Fire Pole! Actually, your kids are on to something. I sometimes drive by a house that has a tube slide going from a deck off the second floor...into the pool! (I wonder if their insurance company knows about that...) Your tube slide could run outside the house and back in through the basement window well. Yeah, I guess I did just go back to the earlier version. It was good to start with, except for the powder room... Upstairs...oooh, that one bathroom is really tight. Do you have 4+ kids? I guess they wouldn't want to share one bathroom...or even two half-baths joined by a shower or tub room? (I had a friend whose family lived in a house with this...six kids) Anyway, can you shrink the first bedroom's desk and slide the bathrooms down so the furthest one can be a bit bigger? In our last house the kids' bathroom was really small; when we remodeled it we put in a pocket door and the bathroom seemed twice as big. We respect privacy and would never,. even the little ones, open a closed door without knocking, especially in a bathroom. I rarely see the sink between toilet and tub, isn't it usually tub-toilet-sink? In the first bathroom, just go with one sink. It's so small, they will never be in there at the same time, and they will need the storage and counter space. Why not put the water controls for the tub and shower on the outside wall with the sinks and toilets? You are going to put storage under that bench, right? Is the laundry room in the basement? Is there a place for a laundry chute? At least it can get down there quickly...Hey, the slide! Your girls are so smart.

Ha it is starting to resemble a mini waiting room! I toyed with the idea of adding a little magazine basket or a small reading table but not sure if that's too much. The previous owner is the one who built the house, and later divided it into apartments. He (large property developer in the area) had put in the false floor and told us it was stable and we could put furniture there - we felt it might not be strong enough, as it felt a bit weak when we walked on it. We pulled up a section of the floor to examine the structure, and the engineer who evaluated it told us we need further reinforcements, but it's just adding in additional beams between the existing ones, something a carpenter could help with. The engineer provided exact plans to give to the carpenter, of the size of supports needed, the necessary spacing between supports, and the method to attach them. To be clear there is a false ceiling in the entry hall for the building, then above the false ceiling, a plexiglass window that the balcony looked onto originally, and then on top of that, the false floor in our apartment. We won't at any time actually break through into the common entry hall. We're doing a full renovation of the apartment, adding a mezzanine library in the double height living room and redoing the attic space (the attic is private to our apartment but we will need approval from the other owners for skylight/velux windows). For the attic it's similar to the false floor in the entry, we must add additional reinforcements in between existing floor supports per the engineers recommendation. We are also converting the long and narrow walk-in closet from the bedroom into the front hall closet, with one end of it becoming the stairwell for attic access - which is perfect because there is a nice tall window in that section that will brighten up the hallway now instead of being in the closet. We are working with a qualified architect on this, still only at planning stage. We are not making any changes to load-bearing walls and very minimal impact on party wall. The front entry area is the easiest fix, just reinforcing the floor and removing the balcony guard, so we're trying to move forward where we can easily make some progress.

I think you're giving the taper too much power. If something needs to be in a bin, that bin doesn't need to exactly fill up the whole shelf. Lots of stuff may not need to go in bins or baskets anyway. You could get 12"-deep boxes and put them on the deeper side, and leave the rest of the shelf for setting things that don't go in bins or boxes. Or, if you do need a bin that exactly fills the shelf, can't you use your plethora of woodworking tools to make your own in a trapezoidal shape? It's just an oddly shaped wooden drawer, which is itself a lidless wooden box. (I made a storage box/bin for an oddly shaped space by cutting up foam-core board and hot-gluing it together. Now and then I have to reinforce it, but it works great! I'm too lazy to make it out of wood, and I don't have a lot of experience using thinner wood like 1/4" luan or masonite, and 3/4" stock would be too heavy) You could install shelves, or you could make "pockets" to hang on the wall based on what's going to go in them (if you make your own pockets, you can make them as fat as you need for whatever you're going to put in them). I'd say: First, figure out how to put a single hanging rod on the 24"-deep side (and limit how many coats can go in there--everybody in the family gets two hangers, and any other outerwear goes in the bedroom). Or, put in one hanging rod (those Closet-Maid/Elfa wire shelves?) for long coats, and install second one halfway down the wall to convert one half of that space for jackets? My experience is that especially in winter, there are more hip-length coats than short jackets, so plan for winter, not spring or fall. Then see what sorts of other storage needs you can fulfill there--would the vacuum bit on the coats side? Can you put pockets on the side wall for gloves, hooks for umbrellas and dog leashes? Can you put a tray or basket on the floor to hold boots or shoes? Or something on the shelf above the hanging rod that would be useful for what you store there? Then stand in front of that tapered side with all the stuff you're going to put in there, and see what inspires you. Do you want shelves you can put boxes on? (You could make a small trapezoidal bookcase and bolt it to the wall, leaving space below it; or use brackets on the back wall to install tapered shelves--you can buy brackets of varying lengths.) Would pockets or baskets on the side wall be useful for stuff like cleaning supplies or shoes? Would hooks allow you to use the most shallow section for hanging the vacuum hose?

Great feedback! Yes I am starting to realize how ugly those stair treads are. I have a dog who suddenly avoided the stairs, so I did something kind of quick. I like that they have a rubber/silicone backing so you can pick them up and throw them in the wash as needed. Unfortunately that’s a new enough feature that there are not any nice designs with that feature yet, but I will keep looking. For the same reason, that’s why I don’t want a full runner - need to be able to clean dog tracks. I love the part about hyperfixating! Yes! That’s exactly what I’m doing! Haha. I considered beadboard or board & batten. My home is a federal style row home and the original ones have an enclosed space (two sets of doors) often with tile between the inner and outer doors. I considered trying to recreate a look like that (without extra doors) by doing beadboard for a small entry with some coat hooks, etc. then I thought about pulling the beadboard all along the left wall and to the back garage door to disguise it, but that may not be a good solution either. The right wall that goes up the stairs is part of what is called the tower or the stack. All the floor stairways are in the same location and they’re all open to the floors they’re one, so it was a challenge finding a place to stop one color and where to start another. That color goes all the way up to the third floor. It looks amazing on the second floor where there’s more light, but it’s true - it’s not flattering on the first or third floors, which are basically just hallways. I guess I should consider different paint too.