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.

Dorothy - if you're putting in a 2-bowl sink, then I don't see how you can possibly fit a decent-sized one in the corner and still only take up 42" (not counting the pullouts) on each side. 2-bowl sinks should be 36" wide to have decent sized bowls. If you're putting in a 30" single-bowl sink, then 42" is about right. A cooktop or range of 30" will take up around the same space as a 30" sink. is that a 30" in your plan? I thought it looked like 36" (it wasn't labeled). The difference is that you will spend far more time at the sink than the range/cooktop and it is very rare that more than one person needs to work at a cooktop/range at the same time. Kitchen work studies show: 70% or more time spent in the Kitchen is spent preparing a meal or snack - uses the sink 20% or less is spent cleaning up - and that includes not just sink work (hand washing a few items), but also non-sink work such as loading the DW (if you don't pre-rinse your dishes), unloading the DW, clearing the counters & table, wiping down the counters & table, and sweeping up at the end of the day. - uses the sink 10% is spent cooking - stirring, adding ingredients, watching food cook Based on the above, no more than 10% of your time will be spent at the cooktop while 90% or more will be spent at the sink - so it makes the most sense to have the range/cooktop in the corner where it's used much less and the sink out on the straight run where it's more accessible and easier to use and allows you to have a wider sink base & overall sink size. This is how a 30" range would fit. BTW...how wide is that "south" window and exactly where is it located?

While your children are small, girls sharing one room and boys sharing the other isn't that much of a problem. As your children reach their teens, there can be more conflict over "privacy" issues. You might consider discussing a design for your "forever home" with an architect and begin looking for a place to construct your home to meet your specific family lifestyle needs. Consider putting your master bedroom suite on the main floor with a great room and mud/laundry room -- adding any family room and guest suite in the basement -- leaving the upstairs for bedrooms and bathrooms for your children. With four children who will be teenagers at the same time, at least a small kitchen in the basement family room and a large porch for entertaining would be well worth considering. https://www.google.com/search?biw=1328&bih=617&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=Thu1XdvuB4m55gLn16yQAg&q=images+upscale+large+outdoor+porch+with+kitchen&oq=images+upscale+large+outdoor+porch+with+kitchen&gs_l=img.12...3486.7352..9284...0.0..0.395.1307.12j1j0j1......0....1..gws-wiz-img.l2xexzCCnHY&ved=0ahUKEwjbzZO_y7vlAhWJnFkKHecrCyIQ4dUDCAY#imgrc=wOXTnHaQ0Q615M:&spf=1572150107797

Thank you all for the input. I do appreciate it. @just_janni we do plan on having great views of a pool and hot tub area. I love all the "back yard living" that this plan offers. I have had a hot tub for years and love it and cant wait to have a pool also. @Mrs Pete my current living room in 14.5' x 28', and I love it. The size will not be an issue at all. I already planned on not having a tub in the master. That is what hot tubs are for, lol. I never planned on having an outdoor fireplace. That is just decorating stuff to me, so I didn't bring it up. I wish the kitchen had a pantry too. That is why I would ditch the garage entry powder room and use it as a small pantry instead. I had not thought about the driveway placement. That is a good point, thanks for bringing it up. @strategery haha! I love sunken living rooms, have my whole entire life! I realize that we do not all share the same tastes, so I certainly respect yours. @cpartist The kitchen arrangement is very common for my area. I have been in many new homes and never once thought the kitchens were too dark. Now, I do realize that I was just looking at the homes and not actually working in the kitchen. And it was not after dark hours when I was looking either, so it may very well be an issue. Maybe I could have a few skylights added in areas that may be a bit short on natural light. I will certainly consider your idea. @vinmarks I am so sorry that happened to your FIL. How horrible. Certainly makes one think about safety at home. @Virgil Carter I am 100% positive that anything and everything will become dated, lol. I would not consider drywall in place of the brickwork at all. The sunken living room with the brickwork is one of the things that attracted me to this plan. However, on that note, I planned on having a stacked stone instead of brick, not that it would make any difference. I consider all that stuff to be decorating choices, and so had not brought them up. I am sure many of the people who come to houzz for decor help or inspirations would be absolutely horrified by my decoarting choices. And that is okay. I am not here for decorating advice, just a little help with the floorplan. I do like your idea about raising the ceiling if I don't have the sunken living room. That will certainly be the way to go if I ditch it. @lexma90 I bet your hubs has a whole list of things to avoid, lol. Just like paramedics, homicide investigators, police, firemen, etc. I totally get it. I was a professional dog groomer for 15 years and I have a very, very long list of dogs that I will never own. @littlebug zone 5 Missouri, @AnnKH You are both so right about mobility issues. My husband had a heart attack and emergency open heart surgery last year. He certainly had mobility issues when he first came home. Many of the things we went through has been helping us make choices for our new build. And AnnKH, I did love that Frank Lloyd Wright house. Thanks for the link! @jewelisfabulous I had already planned on getting rid of tub in the master and having a big shower in it's place. I had not thought about curbless. That is an excellent point, and thanks! @bpath excellent catch with that hallway being to narrow for wheelchairs. I had not even thought about that. That may be something we have to do with all doors and hallways around the master. Your idea for the elevator platform thing was great. It reminded of the lift chairs for use on stairs. I thought it was a great idea! I may get my sunken living room after all ;) I do realize that the house may look MCM, or dated to others. We bought our lot in an old neighborhood that is filled with long, low, ranch homes built in the 1950's and 1960's. And I love them, sunken living rooms and all. While there are homes dotted throughout the neighborhood that are obviously decades newer, we do not want to do that. We want our home to be look like it belongs in the neighborhood, but with a modern floorplan that I prefer. I will certainly research what other people have done about light issues with the wide eaves and how they can block it. And thanks to those of who brought up the dryer vent issue. That is something I just assumed would be taken care of by builders and inspectors. I have seen several new builds with laundry rooms in the middle. I will check them out and see if the builders were ignoring any issues that it may cause. Many thanks to you all with the opinions about the sunken living room. While I can't say that I am swayed away from it, I will certainly rethink it. I'm going to check into one of those lift chairs for stairs, lol! I will try to find a way before I totally give it up ;)