I played with your plan a wee bit, turning the laundry room and baking pantry on their sides and moving your kitchen appliances around quite a bit. =) Both laundry room and baking pantry are wider in this plan, which means that you have better aisles in both spaces. I didn't realize until I working on your plan how narrow your baking pantry was. If you were spec'ing standard depth counters & cabs along one wall and 12" cabs on the other, you're left with less than 29" for the aisle. That's fine if you don't intend to work in their but since it sounds like you want to do baking prep in here, that's not going to work well at all, especially if you want your kids to help you. My plan does mean no window in your laundry room but you could always add clerestory windows between baking pantry and laundry room to let light flow from one to the other, like they did between spaces in this home. Okay, into the kitchen. I removed the wing walls on each side of the dining area so that you're not pinched for space around the table. However, as I wrote above, if you want to keep the walls, you can bump the space out instead. I moved the fridge out of the corner and against the pantry wall. That puts it close to your baking center; shorter walks to get eggs, butter, etc. I moved your clean up sink and 2 DWs to the wall next to the fridge. Here are inspiration pics for sinks against walls, not under windows. Moving the clean-up zone, opened up space to move the range top and hood to an exterior wall. Since you're concerned about noise, you should definitely look into adding an remote blower to your hood. This runs ducting up the exterior wall to your roof where your blower will sit. You'll cut noise quite a bit. I moved the ovens to right next to the baking pantry door so it's an shorter walk with pans of batter. I added a prep sink to your island to give you a good work zone between pantry, fridge and range top. The downside of this plan is that it puts the clean-up sink and dish storage the farthest from the dining area. It also means that anyone wanting to grab last minute items from the fridge to bring to the table will walk through the cook zone. Not ideal but I can't think of another way to address that at the moment. Oh, the other thing I did was recess the full depth fridge into the pantry wall so that it appears to be counter depth. I've no idea what your aisle widths were because you hadn't marked them but you have a large enough space to go for generous 48" aisles.

rockybird, we're expecting to enjoy all 4 seasons, with mild winters, hot and humid summers, and beautiful spring and fall weather. When we visited in July, we experienced unusually mild weather in the 80's, and it's generally been in the 60's and 70's when we've been there in spring and October and November, although much colder at night and early morning. We were actually unexpectedly snowed in when we visited last February and all flights were cancelled! I'm looking forward to being able to finally wear sweaters and jackets though :) If we added dormers I would want them to be functional and either add light into the first floor with a raised ceiling or into a second story or attic space. When I reference a 1 1/2 story I mean a second story that is smaller than the footprint of the first level, with varying roof lines, rather than a full second story that is the same footprint and square footage as the second level. We would either use ours for unfinished attic space or maybe a loft/second media room, a bunk room/guest room, and a guest bathroom. Just extra space for DD and visitors that DH and I could close off when not in use. Here are some examples of dormers that function to let light into a first floor and also some 1 1/2 story homes with dormers.

People can share THEIR finished $/sqft. but in reality it means little. Prices from even six months ago are outdated, prices are heavily locale dependant and if a house can be built for say $400/sf the same house can be built for $200/sf but with different flooring, cabinets, siding, trim, windows......etc. Basically a stripped down version of a more expensive version.

I'm a fan of morning light, so I would favor the east room for the master unless it is near the street and traffic noise. I would use the west room for the sitting/TV area. Easy to get to it from downstairs if you just need to get away upstairs for a moment of quiet. I would line both walls of the north room with custom closets and put a window seat between closets at the window, or just have the window in a WIC/dressing room. I would remove both chimneys so you can move the door to the other side and allow for a straight walkway through the north room lined on both sides with closets; WIC on the north side and traditional on the south side. The south room would be the office and you might steal a few feet of it to enhance the closet/dressing room.