You could move the laundry to be alongside the stairs and accessed from the mudroom in another direction. However the way the mudroom is done you won't be using it as such. Peoplenaturally gravitates to the fastest path to anywhere. Just look at grass in an open area and paths generated there by people. If you have to walk out of your way to use a mudroom then it won't be used very much.

i like the layout and would love to see the front elevation. i know the pros or those with building experience will have a few layout/design comments.

Which way is north? This will affect how much light you get in the kitchen. It looks like there are no rooms above the kitchen, so you could have skylights over much or all of the room. They will be shaded by the second story at different times of day, though, depending again on which way is north. It also appears as if the rear porch is covered, which will greatly diminish the amount of light in the family room as well. Uncovering this porch and thinking of it as a deck will improve natural light in both the family room and morning room, which I assume will function as a breakfast room/informal eating area.

A few things I don’t like... laundry room gets the best light with the corner and windows on both sides while kitchen feels cave like; also the bathroom right between the dining room and kitchen... awkward...

I'm sorry to hear about your house.. I hope your rebuild goes smoothly!

couple of questions

- is there a reason you want the laundry as far as possible from the bedroom closets? and only accessed by walking through the dirty shoe area?

- who all will be living here?

- you have a lot of different seating spaces - have you thought how you'll use those spaces on a day-to-day basis? (morning room, island seating, dining room, sitting room, screened porch, family room

- do you need a closet by the front door for guests?

- the powder room sharing the wall with the dining room is not ideal... for noise reasons

- I assume the stand alone office satisfies a need for your family? Work from home? Air BnB? Maybe a dormer or two along the long walls would enhance the space

- the master bath is very symmetrical... I'm not 100% sure about the functionality though. Where will you hang towels for showering? Are you bath people? The tub is really dictating the space.

It's not the end of the world, I suppose, but it's a bit unfortunate about the Fawlty Towers up-two-down-two from the foyer into the sitting room. All else being equal (or corrected), I'd want to pull the facade out enough to avoid that bit of silliness.

I'd keep the plan as it is. You will have lots of natural light from the many windows & patio doors of the great room. These three model homes have a similar plan.

https://tours.stevenjamescollins.com/public/vtour/display/209717

https://tours.stevenjamescollins.com/public/vtour/display/209720

https://tours.stevenjamescollins.com/public/vtour/display/209715

The only thing I'd change on your floorplan is .....

I'd make the laundry room smaller in favor of a larger walk-in pantry. After all, you already have a separate mud room for storage.

I don't love the location of your powder room.

Do all your bathrooms need to have tubs?

I would move exterior garage door on the far back wall to the left do you have a long row of storage between it and the corner. I'd also put a second exterior door in the garage closest to the corner with the morning room.

"You will have lots of natural light from the many windows & patio doors of the great room. "

Not necessarily true. It all depends on house orientation. The porches will block a lot of light. We built a house once designed similarly that had full length doors/panels across the back and my living room was still pretty dark because of the house orientation and my 12 ft wide back porch.

Double doors how I hate thee. Not as secure, not as tight for air. More costly. Who are you trying to impress? Cause I ain't.

Oh how the porches will block the light.

Stairs are expensive and square footage wasters. Have one if you must but having 2 is pointless. Like to clean stairs? Only the sadistic fool wants double...

Here is a concept. not a fully-thought-out plan, just a pie-in-the-sky concept: You want to keep the dining room from being the path through which laundry and kids travel to get to the kitchen, and through with muddy kids and groceries pass through through the kitchen. But, it doesn't give you a kitchen window. But, there might be a way to redesign my pie in the sky to do that.

I tried to make the door from side entry to breakfast room smaller, so it's still there but not the straight route in. Instead, you can go straight to the mud room. The laundry to the left. Continue on to a SIDE DOOR. If you have a wrap porch, and a driveway along side the house, you need a side door. You'll love it, trust me.

I don't know how to connect from the new side hall to the front hall. But I wonder if you'd consider having the stairs land where the basement stairs start? Flip the stairs. Gives the kids an easier route, and it's easier for you to holler up in the morning to get down for breakfast or you'll miss the bus dagnabbit.

