. Whereas....

2) The bedrooms in the lower right corner are quite tight. Sure, you can fit beds in them, but not easily in 1 case. Just 20 extra sq feet each - saved by tightening up the mudroom - would have made a big difference to useability

3) Pantry across a hallway from the kitchen means you will be making, oh, 100 extra needless steps at every meal. Just imagine making breakfast, filing bowls with 3 different cereals from the pantry, then multiply by 365

4) This plan has 11 external corners. (Basic rectangle has, of course, 4.) That would be fine if each corner was there for a purpose and you got good value from the expense. But that is not the case.

5) So many outer walls are eaten up by closets, while the plan generally is needlessly starved for light. Closets, utility rooms, pantries, and other non-inhabited spaces should generally be pushed toward the interior of a plan so that light and air can be provided to the living spaces.

6) Since you have several acres, and you're willing to convolute this mass with 11 corners, extra ridgelines etc., why not use those $$$$ to create a plan that is at most 2 rooms deep, and provide light and air amply to every living space?

Etc. This plan would not give you good value for your money and would be limited in resale value relative to its square footage. An architect can get more function into less space, for less cost, even including the architect's fee.

I agree with all of the above posters. This plan isn't working very well.

We farm too. When planning our home I had a couple of questions that I kept in the back of my mind: 1) when my Husband gets called out for an emergency in the middle of the night, how quickly can he be out of bed, boots on, and in his truck? and 2) when my kids are playing in the backyard, how quickly can they get to a toilet?

Holy cannoli! Look at all the different roofs! And I counted 19 corners, not including the screened in porch. $$$$$

Houzz photos are fun to gather as inspirational ideas, but you cannot assume the space in the pretty pictures is functional. That 15x17 kitchen is really just a 10 x12 kitchen in disguise.

I was inspired by these photos on Houzz (see below) and tried to do something similar. Seems pretty bright to me.

Images like these are frequently artificially lighted -- or enhanced using software, so the interior looks best.

Echoing everyone above: the jigs and jogs, and complicated large roof, will all make construction ver expensive (and the roof will continue to be expensive, as far as reshingling, over its lifetime). I'm never a fan of a front door that essentially opens into a private area, like a dining room. I like a closet at the front door for visitors.

The kitchen alone needs an entire thread. Everything noted above is important, and I will also say that I never like a fridge set deep inside the kitchen. Much better to have it at an end of a countertop run, so family members, esp kids, can access it without bothering whoever is cooking. Here are some helpful GardenWeb kitchen forum links for planning a kitchen,

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/4306041/new-to-kitchens-read-me-first#n=477

[https://www.houzz.com/discussions/looking-for-layout-help-memorize-this-first-dsvw-vd~2699918[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/looking-for-layout-help-memorize-this-first-dsvw-vd~2699918)

That last link is what Jan Moyer's Item C is referring to -- "Ice. Water. Stone. Fire."

We farm, have a home-based construction business, and I like to garden, so we put a full bathroom including shower in the garage and another full bathroom on the main floor right by the back door, where everyone comes in from outside. In the garage we also have a second-hand stainless steel restaurant supply sink (for washing vegetables, plant pots, eggs, etc.) as well as an older washing machine for chore clothes.

So are the bedrooms between the kitchen and the laundry room for the scullery maids? Why else would you have bedrooms only accessible from the kitchen or the garage?

Like others have said, this plan is seriously flawed in many ways. You have this giant rabbit warren of poorly allocated space on the right side of the house, making for awkward flow and generally making the kitchen a wide hallway with a fridge and stove in it.

Adding to the notes about the natural light problems - the arrangement of rooms doesn't allocate the light well - I'd completely rearrange the layout to put the kitchen and dining on one end of the house, the living/great room in the middle oriented so it gets plenty of light from the backside of the house (right now it looks out into the screened porch), and then move ALL the bedrooms, laundry/mud, screened porch, etc, to the other end of the house so they're grouped together and not stealing light from your gathering rooms.

In addition to the problems already listed, what on earth is with the awkward and out-of-the-way access to the deck and screened porch? To access the screened porch, I either have to walk through the master bedroom, or walk through the kitchen and into the rabbit warren, exit via the backdoor there, walk across the deck outside, and then enter the screened porch. In general, you have all these nice outdoor spaces, but make them awkward and difficult to access, especially for guests.

