Review my floor plan
Jeremy Seger
4 years ago
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WestCoast Hopeful
4 years agoJeremy Seger
4 years agoRelated Discussions
I have a headache, please help me review my floor plan!
Comments (51)I knew a lady who had a 'Formal Room'. Her house was known, locally, as "The Castle", and was a Tudor dating from 1925. Anyway, the 'Formal Room' was a large walk-in closet next to the kitchen, where, when the maids weren't doing anything else, they could go and get a 'Formal' (party dress/evening gown), and "iron-on-it" for awhile. The lady's daddy had owned a beer joint, but she'd been Miss-something-or-other, and had snagged the richest boy around. It was real smart of her to have 'The Formals' where the maids could grab one, when the Lady of the House, or her Daughter, called from upstairs, or from the Country Club, and said, "Vinah! Git me thaaayit blue Dior ready. Wuhrrr goin' ta thuh University Club tanite!", or "Git me up some formals, Queen Esther! Tha inlaws are flyin' us up ta thuh KENtucky Derby." That 'Formal Room', now that you've jogged my memory, was probably the house's original Pantry, and is roughly the size of YOUR pantry. In fact, your house is roughly the same size as 'The Castle'. And its facade seems about as complex and expensive-to-build as 1920s Tudor architecture. Yours is a HUGE, luxurious house, by most people's standards. So, I'm baffled as to why the dining table is relegated to a 13'x13' 'Dining Area' off the Kitchen. I'm guessing you're in someplace like Northern Michigan, where people are very unpretentious. But still, there seem to be a lot of people in your life, and jamming them all into that little space, when food seems rather important in the scheme of things (the well-developed kitchen... the large pantry....) would seem to potentially make for tense and unpleasant meals, when the whole family is together. We recently moved back South, when it turned out we'd taken over another corporation (honestly, I didn't mean to...), and someone was offering us too much money on our almost-complete house outside Portland, and somebody else took our lowball offer on a silly, overgrown "Old-South-Style-Dream-Home" (on considerable acreage, with millions in landscaping and embassy-style electric fencing that we were getting basically for-free). As much as I hate Mississippi, all those tempting numbers made the move back home impossible to resist. So, here we sit. This house had the typical tiny, prissy little Dining Room, just big enough to hold the previous Owner's "Mamaw's (Grandma's) Mahogany Dining Set from Montgomery Ward" (C. 1957). The space was too small. It became my husband's Library. Stretching across the back of "The Gracious Mansion" was some bizarre free-flowing conglomeration of space, that was a den/great room... something... I had that space gutted before I even let my Decorator in the door. Didn't want to give him a cerebral hemorrhage... and it's cheaper to let your design team know the raw dimensions from the get-go. They're going to come in and take measurements, and photograph every stub-up and framing anomaly... So I had studs, sub-floor - tutto - sprayed in white primer, before they arrived. Well, I had sold our Portland house before I was able to use my custom table built for 30. But that table (and a kitchen designed for caterers) turned out to have made the house irresistible to my Best Friend's Daughter, who ONLY entertains formally, and otherwise has meals across the meadow at her Parents' house. I have a history of selling my houses to pairs of surgeons. These particular surgeons, despite their youth, paid cash. Seems they'd each been letting their trust incomes pile-up while they were in residency. Good kids. So, here, in my newly-acquired bargain manse, I wanted the same thing: long table, with three big chandeliers overhead... lots of sconces, mulberry silk shades for really soft lighting... but with a big, long buffet, because this IS the South, and we ALL dine buffet-style. In Portland, caterers and rent-a-butlers are fun people. In Mississippi, they're failed actors and musicians, and are bitter, spiteful little bundles of passive aggression. And anyway, everybody at our table here, even when there are 30, are 'family' in some way, and the Caterers really don't need to overhear whatever schemes we're hatching, or whatever dirt we're dishing. Although we use fancy plates and fancy goblets and Whiting's 'Lily' flatware from 1902, we DON'T DINE FORMALLY. Everybody's too busy, and it's basically an open-house-in-the-Dining-Room: arrive at some approximate hour, grab a plate, leave whenever... But the table seats an easy 30 (three feet for each person), with blazing chandeliers overhead, and my favorite ancestor, a banker from Riga, glowering over everybody, from the center of the longest wall. It's a practical room: brick herringbone floors that can be mopped with strong soaps; fractionally non-parallel walls for better accoustics; embossed velvet 'papering' the walls, for even better accoustics; a tented ceiling where it once 'cathedraled', for soaking-up our family's cacophony; sturdy