You could shrink a bit by not having such a wide dedicated hallway space between the LR and DR proper. The margins of those rooms and "hall" could overlap a bit. If you are planning for a butterfly roof you will need to have water runoff management at that juncture of the roof which I am assuming would be approximately where the entry is, so you will need some kind of scupper/gutter system planned in this area, and I don't think you want a random gutter running down especially on the back near the windows. I would have a better bathroom/bathroom access for the exercise room. Why are the stairs turned so the back of the flight faces the front door, and you have to walk to the study to go up? To deemphasize the presence of an upper level? If so you may want these stairs elsewhere altogether. Is the downstairs office private enough? Do you want an office with no windows? Is the windowless front facade of the house intentional? In a house with such strong axes, the near-miss of the alignment of the stairway wall to the kitchen-bedroom hallway is off-putting. Post the kitchen layout in the kitchen forum once some of the other kinks are worked out. I would also tuck a point of service fridge in the master complex and upstairs somewhere in a house this big.

I like bpathhome's reworked master suite -- if you just want to, say, put away a pair of shoes or pick up a sweater, the closet is much more convenient. It will be more convenient to bring in baskets of clean laundry. And this makes the master bath a bit more private. The toilet closet, though, looks deep, narrow, and uncomfortable in both renditions. As for who'd want the laundry next to the back door, my daughter -- a nursing student -- is already saying that she definitely wants to live in a house that will allow her to enter the house, drop her scrubs (with germs from work) and change before she enters "the house proper". She's already becoming nervous about "bringing her work home with her". More to the point: The laundry has some problems: You say you're planning to store smelly sports equipment . . . and that it'll be a sewing /craft room. I don't see those two plans combining nicely -- who wants to sit and work in a room full of smelly stuff? You have an over-sized garage. I'd build appropriate-sized lockers out there for the sports equipment -- never bring it in the house at all. And I'd cut down the size of the laundry room. I wish you could flip the powder room and the pantry. That would allow you to have plumbing lines in only one wall, while servicing both the powder room AND the washer/dryer. But the pantry is perfectly positioned right now.

Overall, I'd say that you have a good start on a starter home plan. I only see a couple of real issues. First, will you have enough headroom where your basement stairs go under the bedroom wall? Typically risers are about7.25 to 7.5 inches high and treads are about 11 inches long. It looks like you have about a 10 ft run before the stairs duck under the wall. 10 ft (120 inches) barely allows for 11 treads and that's if you make them each a tiny bit less than 11 inches long. Therefore you will also have have only 11 steps down before you reach the wall. That means that if the risers are 7.5 inches high, the stairs will drop 82.5 inches at the wall... which seems like it ought to be plenty because no one is that tall... but you also have to allow for the thickness of your floor joists. Those are likely to be another 10 to 12 inches deep. If the joists are just 10 inches thick, you need an 82 inch total drop in order for a 6 ft tall person to have minimal headroom. Anyone any taller than 6 ft will have to duck or will bump his/her head. If the joists are thicker OR someone taller than 6 ft will be going down the stairs, you need additional headroom. The only way to get it is to either make the staircase steeper (i.e., make each riser higher, or make the treads shorter so you can squeeze in another step) or back the start of the steps further from the wall so you have room for another tread and riser. Next, it looks as if you're using 24" or maybe 28" doors bedrooms on the bedrooms. I would caution against having doors that are narrower than 32" on any room where you need to get furniture in. 24" and 28" wide doors will work for closets and bathrooms... as long as no one in a wheelchair has to maneuver in/out. But squeezing furniture through a 24" or 28" wide doorway can be nearly impossible... especially if you first have to fit it down a narrow hallway like your two secondary bedrooms. Also, standard exterior doors have 36" wide OPENINGS. It looks like yours MAY be drawn as just 32" wide doors. You simply cannot fit most modern refrigerators through a 32" wide doorway. And I doubt many sofas would fit thru a 32" wide doorway either. BTW, I would also want 36" wide doors into the laundry room (avoids scraped knuckles when carrying a laundry basket.) Next, I agree that, as shown, you don't have quite enough room between the island seating and the sofa. But I don't think this is a problem because, if the furniture in your drawing is really to scale, your sofa can easily be moved 12 to 18 inches closer to the TV to give you more room behind it. (In fact, IMHO, all three pieces of living room furniture should be moved closer together. They're too spread out for comfortable conversation! I'd center the loveseat on the window and then move it forward away from the window and also move that chair in closer to the center of the room. A seating arrangement in the living room should give a sense of intimacy! But this is a decorating issue, not a building issue... except in so far as I'm saying your living room is plenty large. LOL!) Finally, aesthetically, I don't particularly like having the master bedroom open directly off of the kitchen but functionally it will work. A friend of mine has a similar set up in her home but, to give the master bedroom a little bit more of a sense of "privacy" what they've done in their house is create a little "recessed entry" (alcove) for the master bedroom door with an art niche on each side. Here is a sketch to show you what I mean. Their alcove is only about 12 inches deep total. The bedroom door hangs on the inner doorway and the outer doorway is just a trimmed out opening. The art niches are only a couple of inches deep... just deep enough to hold a small statue. But the overall effect makes it clear that you're entering a different "zone" when you go thru the alcove. No one will mistake my friend's bedroom door for a door to the pantry. If you would like me to, the next time I'm going over to my friend's house, I'll try to remember to take my camera and ask if I can take a picture of their recessed bedroom door to post for you.

I like it, but I'm not sure I'd want it for myself. Its unusual angle makes me think it was designed for a specific lot with unique needs. Things I'm thinking: - With that large V-shaped front porch, it'd be lovely for a vacation area, but I can't see it fitting into a typical suburban lot. - Where is the front door? I think it could be confusing for guests. On the same subject, you have so many exterior doors, and that's a difficult option -- doors are more expensive than windows, less energy efficient, and easier to break into. I think I'd turn some of these into same-sized windows. - The floorplan is angled, but the pictures seem to be "straight" with the breezeway in the middle. This is reminiscent of old, old Southern farmhouses called DogTrot houses. - I like the metal roof shown on the house in the pictures. Seems to fit the house well. - This house has a great deal of exterior wall and lots of jigs and jogs, both of which make this an expensive house. - I like the kitchen /dining layout, but I think you need more space between the island and the table -- I think I'd reduce the width of the island to fix this. I think they did reduce the width of the island in the house in the pictures. - The tower is really neat looking and essential to "the look" of the house, but you have to access it by cutting through the laundry room -- weird. - I think that smallest bedroom is okay ... only because it also has a small bed alcove on the edge, leaving the whole room available for other purposes. However, this is limiting: You cannot ever use anything except a twin bed, and it's kind of oddly tucked around "behind" the closet. If you intend to always use this as a den or office, it's ideal. You could make up the bed as a sofa and still have plenty of space left for a sofa or desk. However, the room is not at all flexible. - The second guest bedroom also has odd dimensions. I think I'd simplify the whole bedroom wing.