Oh, and the window situation on the left elevation is really unfortunate looking. If you're not going to scrap this plan and start over, at least make the windows symmetrical and evenly placed and fix the bathroom layout accordingly. The reason houses like this can look so bad and weird on the outside is because they're designed from the inside out, with little regard to the resulting side elevations, roof, or footprint.

Also you’ll notice in all the inspiration pics every single light is turned on + they’re professionally photographed - day to day, those are not necessarily bright spaces.

Yes, I am bummed. I really like it, but we've never built so I wanted some feedback. I'm curious to know what you all think is a good layout and family functional house plan for a family of 4 with small kids to grow up in, if you have any to share or examples to check out. That may help me game plan further too on how to proceed. I love an open-floor plan with 3-4 bedrooms, all on one floor, large mud room and extra flex room for a play room/guest room, with an attached garage and ideally around 2,500 sqft. I love a screened in porch and a large window over the kitchen sink to see the kids in the back yard. I do appreciate you all taking the time review and provide your feedback too, so thank you.

Please read this thread. It's a good place to start. Don't get too caught up in specific aesthetics just yet.

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/beginning-bubble-diagram-for-a-custom-home-dsvw-vd~4351651

Coastal Farm - You may feel like you need to start searching plan sites again. Resist! Instead of going down the crazy making path of looking at online house plan sites, you might instead search the "building a home" for "architectrunnerguy." You'll find several examples of not just floor plans, but threads that show more of the process of working with a talented architect, like architectrunnerguy :-)

Here's one example... https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5356205/want-to-see-our-super-awesome-house-plan-al-a-architectrunnerguy#n=59

Coastal Farm, this thread might also give you some hope and some ideas : ) . Read through the entire thread to see the progression,

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5307456/need-help-with-picking-exterior-materials

Imagine making a simple soup and sandwich meal in that kitchen, where you need to go to pantry, refrigerator, stove/microwave and sink. Way too many steps.

Better to find this out now, than after it's built.

"I'm curious to know what you all think is a good layout and family functional house plan for a family of 4 with small kids to grow up in"

I'm going to just go through my checklist, point by point. Sorry if it comes across as dictatorial, that's not my intention :) Just a note, we have 2300 sqft indoors plus a 10x50 covered front porch and a 10x30 lanai.

Must haves for me:

• Two separate gathering areas: one "formal" (not stylistically, rather in its use) with no TV for adults and well-behaved children to chat, and one "relaxed" for kids (and hyper adults lol) to play, the family to watch movies, teens to watch their shows after the rest of us are in bed, etc. Optimally the relaxed room is far from the parents' bedroom and removed from the formal space. The relaxed space will naturally evolve as your boys grow and their needs/interests change.
• A perfect kitchen. That is the room I spent the most time thinking about, and when we moved in I knew exactly where every lid, bowl, jar, and elastic band was going to be stored. I have not once had to search for something I needed unless someone else put away the dishes lol. Seating for chatters is important, and need not be at an island (though we have that too). Our farmhand just yesterday was sitting in the swivel chair in the kitchen and he said "This is the best seat in the house. You can see almost every room and outside." Which is true, and what I planned it for. Yet, you can only see that chair if you're in the kitchen or dining room.
• A separate dining room with a table large enough for our whole family plus guests, open doorway to the kitchen but the two rooms not visible to each other.
• A mudroom with enough storage for all our Stuff, with access to the backyard/fields
• Easy access to outdoor living spaces from indoor living spaces.
• As mentioned above, easy for someone to get out of bed and into a vehicle quickly in an emergency. Running across the whole house and around your four 90-degree turns isn't quick.
• As mentioned above, easy access to a toilet from the backyard.
• Natural light. Light, light, light. And good lighting to supplement it.

Things I did not prioritize at all:

• walk in closets for children
• individual bedrooms for children; they share. (I recognize that this is a decision each family needs to make for the needs of their family. But on a tight budget, kids can share IMO)
• matching an inspiration pic. Sorry, but I think finding pics is what you do when it's time to finish and decorate the space you already have, not when you're trying to focus in on your family's needs.

If I were in your shoes, I would make similar lists based on my NEEDS and I would ask my partner to do the same. I would do the same for my Wants, Nice to Haves, and Not a Priority-s. (In fact I did do that and it helped tremendously.) All houses require compromise, and it's vital to be able to identify what can be compromised and what cannot. And seeing it written down clarifies my thoughts and makes it easier for my Husband to process what I'm trying to communicate.