chairs, and a sturdy table... And "immediate family", for us, can easily fill the room. We totally fill up the room with people, at least once a week. I'm thinking that you're happy 'Yoopers' (or some sort of Central European/Alpine types, in a snowy part of America) with none of our Southern pretensions or obsessions. But still: wouldn't you be able to use an old-style English 'Long Room', with a long, rugged refectory/trestle table (a long, narrow, rustic table), in a more expansive space? A refectory table can be used for reading, computing, etc., when not used for dining. What I see on those plans just seems like the 'kitchenette' in a 1950s tract house... a tract house that just grew and grew. Your house is the size of a MANSION, but the dining area is like a breakfast nook in Levittown....See MorePlease review my floorplan
Comments (3)Thanks for the feedback. It's definitely just a starting point. We're looking at the reverse stair option, that is shown at the left of the plan. With the bottom portion of the stair case open, I think it might open it up a bit more to the back of the house. Not to mention, it just flows better for us. We will be watching TV in there and I'm currently researching the whole layout thing. I think there are a lot of plans with this layout for the great room. It's the whole TV above the fireplace debate that we'll have to tackle. We are debating the wrap around porch. A front porch is a must, but we may go with a deck or patio in the back. I don't think I want the closet entry through the bathroom either. I was thinking of having the door on that wall. I like the privacy you have with the layout though. I don't feel like the master is right up next to a child's bedroom. What about the dimensions? Sometimes I find myself looking at those that are more square so that that back section is wider rather than longer and more narrow. I guess this is why I'm looking at dimensions of rooms of friends and family to see what would flow better for us. As far as the outside, we are looking at changes to that. We want a simpler look with a darker siding that will blend in with the wooded area. Some other plans that I like the look of are attached. One is the plan that Alexandra Marie is building. I really like the look of that house. http://www.qbhi.com/portal/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=116&Itemid=276 Here is a link that might be useful: Another plan...See MorePlease help me review my floor plan
Comments (14)Thank you all for the nice comments. I am so excited. This is my first time doing a remodel and the last.Lots of good points made, now I am going to have to rethink some of this, darn it! LOL Thats all I have been doing for the last 2 years and driving my husband crazy. I dont think I can get him to talk about it ANYMORE! I see the point about the dishwashers, Ok how about putting 1 dish drawer with the other dishwasher? LOL I dont know why I think it would be really great to turn around and throw in a bowl, measuring, pan into a close by so not walking around to the other side. I wish the china cabinet could go into the dinning room but there is no room, its small. I agree about the wine glasses getting dusty, the last thing I want to do is dust anything. The reason I had the idea of the seperate counter area was because the china isnt that big.Each door will be narrowere than the wine fridge, so I didnt know how to make it look right with three doors being unequal sizes. The refrigerator that is shown is the all refrig from sub zero. I have planned the refrg/freezer door in the island and I do have an upright just outside the backdoor for the main storage. My husband wants me to put in another ref/freezer drawer on other side of kitchen for drinks and ice but I thought that was excessive. I am worried I will miss the sink in the island, its a big concern. I was thinking the fridge landiing and oven landing would be on that end of the island and thought the sink would get in the way. The other end is where I have planned to have seating....See MoreReview my floor plan please!
Comments (30)Regarding the sq. footage, if you look at the image in the original post, it looks like it is 2546. Back to the initial request, if you are trying to squeeze out every possible square foot, maybe take the time to lay out furniture on the plan to see where you may have an issue or opportunity. For instance, that is a lot of space in the bedroom, which would make sense if you have a big bedroom set of furniture. These days it seems like people are opting for more walk-in closets with storage systems that take the place of needing to have any dressers in the bedroom (possibly some bookcases and a flat-screen TV). Regarding the garage size, check the width/length of the vehicles you plan on parking in there and assure you still have space for other things you want to store. I've seen some recommendations to shrink garage size, but then you need to account for space somewhere else. If you have a truck or large SUV, you might also be constrained....See MoreWestCoast Hopeful
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Jeremy SegerOriginal Author