Where does a first time visitor park and how do they get to the front door?

Where are the adjacent homes located?

Hi Mark, there is a house to the left of our lot and the lot to the right is an empty lot. The house to the left will be set back slightly from where ours is. Good thinking point on parking. We debated on a small circle drive and maybe that should be revisited. As drawn now, I guess our only parking is on the driveway on the left. There will be a sidewalk to the front door. Thoughts? Thanks!

Which direction will you usually approach the driveway from? That is, will you usually pass the house to reach the driveway, or is the driveway the first thing?

Will there be a step, or two, from the garage to the laundry room?

My thought, as it is always, is to design the house to fit the site; and that does not stop at the property lines. You may want to align your house with your neighbor's so nobody is looking into the back yard of their neighbor. You may want to have the house designed so it fits in well with the other homes in the area as far as size, style, and level of design. Consider the views out from each space in you house, the views into each space in you house, and the general views of your house. Do not dress up the facade that faces the street and forget about the other sides of the house. Make the house attractive from all angles. You should not design a home in a vacuum and plop it on a site. All of that should be kept in mind when laying out the spaces for your house.

There are a lot of things I do not care for in the layout that I do not know the reasoning behind. Whoever laid out the kitchen has sentenced you to a life time of hard labor.

Mark, regarding the kitchen, my snark response would be that it’s okay, since the master suite is also the maid’s room, being off both the cleanup zone of the kitchen, the mud room, and the laundry. However, that position has become very common the last several years, so I’m working hard to eliminate that issue from my mind. Apparently I’m not doing a very good job.

I would change the laundry door to a pocket, or no door at all, since I envision it usually being open and hence in the way of the closet. And I’d have a door to the mud room, so that it can be closed off against the cold and hide the view.

I wonder about the location of the door to the garage, and if it will be an issue with the vehicle when the car door is open. And where will your trash/recycling bins be? Will they be easy to get to?

Do you need a closet at the front door?

Am I correct that the only way to the kids' bedrooms is through the game room? This seems like an very long and circuitous path all the time, and and especially so if you need them or they need to get to you in the middle of the night. Imagine a child is sick or the fire alarm goes off in the middle of the night; I would not be comfortable with the convoluted path needed to get to them. This could work if your kids were teens, but doesn't seem like a fit with young children. Your comfort level with this may be different, though.

Overall, I would recommend mentally walking some of your frequently used paths through the house. This just looks convoluted to go about your daily life.

Kristin, I thought so too, at first, but now I see that there are two living room doors to the game room, so there is actually a straight shot (except for chairs) from the mud room/master/kitchen to the kids’ bedrooms.

We are in a more traditional house with master on the same floor as the kids, and I always appreciated knowing by the sliver of light under the door who was still up doing homework, reading, or playing video games.

My concern about the kitchen is the work triangle. It is hard to read but it looks like the sink is about 23 feet from the refrigerator, even if you take a shortcut through the living room.

Here is another s.n.a.f.u. that occurs in a lot of plans. The red represents the space hanging clothes would occupy (2'-0" by the unobstructed length of rod). The room is labeled "W.I.C.", which I assume stands for "Walk In Closet", for Bedroom 2.

Amanda, not to be too critical, but the floor plan does not seem to be an integrated design in that the actual functioning of the home (i.e. how you will really live in it) was not well considered in the layout of the home. It seems like you may have been given a design that has all the elements of a home you asked for, but just laid down in a "just hook all these rooms and spaces together to satisfy the client". An integrated design considers the lot, orientation, views from outside, views from inside, size, layout, natural light, climate conditions, functional efficiency, energy efficiency, aesthetics, and budget. With these parameters understood and listed, then the actual design which incorporates all these elements begins. Was this plan designed by an Architect, Design Builder, Drafts-person, other? I think you could do better with some serious reconsideration of the current proposed design. The result will be not just a beautiful home you can be proud of, but also one you can live with. Best Wishes!

The house has a lot of jigs and jogs that are unnecessary. Actually, there are 36 corners total which are about 20 too many at least! You could push the entire wall that goes across the living room and kitchen back and gain +/-2 feet for probably a net cost of zero (or very, very little). There are many other instances of that around the perimeter - just look for them.

I really hate the secondary bedrooms being located behind the game room. I would NOT want that with kids (and I have four!) Kids don't need to feel that secluded from their parents at any age under majority (ask me how I know ;) )

Your master bathroom will get no natural light, which is really unfortunate. Neither will any of the other bathrooms.

"the floor plan does not seem to be an integrated design in that the actual functioning of the home (i.e. how you will really live in it) was not well considered in the layout of the home. It seems like you may have been given a design that has all the elements of a home you asked for, but just laid down in a "just hook all these rooms and spaces together to satisfy the client""

Truer words have never been spoken.

A plan of this size and with a lot with this much room on the site should have a garage that can comfortably fit cars and also walking space to get around them. Even with a smaller vehicle than the pickup truck you have shown, the house entrance feels really tight. Ideally the entrance to the house is also placed aligned with the front or rear of the cars so you don't have to weave in and out to get to each vehicle.