Take the advice given by others above and research the info in those really helpful links. I am sorry you're feeling bummed out, truly. You've got a great opportunity here to really learn how to work through these analyses so I hope you start feeling encouraged as you read and think about how you can build a perfect-for-you home. ((hugs))

Lindsey has given you some very good advice. I will add that your children will not always be the age they are now. I know - "penetrating glimpse into the obvious", as my late DH loved to say. But many people here do forget that while one might want "sight lines" so that a constant eye can be kept on young children, one doesn't particularly want that with 2-4 11 year olds in the room. They might, however, again want that when they're 16, especially if they're not ones own!

Advice, not advise.

I'm a little concerned the front may be boring or too long with a lot of roof

These concerns are justified. The roof seems to be "larger" than the house, and this is because the house is too "deep". Instead of spreading so wide, consider an L or T shaped house ... this will allow the house to be no more than "two rooms" deep at any point, so the roof won't be pushed to such proportions.

Also, if you're looking to build a budget house, get rid of the jigs-and-jogs around the edges. They add nothing to the live-ability of your house, yet they drive up the price of the build ... and the roof.

I would definitely not be happy about ALL of the though traffic going through the kitchen.

That's only one of the kitchen's problems. Really, the kitchen is -- by far -- the weakest spot in this house ... you have essentially four "areas" in the kitchen, and they're too spread out for efficiency. The kitchen is a complete start-over. No, wait -- I like the pantry, but not its location.

The master suite is wasting a ton of space (plus the whole closet through bathroom issue).

I like that the master is on a corner and that it has an exterior door ... but that's where the positives end.

I don't have a problem with the closet opening into the bathroom, but IF you have that set-up, the closet needs to be immediately next to the door so you're not forced to walk through the bathroom to reach the bathroom. LOTS of things are nice ideas, but ONLY in the right context.

The bathroom's a mess too. Pocket doors are great for doors that're rarely closed ... not for bathroom doors. All your light is coming in from the tub area. The angled wall on the toilet closet is not user-friendly and partially covers the closet door -- why shove the toilet into a dark closet anyway? How unpleasant. The vanity isn't big enough to allow for drawers for convenient storage.

The closet is also very far /through many twists and turns from the laundry.

The dining room is too isolated from the kitchen.

Agree.

I question whether anyone will ever willingly sit at the desk in the dark, remote corner of the untidy mudroom with multiple hallways branching off behind their back.

I was going to say the same thing. Additionally, parents today face an uphill battle monitoring their kids' computer usage ... a desk that's remote from the rest of the house just makes that task more difficult.

2) The bedrooms in the lower right corner are quite tight.

Eh, the bedrooms are okay ... the closet door in the left bedroom needs to be flipped ... the hallway outside the boys' bedroom is unnecessarily large.

The boys' bathroom is nicely sized, but I'd downsize to one sink so they can have drawers for storage. Storage trumps duplicate sinks in every case (even in the master). Since their bedroom "backs up to" the laundry room, I'd want some sort of a "throw-through" door for dirty clothes -- could be so convenient.

Seems pretty bright to me. If we put the sky light back over the kitchen island would that help? I thought sky lights can eventually become a problem down the road.

I teach photography. I can easily make your dark kitchen appear to be sun-filled ... for a couple photographs.

The reality is that this plan will give lovely light to your master bedroom and bathroom, the mudroom, and the right-side boys' bedroom. The rooms where you'll spend most of your waking hours will be dark because they're either under porches or they have minimal windows.

Yes, I am bummed. I really like it,

Tell yourself you're "in the learning phase" and don't feel bad. Start studying and learning, and soon you'll have a better idea of what's going to lead you to a nice house that'll be a joy to inhabit.

I will add that your children will not always be the age they are now.
I know - "penetrating glimpse into the obvious", as my late DH loved to
say.

Overall, I think a family house works best if you have one large living space where everyone can gather ... and one smaller "away space" (that phrase is stolen from The Not So Big House series). That "away space" needs to be right: it needs to have acoustical and visual privacy from the main living area (think about Mom wanting to go quietly watch her own movie while the boys are all screaming at a football game on the big TV ... or a child needing to practice a musical instrument ... or Dad wanting a quiet place to go read while Mom and the kids are working on a school project). You also want this space to someday work for visiting friends ... close enough for supervision, far enough for sanity.

