The travel distances in the kitchen are excessive and inefficient. You have created too many work counters too far apart for one person. I find your comment intriguing. You are clear in conveying the gist of your opinion but you've completely left out any reference to WHY you hold this opinion. Why are the travel distances in an 8x12 open space excessive and inefficient? Is there a kitchen designer's study which suggesst kitchen designers limit the point to point travel to less than 12'? Is that what you're basing your opinion on? As for the inefficiency, here too I'm lost. Efficiency is a concept related to productivity, at least when it refers to human labor. Most of the labor in a kitchen involves either work at the sink, fridge or stove. This kitchen design minimizes travel between these fixtures. To the right of the stove is 5'6" of counter space before the sink interupts the work space. Within easy reach of the fridge are two counters upon which I can place items removed from the fridge. In terms of labor productivity I think that the kitchen works efficiently. What are you seeing that I'm missing? On the side of the kitchen opposite the work triangle is the dishwasher and plenty of uninteruptted counterspace. This counterspace has a grain mill at the end, it allows for baking to take place without intruding on the work triangle, it allows for me to place 60 canning jars without worrying about crowding, it allows me to place any gadgets that I decide I simply must have. Now perhaps you're concluding that the space is being inefficiently used because it's not being used as centrally or as frequently as the space within the work triangle and if so, yes, I'll cop to that, it's not, but if this is the line of your criticism, then it should be the case that every kitchen that incorporates space outside of a work triangle is using space inefficiently. Rather than me guessing WHY you reach your conclusion it would help me to have you TELL me WHY. What would help me even more is a suggestion from you on what I should do differently. That would be golden. A statement that the layout is inefficient and excessive doesn't help me much at all. A better configuration is a double loaded work area with support elements either side like a pantry or pastry station that you would not use as often as the central area and appliances. What is a "double loaded work area" and how would 1 person use this work area efficiently? Other than the bar sink I have located in the area outside of the triangle, what else, specifically would you suggest be included to make my time in the kitchen proceed more efficiently? If you think the basic design, a G-Kitchen, is beyond salvage, what would you suggest replace that layout? The kitchen is overly generous with space, the stair is an overly grand staircase but the entrance is into a cramped back hall with far too many doors. The elements of the house seem oddly out of scale with each other. In another thread I wrote that I couldn't offer an informed critique of someone else's plan until I knew what was guiding their choices. In this thread, in my original post, I wrote the following: The requirements were: - Big kitchen, disproportionately so compared to the remainder of the rooms. So I find it odd that, after you chimed in and agreed with me in the other thread that you needed to know more about the other person's goals before you could offer feedback, that here, knowing that I want a large kitchen, your feedback to me is "The kitchen is overly generous with space." The entrace isn't into a "cramped back hall", it's into a "cramped vestibule." Most vestibules are cramped, it's kind of the nature of the beast, isn't it? I agree that there are too many doors. I've since remedied that by removing two doors, so now the vestibule has an entry door, a closet door and two glass doors leading into the home. I moved the powder room to the back of the home and created more landing space around the bottom of the stairs and I removed the closet door on the right side of the house, across from the stairs and I use that volume of enclosed wall for a built-in accessable from the living room. See below: The space at the center of the staircase is to be used by a curving masonry bench which forms part of the fireplace and which will retain some of the heat from the fireplace. I've experienced such benches in my travels in Europe and I really enjoyed curling up on them and reading, or napping, after coming inside from a cold day of skiing. The gentle radiative heat seeping into my bones was luxurious. I admit that the inclusion of this space now is a design compromise but it's one that I'm happy to make for it gives me a space that I will use, it creates more radiative mass into which heat can be stored and it's out of the ordinary. It wasn't a "must have" but as a space filler it hits the mark on a number of fronts, far better than how I see people fill up space in their homes with chairs of tables that will never be used. The space at the foot of the stairs is available for a table, art, a build-in of some sort. The space midway up the stairs allows for a shelf for a plant next to a window. The staircase is overly grand. I've been struggling with how to incorporate it without wasting a lot of space. It's been quite a struggle. If I did away with the curve and went to a simple straight staircase I could slice a 6'x 15' section off of the plans and make an even smaller home, thereby making the kitchen disprortionately larger in a smaller home. Look, my garage is 24x24, space for my truck, motorcycle,sports car plus room to spare at the front. I'll have a metal/wood workshop in a separate barn. I have a large kitchen. These are all spaces that are useful to me. My dining room is small because I don't have large family gatherings and when I have guests it is only every a handful of people, a lady friend over for dinner, a buddy over for beer and to watch a game, one or two couples over for an evening - there are no grand dinner parties where I have 20 people crammed into my house. The living room is primarily for my own use but has space for 6 people sitting around conversing - I don't need space for more people and I don't need space, like a family of six would, for 6 people doing their own things in the LR - when I have six people in that room, I can assure you that one won't be watching TV, while another is reading, while another is doing needlepoint, and while two others are playing Monopoly. In the basement will be the utility and laundry rooms. I'll have an endless pool down there, a sauna or possibly a steamroom, I haven't decided yet, as well as a workout room of some size, and open space for whatever may strike my fancy in the future. Upstairs will have two master suites and an office if I can squeeze it in and if not, no matter, I can do office work anywhere in the house because I don't have kids or a spouse to distract me, so I don't need to cocoon myself away to find a quiet space to work. The elements of the house seem oddly out of scale with each other. There is some truth to this. Large kitchen, large garage (considering many 2 car garages are 20x20 or thereabouts), large staircase, fair sized mastersuite, small dining room, small living room. I'm not sure what I should be doing about this though. Should I scale back all the large rooms where I want space or should I scale up the the LR/DR where I don't want space and should I make my mastersuite larger or smaller and should I do away with the secondary mastersuite which might be used by one of my parents at some point in the future if they move in? Any suggestions? Criticism is useful, to a degree, but what really helps people in the design phase are actual, concrete, suggestions and alternatives. As I noted in the thread title, fresh eyes and fresh ideas would help me a lot.

