wearybuilder, thank you for your post and rec. I feel as you do about the houses of this style feeling closed in. I live in a suburb that was mostly created in the late 60's and early 70's so there are many, many split entries. Even though I realize they are not very desired, the fact is that they exist in an EXCELLENT school district and often on yummy lots. When building, in the case of my style, they crammed 5 bedrooms and 2.5 baths to make the house SOUND big, but the bedrooms are really small and the bathrooms were so tiny they were barely functional. We have already combined a miniscule full bath, a teensy master powder room and small walk-in closet to make one large main bathroom. With a window! What is it about these houses that the bathrooms don't get windows?? The little "nursery" next to the master is now our closet. Effectively, we turned the three bedroom 1.5 bath upstairs into a 2 bedroom 1 bath, but it is so_much_better. Downstairs, the two bedrooms on the "garden" level, we are making sure they get more closet space and more windows. In the end, it will be a "smaller" house but I think it will feel and flow much better. Now if we can just find a way to make the outside more attractive :-) Can't wait to open up the stairs! Joanna

Hi live wire oak, Thanks ever so much for your continued support. I am lucky to have found this forum and people like you. Beleive me, we will not be making any changes without seeing the effect in 3D in walk through style like you mentioned. Like you said, I want to see what the view (outside and inside) will be to the bedroom gables if we redo the garage roof/and or bump the bedroom gables forward. If we do go this route, we will be sure to investigate tying in a roof plane for a potential foyer bump out/and or porch. I am investigating as many options as possible before spending another dime on construction. The architect that we worked with is experienced in both residential and commercial, he is a fully qualified architect and he has an amazing wealth of construction knowledge. He owns his architect firm and works in his profession full time. He was recommended to us by a structural engineer. Our architect used AutoCad for the design -- I don't think that is viewable in 3D. I imagine we could have paid for someone to have taken the AutoCad file and transferred it to something like Sketch-up. We should have pursued that. I simply did not realize until now how different a 2D elevation picture would be from the 3D real life creation. Tough lesson to learn for us! Carol

And in Sarah Susanka's books, somewhere she mentions such a situation. And her approach includes the option to add a piece to the ceiling which defines the small area devoted to the entry. You put the special flooring down, and it is also good to define the entry CEILING as well. Especially if you can add lighting there. In another of the HOUZZ idea books, they had a square open back shelving unit which they placed instead of using the sofa as a traffic director. The spaces were squares and they added nice baskets to many of the spaces. If you do shelving there, and the room is small, keep the shelving without a back. Unless you make one end of it the area for a coat "locker",,,,,in which case it can become a "mudroom." I don't think a formal console table would be appropriate in the kitchen area, but a piece that looks like a console, but suited to a kitchen, would be great. It might also serve for both recyclables such as paper recycling stuff and then winter boot tray, and a shelf above with hooks for coats or dog leashes or hats and gloves. It would be very useful if a butcher block top and wheels, so you could use it for a rolling island in times when guests are not coming over. The type of entry that OldGardener describes for her sister is the solution we have in our Cape up here in MA. The living room is small to begin with. So I put this loveseat perpendicular to the front wall, which creates a walkway from the front door past a console table (on the wall opposite the back of the loveseat) and it leads to the tiny coat closet and the hallway to the main bath/powder area. Actually there is only the loveseat, a lamp and small table, and two armed dining chairs beside the black granite fireplace hearth, plus the console table, in this room. We do use the space for quiet chatting with friends and family in a more one-on-one space. We have a huge (12 x 34) family room where there is another fireplace and the TV and a round painted drop leaf breakfast table, with an old sectional sofa....so the living room is a sweet little jewel of a space that provides a spot of calm and semi formality to a casual home.

Take what follows as worth what you paid for it. (Ha...) My very first starter home was a tiny cape cod, where the front door dropped everyone on the far end of the living room. Words fail to describe how much I hated that. I spent years trying to create a nice first impression, a nice foyer, out of that stupid entry. I loved most of that house, it was a great first house - but I never solved the problem of not having a nice front entry. It sounds like you care about something similar too. Some people care, some people don't - that's the beauty of life, different things matter to different people. If you're building a brand new home, and are lucky enough to be building it at the beach, then you really should take advantage of this to know what you want, and to get what you want. Within reason, of course. :-) But a nice foyer is certainly a very reasonable ask. Not seeing the entire floor plan and things to scale, I have no idea if a pretty table will work for you to delineate some space. Just bear in mind whoever said upthread that will need a lot of room to work is 100% right, and honestly it would not work for me. However I am not you. I am just imploring you to think carefully about what matters and what doesn't - lest you spend a shocking amount of money on a new build and then end up like me, spending years hating one of the most important parts of the house.