Thanks for your thoughts and comments! We are also downsizing from a traditional 4700 sq ft house (with formal living/dining) to 3600 sq ft with a great room design, so it is taking some getting used to, but we really wanted a house where we used every inch rather than having all these extra rooms we rarely used. Our old house was large, but didn't use the space the way I would use it--my laundry room was tiny (a closet really) and the bedrooms were large but the kids rooms had tiny closets. So, with this house, we made made sure the kids still had large rooms like they were used to and got larger closets and their own bathrooms to boot (my son doesn't really care, but my daughter is super excited to get her own bathroom and walk in closet :)). Once they move out, we'll have mini suites downstairs for guests. The kitchen/dining/living area is 41' long. Looks like we will be working with roughly the same area for those spaces. :) What is the total sq footage of your house? Of our 3600 sq ft, there is about 1930 for the main and about 1670 for the LL. Nice that you were able to fit 3 bedrooms downstairs and still have a nice sized rec room and play area. We will also have a wet bar down in our rec room. :) Great idea about adding water line in one of the storage rooms for laundry! We do plan to add stairs from the deck outside but just couldn't decide where to place them so figured we would wait to make that decision at the time the deck is being built so we could see what it looks like. I love that you will have an outdoor shower. Love those! We plan to put a hot tub on the deck right outside the master. Thought about putting it down on the LL patio, but my DH really wants it on the deck. Gotta give in to what he wants every once in a while ;-).

We have iron double doors and they ARE heavy. They are very well balanced though and open and close like "butterrrr". My toddler grandchildren have no problem moving them once they are open. Price these doors before you fall in love with either idea. Our door was reasonable (4K +) but they can run much higher. Your hardware for these doors is not inexpensive either, and if you have the requirements that Renovator spoke of for your area of not being able to leave one side latched- a double may not be worth the security hassles. Our double door is inside a security gated courtyard so we often leave it open in nice weather when kiddos are not around.

Skies the limit once you strip it down to the rough opening. What do you want? You can usually get a single door in there some some smaller sidelites as an option.

We had double glass 6 pane doors on my husband’s office in our last house. We loved them, as he could be on his office with the doors closed (listening to music, or playing his guitar) and gave him, and me, a feeling of not being closed off in a room. Worked really well for us, and they were beautiful. As for the light switch. Our light switch was on the left wall, just past the door in “open” position. It was not behind the door. I think you will find that is normal on most double door situations. It was not awkward at all in practical use, even tho it may seem like it in thought.