Similarly a house of this size should not have the laundry room as required thoroughfare. There is no where to sort out clothes or do work in there since the path must remain clear to the garage and there are too many doors. Make the laundry room it's own dedicated space without the coat closet or pass through and let the garage connect directly to the mudroom.

What do the house's elevations look like? Is there an overall organizing order to the exterior? It is not so apparent from the plans.

Thank you all so much for your comments and suggestions. I have been at work today, but plan to dive deeper into each one this evening. I was feeling dissatisfied with what we were getting from the designer which is why I wanted to post on here. Looks like My doubts were confirmed and we have a lot of work to do. Thanks again for your time.

The only access to the study is from the kitchen? thats akward.

Is the side entrance near the garage necessary? I suspect that the laundry room will become the drop zone instead of the actual mud room, assuming from the garage is the most common family entrance. If you don’t need that entry, or could move it, you’d have more room to rearrange those spaces.

"How many folks here (who do laundry themselves) have never, ever, dropped anything on the floor when transferring stuff from the washer to the dryer?"

My hand is not raised.

This house feels like a maze to me. Like I would need a map to get around. It seems overly complicated.

I agree with Lindsey about the laundry room. You would think a house this size would have a dedicated laundry room.

The kitchen layout is poor.

Having the study off the kitchen is strange.

The kids bathroom setup just looks like all doors. Hope they remember to unlock the doors when they are done using the bathroom.

Do you really want to open two doors to get into your master closet?

ALL of your bedrooms have the potential to have windows on 2 walls, but none were added to the second walls. You have a large enough lot ... why no windows on the east side?

You will have a house that feels much nicer with the light coming from a second direction.

@Mark Bischak, Architect - How often do you do laundry and transfer it from the washer to the dryer? Or does Mrs. Bischak do the laundry?

Not a pro and I'm having trouble seeing the details in the plans, but I have to agree with Lindsey_CA 100%.

My "laundry room" is very small, probably 5x8 and leads directly to the garage so it's our main entry into the house. It's one of the things I despise about my house. I also have 2 kids who are now high school aged and between all of us, we do laundry at least once a day. My kids both play sports, so sometimes I have to do laundry more than once because the washer and dryer only hold so much.

I can't tell you how many times people come flying through the garage and hit someone with the garage door. Or come through the kitchen trying to get out because they're late only to run into the open dryer door. I have to move the laundry to the family room to fold it because there is no counter space in that room. I'd love to relocate the washer and dryer but my husband does not want them moved to the basement, and we would lose a bedroom moving it upstairs, so we are stuck.

We have a utility sink that gets a lot of use (much more than I thought it would) and I can't see if one is in your plan, but definitely put one in. Also make sure you have more closet space than you think you will need.

I also agree that the exterior has too many juts which makes roofing lines more difficult.

I also don't like having to go through the game room to get to the kids' bedrooms. While I do understand wanting to separate the kids from the master suite, when they get to be older, you are going to want to know what's going on in their rooms. I have a two story and can open my bedroom door and tell who is still up. : )

I do the bulk of the laundry and carry the laundry from the master bedroom on the second floor down to the laundry room in the lower level (flowery term for basement). I work out of our home, Mrs. Bischak works in downtown Detroit; therefore the time I spend performing household tasks is my "drive into work" time. Laundry is done when the basket is full.

@Mark Bischak, Architect -- Good for you! (But I'm guessing you must transfer clothes from the washer to the dryer one item at a time, to have never, not even once, dropped something on the floor.)

Lindsey, he said his hand was *not* raised-- meaning he, too, drops the laundry :)

I have dropped clothes on the floor in transferring them from the washer to the dryer. My understanding is the question asked " . . . have never, ever, dropped anything on the floor . . . ", I indicated that I did not raise my hand. I have at times NOT dropped any clothes on the floor, I just can not recall when.

Hopefully this side conversation has given the OP time enough to contact a local architect to design a home that meets her needs and fits the site much better than the subject of this thread.

@3pinktrees - Ah, my mistake. I misread it as Mark raising his hand that he hadn't dropped laundry.

@Mark Bischak, Architect - Please accept my apology.

But, this does emphasize my hatred of pathways in front of washers and dryers.

Wr met with with our architect today to revise several things. Thanks for the input and hopefully our next draft will work better for us. Thanks!

Lindsey I drop more then a few things every time I transfer clothes into the dyer. There must have been at least 10 items that dropped on the floor today transferring one load. It's usually socks or underwear. But I have a separate laundry room and the floor is clean.

I never understood laundry rooms at the entrance to the house from the garage. Yuck!

Linsey - No apology needed, I enjoyed sainthood even if it was only for a few hours in the mind of only one person.

Okay, I am a little nervous to post, but I like the feedback (kind of)!! There are still things about this layout that I don’t love, but I think we are moving in the right direction. Thanks for all of the previous suggestions. I am not sure if I should start a new thread, but I will try here first. Please let me know what you think. Thanks!