(And no, I didn't move your pantry to an outhouse in the front yard, I just didn't get to it. Yeah, I'm kinda playing Legos here, it's just brainstorming)

Bpath that is so much better

Oh my gosh - you guys are AMAZING! These are exactly the critiques/suggestions I was looking for, thank you! Keep ‘em coming!

More info about us and the project:

We are a family of 4 - me, my husband, and two boys (14 and 7). We have 6 acres and keep chickens and ducks, two big dogs, and we’re planning to get goats. Hence the need for a good mud room.

The lot is east-facing. It’s on the side of a mountain ridge and wooded, so light is definitely a concern - I felt the previous house was too dark inside, especially in the kitchen. The best light in the house was in the master bedroom, which was on the south side. That’s why I’m really wanting to have the kitchen on that outside wall, if we can. We will be removing a lot of the trees you see in the pictures, because the fire damaged all of them. Still, just by virtue of being on a hillside, light is an issue.

We don’t really need a formal dining room, so we will probably enclose that space and use it as a place to sit and read. The room he called the “sitting room” will be a sewing room for me, so will need some walls and doors on it as well.

I’ll attach a couple of pics of the house we lost, to give an idea of the spot.

I'm so sorry; what a loss!

But I admire your bounce-back optimism! And give your GR a hug from me.

Sorry, but I would start over. Surely your architect (is he truly one?) can give you a kitchen on the south side if that's what you requested. I also would not want my master bath with a window opening to the back porch. Just so many things wrong here...

Did you tell the designer all the things you just said? So many opportunities to give you your new home of dreams. And with your buoyant spirit, you should totally have it!

Your Family Room is not much bigger than the Morning Room. Why?

The powder room is in a rotten location. Everyone can see in it from the family room as well as watch people enter and leave. Yuck. And when that toilet flushes, everyone will hear it. Bad location; the toilet should not be in the center of the action. Tuck it back with the mud room (and add a shower to allow real cleaning of mud and gunk).

Will the new house face east?

I see cars parked on the north side -- are you changing the location of the garage and drive?

Where are you located? Get lots of snow?

I dont see a problem moving things around at the garage entry area to give you what you are asking. Without seeing any elevation views I would be a little more concerned with the usability of the double back stairs. This design places the landing to the right side of the upstairs office, giving you no headroom in the upstairs hallway. With the depth of the garage being 23'10 that only gives you roughly a 5' pony wall at a 14:12 pitch on the right and left side; unless you place some sort of elongated shed dormer for a walk around. I usually try to design the stairs to be a straight run or L shaped with the landing placed somewhere near the center line of the office/bonus room area. This will help your builder not cuss out your architect while he is having to order a custom triangular door. Best of luck to you!

it definitely can be better, I think if you stuck with this plan, you can change seating room to office and make upstairs your guests bedroom. I would extend island and look for a way to open access to dining room. Skylights would be your friend for kitchen. how tall are ceilings on the first floor? I would give kids bigger rooms, specially with big age differences, I don't think one large play room can work for both of them.

Can we talk about the office over the garage? Is it for someone who works from home? Values the isolation? If so, looks like clients are not received. But it also looks like it is designed to accommodate someone living there, what with the full bath. Or is it a guest room? It’s under the eaves of the second story of the garage?

I’m asking about that because if the stairs can move, that gives you options for that back hall. Including altering the kitchen to extend to the left, in FRONT of the mud room and laundry, so that it has views of both the back yard, the front, and people/cars in the driveway. I really value that, myself.

Can we also talk about the upstairs? The kids have huge walk-ins, which is a recipe for a jumble of stuff on the floor. And, one kid gets his own bath, but the other walks into the hall — not a big deal, but then that bathroom has a door to the playroom. What is the reasoning behind that? The playroom folks can go into the hall.

Also, a closet off the bathroom for kids sounds like a recipe for, sorry, body sheddings to mingle with the stuff on the floor. Hair, orthodontia rubber bands, I’m constantly amazed at what ends up on our sons’ bathroom floor.

