The island is large enough to have a good zone of safety around the cooking zone, but not large enough to serve as the prep zone. Your prep zone in this layout will be the corner between your fridge and DW. And that would be fine for many people. If you want to prep and socialize with visitors at the same time, then this isn't a layout that will work for that and you'd need to move the cooking zone off of the island and put a sink there so that you'd prep facing out into the room. Whatever you decide, I'd make the entry to the pantry in the hall adjacent so that you could extend the cabinets down all the way to that hall and move the fridge down further to make access easier from the great room. That will also give you a good place for a MW next to the fridge. I'd personally also prefer a peninsula for some separation between the kitchen and dining room while still remaining open for the connection. I'd also prefer the cooking zone to be off of the island so that it would b easier and cheaper (and more effectively) vented to the exterior straight through the wall. Flank it with some windows to make it a focal point from the great room.

Your parents are in their 70's. At 70 my Mom and Dad could go up and down stairs. My Mom went to the gym 5x a week. However at 72, my Mom developed Parkinson's disease and by 76 could no longer do stairs. She lived until age 84. My Dad could also no longer do stairs by his late 70's. In fact for the two of them in their last years, the shower curb might as well have been Mt Everest for them. One step up or down was difficult. And it would have been hazardous for them too. With both houses you are having to adapt yourselves to the house instead of the house working for you. If you're spending 6 figures of your hard earned money, why build a house that doesn't work for you and where you'll be constantly trying to adapt it to work. You have unique needs in that you have your parents staying for long stretches of time and they are getting up there in years. Like Stinky said, why would you either want to give up your large bedroom to allow them to stay downstairs, or relegate them to a room the size of a child's room? Frankly if you want to consider either of these poorly designed plans (and they're poorly designed for lots of reasons, not only because of your parents), the only solution would be to add in an elevator. (That can be done for around $20,000) Then your parents could easily move from upstairs to downstairs, and visa versa. Are you allowed to build a truly custom house on any of the lots you're considering instead of these overblown, poorly laid out houses that will allow no natural light into the spaces and will not live well for your needs? BTW: Not only the lanai will be hotter from April through end of October, but so will any rooms that face west. It's very poor design to orient a house east/west in our climate. (I'm in SW FL) My house will be oriented N/S with my backyard facing south so my lanai blocks the summer sun and my 32" eaves block the upstairs summer sun.