I'm curious to know what you all think is a good layout and family
functional house plan

Okay ... I'm not saying you'll love this particular house, but consider its details:

That this house has plenty of "interest" on the exterior ... yet the roofline doesn't overwhelm the design ... everything's proportional ... I'm pretty sure if you measured it, it'd fit the golden ratio. It's a story-and-a-half house, which is economical. Incidentally, it's about 2300 sf.

It's an L-shaped house, and it doesn't have jigs-and-jogs all around the perimeter jacking up the price. Even the screened porch fits under the simple roofline.

The living room has windows on two walls, meaning it'll be nicely lit. If you were to cut down the front porch, the living room could be better lit.

Imagine yourself entering from the garage ... you can go straight to the master bedroom ... and you can walk BY the kitchen without walking through the work area.

The kitchen is more efficient than the broken-up plan you showed originally, and a cook can reach everything without walking across the room and around the island. It does lack the pantry. Since you're building on 3 acres, you could easily swap the sink to the other cabinet run and have a big bay window over it. Then you could make the other kitchen window into a pass-through so you'd be ready for grilling.

The kitchen and dining room are immediately adjacent to one another, so serving /clean up will be easy.

The master bedroom has windows on one wall and a glass door on the other ... it'll be nicely lit. The master bath could have windows on two walls as well.

Look at the arrangement of the master bath and closet. They're adjacent to one another, but you 're not forced to walk the length of the bathroom to reach the closet. If you wanted, you could move the bathroom door a few feet to the left, so the closet would be "in" the bathroom ... without being "fully in" the bathroom. On the negative side, it shows a bathroom vanity that could never support two sinks. The master suite is close to the laundry, saving you many steps.

Upstairs, the three bedrooms are rectangles. Rectangles give you more wall space, making placement of beds /nightstands /etc. easier. The closets are all pushed toward the inside of the plan ... this allows every bedroom to have a double window.

Note that one reason this house works is that it's a modern take on the old-fashioned American Four-Square ... and that allows lots of "edges" for the much-desired natural light.

Again, I'm not saying you should adopt this plan ... but it illustrates how some of the problems in your plan can be remedied.

Other thoughts:

- Placing the washer /dryer on an exterior wall is cheaper and more fire-safe.

- I don't like the location of the playroom /bedroom. Eventually this'll probably become a teen hang-out room ... and at that point you won't appreciate its near-the-master location. Imagine it's summer, and the boys are allowed to stay up late ... you don't want to go to sleep to the sound of them playing video games or music. Also, if you (or a future owner) ever wants to use this as a bedroom, it isn't near a full bath.

- You say you're building on a budget ... do you need that powder room? Guests can use the hall bath.

- Is that a sink in the garage? Do you live in an area where this will freeze in the winter?

- Is that a refrigerator or freezer in the garage? It's much, much too far from the kitchen.

- For several reasons, I'd prefer the master suite near the garage: It's just convenient to come home and have your personal space nearby -- why give that prime spot to the kids? Typically this location is nearer the laundry room -- make the kids tote their clothes! When your boys are teens, you'll be glad that they have to walk past your bedroom when they come home -- you'll still wait up for them, but you'll be able to sit and read in your own bed while you do it.

- You have allotted closets throughout the house ... don't give these up in the name of economy!

Start a new discussion with this title:

We are about to finalize our list of wants and needs for a house and I wanted to ask for any suggestions or advice before we give it and a copy of our site survey to our architect.

Remember, if you are going into surgery, you should not make the first few incisions to help out the surgeon.

The purpose of an architect is to : With your budget, design a home that meets your needs in a functional and aesthetically pleasing way that suits you and your family. Begin anew with a pro. Designing a home is like writing your memoirs. A lot of paper goes in a trash can before it goes to the publisher : )

"I'm curious to know what you all think is a good layout and family functional house plan for a family of 4 with small kids to grow up in"

To demonstrate why nobody can just post a plan and say, "Here, build this, it's a great family home for you," I'll walk through MY list of needs that I gave our architect (or pointed out after the first draft, because I didn't think of EVERYTHING the first time) and you can see how different they are from Lindsey's.

We're a family of four, as well, building on a hobby farm-to-be of 10+ acres. My kids, however, are both special needs and unlikely to ever be independent. SO:

- open floor plan for the public spaces so I can keep track of what they're up to.

- public and private areas of the house have some degree of separation so I don't feel like my guests are all up in my business all the time.