This monstrosity is a prime example of modern sprawl. The dining room should be an office, bedrooms ARE and should double as playrooms, what is the point of a morning, sitting, and living room when one will do, especially if your kitchen has a breakfast bar, your garage can be both a mudroom AND a garage, laundry could be moved into master suite area with a laundry shute from upstairs to it. Put your money in the bank, not into this white elephant in the making.

Are you really wanting a house which is so large and inefficient? It will be expensive to build and expendsive to operate and maintain.

You could get a well-designed and more efficient smaller house from someone who knows how to design houses, and still have many of the needed spaces.

Bad design. Start over with someone else.

I see a lot of wasted space. If you will use a dining room, keep it, but a lot of people don't use them.

Do you think anyone will ever use the Sitting Room?

The pantry looks waaaay too small to me, and the laundry room seems too large.

Is there a closet for coats off the foyer? I don't see one.

I would find a way to put the kitchen in a different place where you're not looking at a wall when you're at the stove.

Thanks for the comments! A lot to consider. I failed to mention that this design is based on a Southern Living plan we really love, but won’t work for us as is. It’s SL1921 by Mitch Ginn.

We actually haven’t even met with the architect yet, so he’s just been going on what we told our builder, and this is the very first draft. We’re meeting in a couple of days to refine things and make changes. And yes, he is a real architect. He’s designed many homes in our area that we love. There’s another backstory to this saga, because we were originally working with a different architect, and a few weeks after he started working on our plans he suddenly passed away from a heart attack. Awful.

This plan is more than 1,000 square feet smaller than our old house, so I’m not super concerned about it being too big or expensive to heat and cool. The old house was partly built in 1900 and poorly insulated so I’m guessing our utilities will be much less expensive, kind of no matter what we build (within reason.)

Another factor I failed to mention (sorry!!) is that we’re hoping to do a full or at least 1/2 basement. Because of the rock situation in our location we won’t know if that’s possible until they start digging. If it is, it will obviously change several factors about what needs to be in the rest of the house - e.g. I’d love to have my kids’ play stuff in the basement and use the 3rd bedroom upstairs as an actual extra bedroom, or maybe put my craft room there.

We do want a separate “play room” for the kids, because they are gamers and I don’t like them having TVs in their rooms.

For those who didn’t see my previous comment, the dining room will be an office/study, and the sitting room will be a sewing/craft room. So not duplicate spaces. I don’t like breakfast bars (had one before and never used it) so the morning room will be the only eating area. We’re not big entertainers - certainly not enough for that to influence the design of our home. We typically only have a couple friends over at once.

The “office” above the garage is where my husband’s going to have his beer brewing equipment set up. So not a typical office where clients will come. Bathroom is there because our old house had 4 1/2 bathrooms, and it makes sense from an insurance perspective to do the same in the rebuild (anyone who’s gone through this can confirm.) I like the suggestion about moving the garage stairs, and then incorporating the mud room there somehow.

You can pretty much ignore the layout of the kitchen as far as where appliances, etc are - we will be working with a kitchen designer on that and I already have like a dozen changes I want to make.

I take a bath every night so a big tub in the master is a must. Window placement there doesn’t matter too much because where we live we can’t see any neighbors from any part of the house. Privacy isn’t an issue.

Kids’ bathrooms can definitely be tweaked! I’ve been so focused on the living areas I haven’t even really looked at those yet. So much to think about! It’s kind of overwhelming.

Thanks for all of the well-wishes. We are very lucky to be alive - the fire happened while we were asleep and smoke alarms woke us up. We all had to jump from the second floor and then had to walk barefoot and barely clothed to our closest neighbor’s house in the snow on a polar vortex night. We all got varying degrees of frostbite on our feet and my husband was in a medically induced coma for 10 days due to smoke inhalation and subsequent staph pneumonia (he ran back into the house for us because we got separated and he didn’t know that the kids and I were out.) We lost our cat and my son’s parakeet, in addition to all our belongings, but it could have been much, much worse.

(Is there a better way to reply to individual comments here? I’m kind of new to posting in Houzz and it’s really different than other forums I’ve used.)

@PPF - we are in Virginia. We do get snow, but not a ton. Some years we get a couple of big storms, some years none at all. And good eye on the driveway! Yes, we already have a second road that goes behind where the house will be, so we plan to use that and create parking and the garage on the south side of the house. This is because of the sloping nature of the lot, to avoid having several stairs up from the garage into the house. And yes, it will be east facing.

