Thanks for the feedback everyone! A little more information, we live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the local building department allows us to only have an engineers stamp, it isn't required to have an architect. Additionally, our builder (while not an architect) has a lot of experience drawing up plans, and if we could find a floor plan that only needed some modification then he could draw up the plans. Maybe we will end up going to an architect after all, however at the moment I'm just trying to collect some floor plan options to see if we can avoid it. Ideally, we are looking for a single story home that has a large great room, windows in the kitchen, 3-4 bedrooms and about 3000 square feet. We don't need a seperate dining room, or formal living room, though if a plan has a dining room we will turn it into an office, or some sort of other "flex" space. Thanks!!

Hmmmmm.... What do you like about your main floor entry lighting switches and what do you wish you could change? My entry /living room light switches are located around the corner from the front door. Yeah, it's only one step, but it makes no sense. This is a horrible, out-of-proportion image of my house. My front door is slightly recessed (to provide a bit of escape from the elements), and it opens into a small foyer ... and a formal living room to the right. The light switches to these two areas (and the exterior lights) are located AROUND THE CORNER where the red arrow points. Why? Because we have pier windows on one side of the door, there's no space left for a light switch. It's not a deal breaker by any means, but it's rather stupid design. My everyday family entrance, which is worse than the front door: The original house plan showed a two-car garage, but the people who built it "took it in" and made it into an office. It's a nice big space, which we use every day, and because it was done as a part of the original build, it doesn't have that "added on" feel ... but the builders neglected to move the light switches from their original spot. So we enter the house at the blue arrow ... and the light switches are located at the red arrow. I "fixed the problem" by buying a small accent lamp, which is never turned off, but it's not ideal. Things I love about my light switches: - I love that the top outlet in all my living room outlets are controlled by a light switch ... which means that I can turn on /off all my living room lamps (3) with one switch. In fact, I wish I had more outlets-that-control-lamps accessed by light switches, even if they only control one lamp ... it's easier to flip a wall switch than to feel for the small switches under the shade. - I love that the light switch in my master bedroom closet and my attic are "connected" ... so I never wonder whether the attic light was left on; rather, I just look at my closet, and I know. Of course, this works because my attic steps are located right next to my bedroom ... if your attic stairs are elsewhere, you could "connect" your attic light to any closet light. - I love the switch by my back door that controls outdoor outlets. So handy for Christmas lights. I wish I had these on the front of the house too. - I love that I have a motion sensored light in my walk-in pantry /laundry. I love that when my hands are full, I don't enter a dark room. And it turns itself off after something like 10 minutes. - This is a really simple one, but I have a light switch at each end of my hallway. Only one light, but controllable from two ends. Things I don't like: - I have one switch in my laundry room that turns on /off all the exterior lights around the whole house (and I have so many that I can really light up the night). I don't think I have ever used that light switch. Well, it's not so much that I don't like the light switch as it has no point; it probably cost little, but anything that isn't being used is a waste. - The light over my breakfast table and the light over my kitchen peninsula are controlled by the same switch. This means that I cannot have JUST the kitchen light or JUST the table light. - This is more about layout than light switches, but we always leave one of our master bathroom lights on at night, and the main light is positioned in such a way that the light pours straight onto my side of the bed. - We added ceiling fans to all our bedrooms, but we only have one light switch in each bedroom; thus, we have to use the pull chains to control the fan. It would be better to have two switches: One for the fan, one for the light.

The answers to your questions will change based on how people live--which may be different from how you or I live. My current home has a formal dining room at the front of the house, similar to your floor plan. We use that dining room once a year on Christmas, and only because I feel obligated; the other 364 days of the year are spent eating meals in our eat in kitchen, even when we're squeezing 10 people around our kitchen table. For our new, downsized home (we're in the final sketches with an architect) there will be no dining room, and a very large eat in area for a table in the kitchen. Because that's how we live. So in your floor plan, I'd turn the dining room into the living room as Patricia suggested, and put a table in the current great room. Whether you do that or leave the dining room at the front of the house, I'd personally leave the fireplace as a separating wall between the great room and living room. If you remove it, you'll then have a huge cavernous space (30'x20') that would then be broken up into different seating areas anyway. The fireplace just makes it easier to break up those areas and provide more of a barrier for times when someone might want to watch TV in one area while someone else would prefer to read or listen to music in the other area.

I feel like this is a family room type look. But you can use as dining room if that works better for you Many will ask for more pictures and a floor plan. So if you can post those. But I guess to answer your question, if you do end up using this as a dining room: There’s not much room for much so a rug, table, chairs, maybe a bench on one side, what’s your style? Maybe wallpaper on the walls.