Thank you so much to all of you for your comments. They have been very helpful and I really appreciate all of your time. I don't know how many people will still read this thread, but I am posting a couple of additional pictures showing a couple of Cape style houses with a little more punch to them. I am very interested in any thoughts you may have. Option A. This is one we really like. Not really the blue, but the contrast with the stone, the trim, etc. We would have three smaller dormers (those are too big) and I think this would be about the height of the roof of ours. The garage would be in back so we would not have the gable on the left that's why I show it with the gable and then closer in without to give the idea of what it would look like for us. Option B: We like this as well - nice color scheme. We might choose to put stone on the porch instead and we would have equal sides like I showed in my original white house above. I believe this roof is steeper/taller than what ours would be. Just curious if you like these and think they add enough pizazz to the classic Cape style? FWIW, there are not a ton of this style of house here - usually one or two in any given custom neighborhood, so they are not overdone.

The downstairs seems to have a pretty good layout, but the rooms -- if I'm reading the numbers correctly on the small plan -- are fairly compact. With only two of you in the house and only one possible child in the future, I wonder if you wouldn't be better served by fewer /larger rooms. I mean, you could use the un-used upstairs guest room as an office, and you could go with one nice-sized eating area instead of two cramped spaces. I would relocate the door to the screen porch. Once you have a table in place, you won't be able to reach it -- not without gymnastics to get around the table and chairs. The kitchen looks more than a little awkward -- it needs a whole re-do. It's a modest space, but it still could be laid out efficiently. I think it would work best as a simple galley -- two straight runs of cabinets on each side, and bring them a little closer together. A galley is also cheaper because you're not paying for complicated angled /corner cabinets. I like that the staircase has windows. The upstairs hall bath vanity is not large enough to support two sinks; and with NO storage in this bathroom, you'd be better off going with one sink and a small linen tower to one side. And given your circumstances, I would remove the door splitting the bathroom in two. I like the layout of the shower, but note that the toilet-in-a-closet door will cover the main bathroom door -- that's going to be a constant aggravation.

Second plan, with the addition of a prep sink on the island. Your fridge doesn't need landing space on both sides, and the island will be extra landing space. Pull the cabinets on the fridge/range wall out to meet the fridge box, and you have an instant built in fridge, with the added bonus of deeper counters--unless that puts the clean-up sink against the perpendicular counter. I can't tell where the windows are, exactly. As twosit mentioned, the dish hutch is in a good spot in the second plan. A helper can load or unload the DW, or gather dishes to set the table, while you are prepping or cooking without interfering in your tasks. You have a small secondary prep space between the clean-up sink and the range, if you have help prepping. Given the choice of a window over the sink, or a window in the pantry, I'd choose the sink--how much time do you plan to spend in the pantry?