This is what we’d like the front elevation to look like - with some changes (like the front screened porch, and larger windows.) But this is the basic idea for now.

I am so sorry for your loss.

When you meet with the architect have your thoughts in writing as a check list. Make a list of what you want - must haves.

You can make a list of the problems with this plan, but it might be better to start with a clean slate. Everything looks better in pictures. So even though you loved the magazine house, It is not a great layout. The front stairs caught my eye right off the bat.

(On a personal note, I'm happy to hear you don't allow TV's in the children's bedrooms.)

Oh goodness, how scary for you and your family. So glad you’re all ok, what a nightmare!! I see you’re wanting to make the dining space a study/office...do you really want people walking into your house and directly into the office?

Your posted plan seems to completely ignore the site, and without a better idea of the site -- existing conditions like roads/driveways and its topography, it will be difficult for anyone here to make good suggestions.

That said, I'd be thinking something like this. The main living areas opening to the south (don't pay attention to the sizes).

I'm so sorry you had to go through that but thankful you all are ok now. I love my "things" but also realize they are just that, "things". Of course the loss of your family pets is very sad and I'm sorry for that too.

We actually haven’t even met with the architect yet, so he’s just been going on what we told our builder, and this is the very first draft.

And based on this plan, I'm guessing he's no licensed architect but a CAD jockey who calls himself a designer. This is really poor and you'd do yourself a huge favor and not work with the builder's designer.

Why? Because the designer is beholden to the builder and will do what works best and is easiest for the builder and not what might be better for you. (Ask me how I know all this,)

Additionally, a true architect designs right away in 3 dimension giving you not only the plans but the elevations and how it sits on the lot. (Look up architectrunnerguy to see how he designs houses to see what I mean.)

A designer will give you what you tell him you want. An architect will give you what you didn't know you wanted and needed and will do it in a more efficient way.

And yes, he is a real architect.

Well based on these plans I'd say he didn't graduate anywhere near the top or even the middle of his class.

Sorry to be so blunt but there is absolutely no sense of spatial relationships or flow to this plan.

@cpartist I like bluntness! No worries. :) 3D designs are coming, after our first meeting, though. I take your points, and I’m sure you know what you’re talking about! We have researched this guy and based on his past work, trust him to do a good job. Our builder (who does only high-end custom work) loves him. We’ll see how it goes from here and if he can deliver what we’re asking for. I’m also coming at this from the perspective of seeing the opposite happen: My parents recently employed an award-winning architect who wasn’t at all in touch with the realities of building, budget, etc. They ended up firing him, but only after $20k of work. We definitely don’t want to wind up in that position. Thanks for sharing your expertise, though, and I will definitely have it in mind going forward, whatever we end up actually doing.

@PPF. I love the idea of having more living spaces on that south side, but we’re restricted by the lot size (especially since the well and septic are already in place) so the house needs to be wider than it is deep.

I can’t find the previous comment, but someone suggested an exterior door on the garage side - THANK YOU! I can’t believe I didn’t even notice there wasn’t one. But I’ll be going in and out that side of the house to tend the animals multiple times a day, so that’s a must for sure.

@D N Unfortunately our Golden passed away suddenly last summer - 8 years old. He was the sweetest boy and we miss him every day!

Our 2 remaining pups were outside the night of the fire, thank God! They actually ran down our road and barked at a snowplow driver, who looked up and saw our house burning up on the hill and he’s the one who called the fire department.

Awww what sweet little heroes!

Good luck with your meeting with the architect - hope you'll come back and update us!

“I failed to mention that this design is based on a Southern Living plan we really love, but won’t work for us as is. It’s SL1921 by Mitch Ginn.”

Therein lies the problem you found a broken plan and you are trying to fix it. You will be better off starting from scratch.

The architect should have walked your property and told you this house plan wasn't worth fiddling with. Start over and be aware that a 14 y.o. will likely be out of the house in just a few years, so that may be a consideration as far as the # of bedrooms goes. You say you rarely have guests, so just thinking...