- 4 bedrooms (one large enough to include 2 twin beds, so that we can make use of respite care offers from local college students). Master on the main level, everything else up.

- Privately located office for the husband

- Thought given to potential future mobility issues. Wider passageways than are "standard" and a shaft included for a future elevator should it be needed. (Husband is certainly looking at knee replacement within the next 10 years)

- Mudroom as a room, rather than a passageway from the outer to the inner

- Laundry reasonably close to kitchen, as those are my two big "chore" areas.

- "See that apple tree? I'd like to keep that."

- "Oh, and we bought a Swedish Tile Stove, work that into the design."

- Kitchen designed for people who like to use a kitchen. Not for socializing.

- The house has no basement (water table is too high), so lots of storage.

Nice to haves:

Screen porch with an outdoor woodburning fireplace.

Soaking tub in the master suite

Would be cool:

A 3rd story tower (had to give that up. $$)

A secret door (got that one)

Fireplace in office (gave that up, too)

If you want to see how all of that evolved and worked out, there is a thread here, with the nearly final plan near the bottom.

To answer the question about what makes a good home for a growing family...

My parents rebuilt the family home in the 90's. Old house was disintegrating (literally) and very little of it was salvaged (it had to be a remodel for favorable zoning/code reasons), so the new iteration of the house was essentially a new and different house, designed by my dad with the help of some architect friends.

Over 20 or so years, the layout has proved to be timeless and highly effective for family living. House is three stories, on a slope. Main floor is a highly traditional layout, kind of a Foursquare layout rotated a bit and elongated - you enter the foyer on the middle of the long side of the house, main floor is anchored at each end by formal living room and kitchen. Opposite the foyer (behind wall and staircase is the dining room, which is accessible from both the living room and kitchen (it's a loop). This is a partially closed floor plan, so the kitchen is not open to the formal dining room (there is a cool two-way swinging door), but the dining room is open to the living room via cased opening. It's technically a closed kitchen, but it's huge - plenty of room for a huge table (for eight people without leaves) and a small sitting area around the fireplace (more on this in a bit). It's a beautiful, functional room but it doesn't encroach on the rest of the main floor, and also doesn't sprawl out to ridiculous great room levels.

Upstairs is bedrooms, including nice master suite, and downstairs, below the main level, is TV den, office, laundry, and guest suite. The house is on a slope, so one side of the lower level has windows. Laundry and TV den are positioned into the hillside so they don't use up window space.

All in all, fantastic layout for both a family of adults (now) and a family with kids (then). The adults had lovely entertaining space on the main level, and us kids could be downstairs with the TV and stay out of their hair and have our own space. To note, the TV was never welcome in the living room - it was an afterthought in our house, considered a passive, antisocial activity and shunted off to the den where, frankly, it belonged. Now my dad has built it out into a home theater, and seriously, a small windowless room with a huge screen and top notch surround sound is the BEST place to watch movies and TV, not in the living/family room with glare and tons of distractions.

And back to that kitchen fireplace. If there is one fireplace in your house, put it in the spacious kitchen and also make sure it has a raised hearth. TRUST ME. My parents put three fireplaces in the house - kitchen, living room, and master bedroom. Guess which one gets used all the time while the others get used almost never? Kitchen fireplace.

I think the takeaways from my family house are:

- Design for your family through time, not for your family right now (kids grow up)

- Don't let the TV dictate how you lay out your space (make a separate windowless den for it for optimal viewing experience)

- Put fireplace in kitchen

- As long as you make the kitchen a big awesome room in its own right, you don't need to let it bleed into the rest of the gathering spaces via full blown open concept (I don't like open concept, how could you tell??)

Dining Room

It's too small.

To seat 8 people, you need a table approximately 7 feet long at a minimum, (8 feet is even better) you would have 3 diners on each side and one on each end. The average (non-skimpy) table is 40” wide (and up to 45”.)

You need to add 3 feet beyond the edge of the table size on each side and end for enough space for the chair, the diner and moving the chair back. You need to have between 28-30 " seating space per diner.

So for eight diners, you need a room size that is a minimum of 13’ x 9.5’ (14’ x 9.5’ is better) that doesn’t have a single other stick of furniture in it besides the table and chairs.

If you want a buffet or hutch, add another 20” to 24” to either dimension depending upon where you put the piece.

Eight diners will get you your family and both sets of grandparents. That’s it. No aunts or uncle or cousins or friends.

If you want 10 diners you need a table that is 9.3’ - 10 feet long (that can be including the leaves).