Mrs. Pete - we intend to have a curbless shower in the master; what else am I missing for trying to age-in place? Would you have the toilet closet door open out into the room in case one of us needs help? I've read that the #1 thing that sends people into assisted living or a nursing home is the inability to use the bathroom independently, so I think this matters a great deal. Things that'd make the bathroom better for aging-in-place: - Yes, a curbless shower is a good start. Be sure your shower door is big enough that someone could help you in/out of the shower. I'd go with a moveable stool instead of a built-in bench ... if you need to take it out /replace it with a hospital chair, a stool is a whole lot easier. Be sure you have a shower head (on an adjustable slide) near the bench/stool so you could shower while sitting, and be sure you can "reach in" and turn on the water without putting your whole body into the shower. Consider a Tornado body dryer. Include grab bars. - Toilet closets aren't good for aging in place at all ... it's the same amount of space as using a toilet-in-a-stall down at the mall. Imagine trying to get in with a walker ... much less a wheelchair. Once you put in some grab bars, the room will really be small. The lack of natural light is a negative, and these bitty rooms are not easy to clean -- you'll smack the broom or mop against the wall. Either make it a real powder room or skip the "closet concept" altogether. Consider that you may one day have some special needs dealing with toileting ... imagine you needed space to store adult diapers or colostomy bag items -- hey, a lot of people use such things ... allow yourself some space where you could include shelves for storage or hooks. What DOES work about your current toilet is that it's near the entrance ... so many plans make you walk a maze to get to the toilet. - Note that a person standing at the first sink will be hit by the door. I'd place a closet (or shelving) nearest the bedroom ... and bump the sink down a bit. - If you're concerned about the possibility of a wheelchair (and personally, I'm not; the possibility is remote ... whereas a cane or a walker is much more likely), you'd need 5' of space in which to turn around. The guest room on the main level could eventually be used for my elderly parents so I will make a note to have a curbless shower in that bathroom as well. Eh, consider two adults moving into that room permanently ... yes, a larger bathroom would be a good start, but they'd also need a larger closet and a private seating area. If you're really thinking your parents might move in with you, I'd say make one of the two bedrooms on the rec-room level into a true second master ... then your parents'd have the rec-room as a sitting area /private space of their own. And you'd need to consider the idea of an elevator. I remember moving my grandmother from her house into a (very nice for one person) studio apartment my uncle built for her on the back of his house. She didn't want to give up ANYTHING, and it was tough; although the move had to happen, she stayed mad about "giving up her stuff" for the rest of her life. That was only a year, but... oh, well. Here's the test: Would you and your husband be willing to trade your master bedroom for this bedroom? If not, then you can't expect two other adults to permanently give up their home /their independence and move into this bedroom. We talked about swapping the office and laundry but the architect mentioned that now the loud, potentially messy laundry room would be far more visible from the common area of the house. I personally would like this switch. Yeah, a laundry room is messy, but you're going to have a door on the room, right? And this would place the office near the back door /far from the master ... in my house this would matter because my husband would like that because he likes to listen to loud music alone in the office. Part of the design "problem" here is that one of my criteria was complete privacy for the bedroom - I absolutely insisted that you can't see the bedroom from the main hall of the house. This isn't a difficult requirement. I am only in my early 50s and have no allusions that this is my forever home. This house will be the 11th (12th?) home that my DH and I will have owned. Realistically, I don't want to live here in my 80s. I won't want to take care of 5 acres plus the 5 acre hay field next door. But if I get a good 20 years out of this house, I will be happy. Heck, that would be longer than I have ever lived ANYWHERE! We're the same age ... and I don't understand this. If you're not interested in taking care of 5 acres +, why build it now? Do you think you'll be up to moving when you're in your 70s? want my guests to intuitively know where to park and enter. I agree. I don't think this topic gets enough consideration. It's not something that will just magically "happen". And sorry, but that assumes a person could get in and out of a wheelchair themselves to get onto a stair chair. Thing is, you don't know what type of needs you'll have in your old age. My grandmother, who lived a century, used a wheelchair only when she left the house -- and I think that's pretty common. She could get out of the car /into the chair ... so she totally could've used a stair chair. That brings up another aging-in-place issue: You need a spot near the garage entry where you could store a walker or wheelchair. Why? Because a whole lot of people do what my grandmother did: They need the mobility help when they go out, but they don't need the help in their own houses. So you either provide a spot near the back door where the mobility item can "park" ... or you put up with it being in the way. Personally, we're including a spot near the garage entrance for a little hutch that I already have ... but it can be removed /that space can become a parking spot. The single thing that gave my own grandmother the most trouble: Changes in flooring. The change from carpet to wooden floors was awful for her. What will your specific needs be in old age? You can't know, but you can study what helps and build with the most likely things in mind.

Developing a long term landscape master plan would be applying your needs and desires to the existing conditions. Existing conditions would also include what is outside of your yard -- good and bad views, shade cast into your yard, grade issues, etc. Based on the drawing above, we barely understand any of these things. In order to answer any question like if you should replace the green circle with a pear tree, we'd need more information, since we can't see what's there now. Since you already have much of the basic information from the satellite view, I'd move ahead and create a base plan, with the goal of having it be as simple and readable as possible ... just lines on a white background, showing only permanent features that will be retained. You'll use copies of it to doodle ideas on and to create the finished master plan. So you don't want to show anything extra at this point. It's good to know where the septic system is, but it won't show as a major feature of the finished landscape master plan. Instead, the elements that you create over it will show. For the base plan I usually show only the trunks of individual trees but not the canopies, in an effort to keep the drawing simple. (The trunk let's me know there's a canopy there and I'll see it in the pictures. If the tree remains to the end, the canopy will show in the final drawing.) Show the canopy edges of wooded areas. Here's an example. (You would need to make it accurate if you were going to use it. I'm guessing at a lot of stuff. Ignore the green lines and blue dots.): It's best to limit the discussion to one area at a time in order to keep it from becoming confusing. To get feedback and help, you'd need to make the site understandable through photos, which are best done as wide, complete scenes. Many shots of different areas from different points of view are hard to understand and sometimes almost useless. It's better to stand at a single location central to the scene and begin taking a series of slightly overlapping photographs than pan from far left to far right. (A computer generated panorama does not work because it is too small, without detail, and is distorted.) The blue dots are suggestion of some locations you might likely take photos from. Some photos would be inward (toward the house) if foundation planting is the subject. Other photos would be outward if views and perimeter plantings are the subjects. Add photos of a given area as you bring it up for discussion. I would think a septic drain field is buried deep enough that you could grow minor plants over it, the same way that grass is growing over it. It doesn't seem that you would be limited to keeping the raised vegetable boxes in their present location .... not if it's going to limit something of greater importance.