Several suggestions (some in support of what others have already said) and comments-- Lower level: --I'd take space from the too large bath and storage rooms and enlarge the bedroom. --10' is too short a distance for large screen TVs; there are suggested distances for most screen sizes. --The office seems rather large, unless someone works from home, or you plan to have a computer activity area there for the kids. 2nd floor: --The bathroom is larger than it needs to be considering the relatively small size of the master bedroom; they're almost equal! --Having lived with bedrooms that had 9', 10', 11', 12', and 13' as their shortest measurements, IMO I wouldn't go smaller than 11' for a kid's room, or smaller than 12-13' for the master width if at all possible. --I remember a thread discussing jack & jill baths where opinions were about split on their desirability. I'm one of those who doesn't like them. --Our design had a tub/toilet room like yours for the girls' room. It was supposed to be 5' x 7', but ended up 5' x 8' (more space between the toilet and tub). FWIW, it is so much nicer with the 8' length. 1st floor-- --You have too much square footage in the halls for 1400 s.f. Like you, I designed a lot of halls into our house when including the pantry, laundry, powder room, stairs, and entrances. But I kept hacking away and rearranging the plan until I got the square footage better distributed so that my other rooms were the right sizes, and there was no wasted space in the final hall designs. --When your kids are just a little older, I think you're going to wish you had a lot bigger dining area! And when they're teenagers . . . --Our appliances, island, and wall cabinets are similar to how yours are set up, and 42" (cabinet face to cabinet face) is plenty of space between them. (39" countertop edge to countertop edge) --2 different neighbors used one column of 8"x8" glass block as their front sidelites. We used three 12"x12" glass blocks for a couple of lower level windows. IMO the larger size glass block looks better than the smaller sizes that used to be used. --It's more energy efficient to have the fireplace between two INTERIOR walls. Our living room is the exact same size as yours. We put a 2-way FP in the wall between it and the dining area (which has a regular informal dining table) that is part of our kitchen. We also got the FP for backup heat during power outages and have it hooked up to the generator, so with its 2 sides and central location it can heat up the 1st floor general living area. Since our house is also very energy efficient (ICF walls to the top of the 1st floor & geothermal heat), the FP is normally only on for a brief time on cold winter mornings when we first get out of bed and DH has just walked the 200' to get the newspaper. We just moved in in December, and are still finishing up some things on the house. It will be interesting to see how low we have to set the heating thermostat to have the ambiance of the FP when we have company over this winter here in Michigan! So, just some food for thought in case any of it might help. We benefited greatly from various GWeb posts when we were still in the design stage, and I know how hard it is to get everything right. Anne

fori, I was actually surprised how dead-on the form of your piece actually was to those early 19th c. examples. I was expecting a little more artistic license but while they appeared to take details Off, they didn't really try to stick anything else On, and that's good :) jterrilyn, I am also a fan of this type of furniture, whether moderne or colonial-revival. The better examples still pretty much follow the proportions of the originals, and are actually much better scaled than a lot of today's furniture. And even the kind of ugly stuff is still solid as a rock. I have a very small dresser, maybe 15" by 30" by 36" that my mother bought "in the dime store" when she went to college in 1952 it's survived trips from Virginia to Philadelphia to Pittsburgh and back again as well as a flood in my parents old house, and various other traumas, and it is still solid. It probably cost her $5.00 new, it was that era's example of disposable furniture, and 60 years later it's still hanging around.

Cp-Yes, we are limited on the outside. We tried craftsman traditional homes and were rejected every time. But you're right, if the outside looks like the rest of the subdivision, the inside could be anything within our budget. Unfortunately, the style rules are vague. There's standard limitations on brick in front, Max of 3 car garage, and minimum square footage. Aside from those, which I doubt remember off hand, because I know we'll meet them. The builder had to approve, and also go through the builder committee of for large builders in the area. Pretty much, they have to look like rest of the neighborhood. We have considered it, and we'll be utilizing one. However, they're aren't any independent ones in our area, and they wouldn't be familiar with our particular subdivision. We've contacted an individual we know that does architecture, but we're not sure if they do residential or commercial/industrial. Bpathome- I love the idea of arranging the bath upstairs. Great idea! Yes, we are allowed to add windows on the side, not sure why I hadn't thought of that.

Everybody's needs, desires, wants and finances are different. And they can be quite different for the same people at different stages in life. For our first 5 years of marriage we lived in an 820 sq ft home in a neighborhood of similar homes and narrow streets where kids played in the streets without worry of being run over by a speeding car. We loved that home and neighborhood and still miss it. Soon after our first child was born we moved in to a larger home of about 1700 sq ft and later finished the basement for another 800. It's worked well for this time of our lives. Now we're building an 8000 sq ft home (http://bamasotan.us). Neither of us particularly likes big houses and we didn't want this one to be nearly this big. However, my wife comes from a large family so it's not unusual to have 40 people over for dinner (like Christmas eve every year as well as a dozen or so other times each year). We also like for people to be able to stay with us (family & friends from Alabama, Sweden, Scotland, etc.) and we both need home offices (we've been splitting home offices w/ guest quarters which works but isn't ideal) so we effectively have a 7 bedroom home though 2 are offices. At one point early in the design process our architect said "so what you want is an inn". I'm still trying to figure out how 3 extra bedrooms and a bit more elbow room in the kitchen and family room ended up being 3x our current house. Frequent quote from our architect "It wants to be this!" Translated: Our and the builders revenue model want it to be this. I think we'd be just as happy going back to our 800 sq ft home though and I'm guessing at some point as we age we'll move in to a much smaller place. A friend just moved from a 3000 sq ft home to a 600 sq ft flat along a bikeway. She can ride her bike to the same village as us with a grocery, pharmacy and a few restaurants. She's been there about 3 years and says that she couldn't be happier. Though I wouldn't give up my wife or her family or all of our friends that come to stay with us for anything, I'm also a bit envious of Jeff's plans for his small place.