If you want 10 diners your room needs to be a minimum of 16 feet long, or longer if you want your buffet or hutch to be at the long end of the room.

10 guests will get you your immediate family, another family of four people, and one set of grandparents.

And so on.

In your plan, the dining room is way too small if you plan to entertain any more than 8 people at a time.

I suggest that you forget about seating at the kitchen counter.

Move the dining room closer to your kitchen, put it where the front bedroom is and expand it considerably into where the current dining room is so that it can accommodate the number of guests you will be entertaining when you entertain.

If you live out in the country it is a good idea to get to know your neighbors and your children’s classmate’s parents, and entertain back and forth, you do need each other.

Use up the entire front bedroom and half the current allotted dining room, and that should give you a good amount of space.

I happen to hate totally dining rooms totally open to the kitchen. When you eat a nice meal, no one needs to see all the mess of the meal prep, but that is up to you how you want to configure it- totally open, partially open, whatever.

You can get a dining table with many leaves and keep it smaller, or you can keep it open and your boys can do their homework their under your watchful eye, and you will be near to help and later to supervise their work on their laptops as they get older.

Make sure the dining room and great room have lots of outlets and your home has good wifi connectivity in all rooms.

Laundry and Mudrooms

Someone commented early that the laundry room is too big.

I disagree. You need room to open the ironing board.

You need the counter to fold clothes, or to spread out sweaters to dry, or to lay out sewing patterns without worry that your children will set snacks on them. Maybe you put your sewing machine on the counter to sew.

I do have an issue with the mudroom. I would not have the closet cut into the laundry room that way. I would figure out exactly what you use the laundry room for, is it also a craft room, do you need more counters, etc.

Then actually think carefully about what kind of storage you need in the mudroom in terms of cubbies. i.e., do you need 4 cubbies? Five including one for dog leashes and other dog things?

Plan that space out exactly to the inch. Use the ones shown in catalogs like pottery barn or crate and barrel as exemplars.

Then I would think about pushing that closet forward so it doesn’t encroach on the laundry room, and find a more creative door solution so it doesn’t take up corridor space in the mudroom hallway.

A desk in the mudroom? Can you please explain that?

And speaking of closets-

Foyer

Am I reading that plan correctly, you don’t have any closets at the front door?

Oh goodness!

Well, you now have a much larger foyer because you have gotten rid of the front bedroom and the too small dining room.

Make a large closet. Large. Larger. Your guest wear coats and boots and hats.

If you can, have two closets, one on each side of the door. If you have six guests in the winter or rainy season, they will have six coats and six hats and six umbrellas.

You know you don’t want those coats on your bed or hanging off your shower and dripping in your bathroom.

With the larger foyer, you have the chance to make it gracious.

Get a lovely table and a nice chair next to it so when someone comes and is waiting, they can sit.

Indoors.

There are marvelous ways to decorate a foyer.

But first things first.

Kitchen

Your kitchen design isn’t logical and was designed by someone who doesn’t cook much.

Great that you have two sinks, but both sinks need to be l-a-r-g-e.

‘Cause I know you know how long celery, green onions and corn and rhubarb are, right?

And maybe there is a glimmer of hope that occasionally someone occasionally helps you out in the kitchen so do you really need to be bumping behinds when one of you is at the island sink and the other is at the range top? Please move that island sink.

And as mentioned earlier, get rid of the counter seating, and with the dining room now right next door, eat at the dining room table like civilized people facing each other and have conversation.

It’s worth it for everyone to walk three steps and let the kids set the table and carry things and you two for you to not let yourself be treated like a short order cook and have the children develop table manners and conversational skills and give their thumbs a rest from those e-devices.

Without the counter seating you have tons more storage space in the island, and who doesn’t need that? And you saved all that money on counter stools, and you don’t need such a big slab for the counter either. Maybe you can put that saved money into better storage, like drawers instead of shelves for the lowers in the kitchen.

About the kitchen sink- have you thought about using a single large sink instead of a divided bowl?

With the dishwasher right there, how much do you wash by hand and when you do, do you really wash, soak, rinse, do a whole two separate bowl procedure?

Wouldn’t you rather have one big bowl for the really big things that won’t fit in the dishwasher?

Do you really want to carry a dirty-with-food and gravy huge platter through your house to the mudroom? Outside to the garage in the pouring rain?

Does your kitchen need two entrance from the laundry room mudroom side? I don’t think so.

