I also grow in beds against a wall (or in my case a 6 ft privacy fence). My beds are 2 ft wide and I just use regular square foot spacing for them. Trellis up the wall are great space savers. I'm a bit concerned about your beds only getting 4 hrs of sun. Most vegetable need at least 6 hours. Thing like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant do best with even more. Is there any other area you can plant those (even in containers) that gets more light. Some things like your herbs will do fine. Greens also seem to be able to tolerate lower light. As for when to start seedlings. I have an spreadsheet that has most common veggies and weeks before last frost that they should be started (I put it together from a recommendation chart published by my local paper and some gardening books). I'd be happy to share it but you may also be able to find a chart geared to your area in a local publication, extension office, book, etc. With a longer growing season starting things indoors earlier isn't as important as in area like mine where the growing season is really short.

Hi, I'm just chiming in.... I've had a home similar to the one you want to build... a few times, actually. We've owned almost 20 homes. This last home we built, we improved on issues that bugged us with previous homes and it has paid off. We've been in this home ten years and still love it. We have recently bought waterfront property and want to come up with a bit different plan, but it is hard for us to change too much of some parts of the layout because it works so well. I see some changes that you could make that may seem ridiculous, but with your children, you will be SO thankful if you do it. I would give up some of your MBR closet for a decent laundry room near your MBR. You will NOT regret it. I put in two washers and dryers, cabinets with a sink, and closet with room for my "flipping lid" types of 13 gal. Rubbermaid type trash cans that I use for sorting clothes. (My kiddos all learned to sort clothes and do laundry correctly!) I have a can for whites, darks, lights, dress/gentles, towels, sheets/blankets. Plenty of hanging areas. In the next home we build, even if it is just my husband and I, we will also have two washers and dryers. I believe it is that important. I'd be chained to the house all the time doing laundry. With kids, grand-kids, guests, etc... it's just crazy to not have them if you have the room. I'll post my photo of what we did. Heck, I think I still have a site up when we were building. Check out the MBa... and how /where we put the shower and water closet. This way, when my husband was showering, he had privacy while I am doing my hair or brushing teeth. I cannot stand having a shower 'open' so if he is in the bathroom, he gets to watch me. I just do not like it. As you get older, you really do want more privacy.... even if it's your spouse. I want to be seen in my best light...not when I'm bending over shaving, etc. Also, we built porches this house which keeps our home cooler. We put in Radiant Barrier almost everywhere. We have over 6,000sf under roof... 4500 heated/cooled. Over the garage has not been hooked up to AC yet...because I'm still using it for storage. When it was almost 100F outside in FL, with the fans on upstairs, it was like 78F with the radiant barrier. Neighbors could not believe it. Our electric bill for our house with two AC systems (5 and 3.5 ton) is less than $300/mo. Possibly $250 avg. We love our kitchen layout, laundry, MBR will be larger next go around. Your home looks good... except there would be great longevity in your home if the MBR was larger and the layout a bit different for the bath, imo. I am also a Realtor and see many homes. I have gone the gambit with building this house. (Lawsuit over kitchen...and custom cabinet issues in MBR. They are fixed now.) Adding 'keystones' of real granite over windows added architectural elements. Fake keystones always look tacky. Also, our present MBR shower is 3'x5'. Next time, at minimum 4'x6'...most likely larger. Our MBR is 14'x16'. I've had 16'x18' before and thought it too large. I think 15' x 21' will be our next MBR... at least. Here is a link that might be useful: Check out some of the features we put in.

Alex House: Thanks again for all the comments. I will definitely be looking into widening the kid's bath by taking some room from the closet and master. We vaulted the LR specifically to decrease the sq footage of the house. We had a larger house before (3400 sq ft) and felt it was too big. We also had a valued living room and loved all the natural light. 2 dedicated offices would be too much. The foyer is the full 2 storeys but the LR is only 1.5 storeys. We are trying to have that "wow" factor with the foyer as this was one of the biggest complaints with our last place. Estate agents consistently told us that their clients when shopping in the higher price bracket wanted to shock and awe their guests with a grand entry. We were planning on splurging on a light fixture and art for this area. There is no guest closet, again this is something that we went back and forth on. We were going to provide hooks, something sculptural that would double as an art piece. As for the DR/ Island seating, your questions are valid. We had this set up in our last place and it worked well. People hung out at the island while I cooked and then we would sit at the table to eat. Originally I wanted the dining table to face the back view, but due to other design issues (the garage cannot move all) we just weren't able to figure out how to do that without having weird spaces. One idea was to push the dining room out as far as allowed (the inside dotted line on the site plan) and turn the table side ways. This leaves a huge space along the closet/pantry wall and will again increase square footage. Also, we are looking to move the deck to start off the dining room and go along the kitchen and all our footings must be within that dotted line. I think with the pantry, mudroom and large kitchen we should have enough storage for the first floor. The fireplace wall in the living room will also have storage built in. bpathome: Thanks for the ideas about switching the office around. We did think about that before putting in the dog run. We decided that the office should have the exterior wall for a bigger window and more natural light and we liked having the foyer/mudroom wall uninterrupted to use as a gallery wall as we have a fair amount of art. Your comments have me thinking that your idea is actually better and if we keep a window where the dog run door is and then have a glass door to the office we could get a fair amount of natural light in there. Kids bath will most likely be widened thanks to the feedback I have received. The kitchen cabinets along the window will be removed for a window seat so I plan to replace the small prep sink on the island to be the single main sink which should make the kitchen triangle much better. We live in a northern snowy city, so somewhere to hang coats at the front door is essential. We thought that the sculptural hook idea would be a more contemporary unique idea for temporary coats but I do worry that this is bad decision for resale and that people would prefer the storage. If we flip the mudroom and office around and put the dog door there I can see the family rarely using the front door as we will use this door almost all the time if not coming through the garage. The views are amazing out the back and we love natural light. We tried to get every room in the house to have a source of natural light. Thanks again for letting me explain our decisions thus far and agree/disagree with your comments. You both have given me a lot to think about. And here I thought we were finished with the floor plan!