Just have one, that will give you that extra space for more counter and more upper and lower storage.

Keep the upper entryway into the kitchen because that is closest to the garage path, and close off the lower one.

That will give you that wall and the one perpendicular to it, the one on the other side of the new dining room for a refrigerator, maybe even two refrigerators, a big sink, maybe two sinks, and a dishwasher.

(And then put a full freezer in the garage.)

Have the range on a wall where you can install a large hood that can vent to the outside, maybe the wall abutting the shed roof and put the microwave there on that side too.

If you really want the second sink in the island, put a second sink in the island but not directly opposite another appliance and not smack dab in the middle of one of the long sides.

Do you really drink enough wine to warrant a wine refrigerator?

If you have meetings in your home for organizations, groups, parties, for your family and kids and groups you belong to, maybe a better (more versatile) choice is a beverage refrigerator that can be used for multiple things including things for your children, and get a lock on it anyway in case you do decide to store alcohol in it.

Garage

Your garage- is it really large enough?

You live out in a countrified area. Maybe you have a van or a truck.

I bet by high school your son will be driving and will need his own car. Mauybe both will have their own cars and part time jobs too.

Don’t you think you should have at least a three and a half car garage?

Or a two car garage plus a large electrified shed/workshop?

I wonder if your two car garage is even large enough for your vehicles , let alone your bicycles, lawn mower and other implements of destruction.

Look at all those things cutting into the garage space- a door, two sets of stairs.

You need to be able to open the doors of your both cars on both sides, no matter what size car or truck you have.

I don’t think you can do this.

Think about this and do your own measurements, not what the builder tells you based on their own minimum requirements.

And frankly, this is not a forever home for you if you have to walk up two flights of stairs from the garage with bags of groceries, either.

Great Room

Do you plan on having a TV in the great room, because I don’t see any place to put one.

If you are having a regular fireplace with a regular height mantel, putting the TV over that is just too high.

There are no other walls wide enough I that room for a TV.

Is that a wall on the back of the foyer? If so , there shouldn’t be one, because your guests would be led into the great room. If you didn’t want someone at the front door to see into your great room you could have a wall there with a doorway into the great room off to the far right and you could choose to shut the door when the doorbell rings or when and if you keep the front door open with just the screen door on.

The room is H-U-G-E.

Have you planned out your furniture placement? Does it make sense?

Who sits together on benches squished against a wall on the side of a fireplace except teenagers you don’t want in that proximity?

Is that a wood burning fireplace?

Maybe instead of those benches, build in a place to store cut logs ready to use in the fireplace, you can use both sides, and sort by size.

On the other sides of the log storage, think about other built in storage such as closed storage on the bottom with open shelving on the top. You can put board games in there, and things like coasters and a basket or two to corral toys, and some nice decorative items, too.

Just clean the logs before you bring them in or you'll have all manner of bug and rodents.

And maybe think about putting in something that can make the fireplace easily convertible to a non-wood burning one because many areas are dis-allowing wbf's or so severely restricting their use because of either fire concerns or pollution concerns or deforestation concerns that you might want to switch over some day, or when you sell the house down the road the convertibility of the fireplace may make it more sellable. The last reason is the least compelling but if it doesn't cost a fortune it is should be considered even for that last reason, too.

Master Bedroom

Is there any particular reason you have the walk-in-closet on the far side of the master bath from the master bedroom? That’s a bit of a hike and doesn’t make sense unless one spouse has a very different schedule and doesn’t want to awaken the other. Is that the case?

Is that a linen closet in the hallway outside the master bedroom?

Get totally different doors. Get a series of cupboard doors, upper and lowers so all parts of the closet can be easily accessed, or else you’ll end up with corners of that closet you can’t get into.

Having a door to the master toilet is disgusting. Yes it is, and I am going to spell it out because you haven’t figured it out.

You have just used the toilet and your hands are literally full of the most disgusting disease-causing coliform bacteria and you have not washed them, and now you are touching the door knob and the door and the molding and who knows what else on the way to the sink.

Just get a partial wall or something to disguise most of the view. But nothing you have to touch on the way to the sink!

With all the doorways into the room and the windows, have you made a to scale drawing of that room with your furniture in it? Besides your bed you have have two dressers and a media stand.

Hallways

Where are they? It seems the house needs to be made 8 feet wider at least so you can have hallways on so rooms can be accessed via hallways without going through other rooms.