Is the house oriented towards the road with the garage "poking out" in front? Garages pushed out in front tend to overshadow the house and become the focal point. Likewise, the long, narrow entry (with a view of the side of a kitchen cabinet ahead of you) isn't a welcoming view. However, once you're inside the house, it's a nice little layout. With a "dead end living room", you're able to fit in lots of comfortable furniture, and I like that you'll have natural light from two sides. I like the arrangement, but I would want a fireplace somewhere in the room ... or perhaps a wood stove. Because the dining room serves as a hallway to the living room and because it holds the only door to what I think is the back yard, you're only going to be able to use a small table. Is this an okay thing for you? I don't see it as a make-or-break; I'm planning on a small table, but we'll have a gate leg table behind the sofa, which we can pull out and use when we have large indoor gatherings. I don't see much space for books, games, etc. in the public spaces. I'd consider adding a set of shelves across the whole dining room -- I'm thinking of the very popular squares-bookcases that you see everywhere these days. This would give you mega-storage ... and you could continue it on into the living room (maybe at a shorter height) as a built-in seat and/or something for "under" the TV. The kitchen shape looks fine, though I agree with the above poster that your appliance layout needs some work. In general, you want to keep things moving in a straight line: Storage of food ... food prep, which includes the sink ... cooking of food ... serving of food. You'll want to serve from the bar that overlooks the dining room, so it makes sense for your "cooking flow" to work counterclockwise. Your kitchen doesn't have great storage, so the good-sized pantry is essential. Since that pantry door is going to stay open pretty much all the time, I'd consider using a pocket door. I'd always rather have a large pantry instead of a large laundry -- as long as you have room for the machines and an area for "waiting baskets", you're fine with laundry; it's one of those places in a house where junk accumulates to fit the available space. Idea: How about opening up the laundry and pantry as one long, narrow room? Moving on to the laundry, I would shift the machines to the wall where the hot water heater is now so that the dryer can vent directly outside. Of course, that creates a new problem with the laundry "backed up to" a bedroom -- and you have noise issues. Maybe the machines under the window? Walking "through" this kitchen to reach the bedrooms doesn't bother me. The entire kitchen is located to the left, so it's more like you're walking PAST the kitchen. In another layout, this might bother me. I would flip the whole secondary bathroom -- meaning move the toilet and sink to the opposite wall. Why? Because then the door would be moved a few feet to the side, and it would be "hidden" from the public room's view. Both bathrooms are minimal in size, and that's a bad thing. You have no storage -- no place for a hamper, to store towels, to store anything beyond an extra roll of toilet paper. I'd make the whole house a couple feet longer; or I'd even steal a foot from each bedroom, if necessary to make the bathroom comfortable. Still on the subject of bathrooms ... you have four rooms in this house that use water, and they're spread across the whole house. The most economical plans arrange the bathrooms, laundry room and kitchen so that they're "backed up" to one another. This means shorter plumbing lines, less expense, and a smaller potential for leaks in the future. Does this have to happen? No, but you're clearly looking for an inexpensive house here, and that would be one way to keep the budget in line. I'd definitely turn the linen closet towards the bathroom/bedrooms rather than the kitchen. I don't have any problem with a potential child's bedroom being "far" from the parents' room. First, in this house "far" isn't really all that far. Second, you're going to hear the child, and you'll be plenty close to respond to him or her. I like that the children's rooms are placed away from the living room, so they'll have quiet to sleep. The bedroom to the right is going to have a problem with the door banging against the closet door. I'd consider a sliding closet door. The bedroom to the right is forced to have a smaller closet because of the need for the door's swing. How would it work to place the closet where you have the bed? It'd make for a longer, more narrow room, but it'd take care of the door problem.