On making the laundry a passageway: I could put a door in the bathroom (it would be tiny-less than 3'. The Bedroom (#2) is my son's room and would be a pass through. In this plan my son's room stays his room. The room in the front would be a playarea and I may remove the hallway wall to make a decent size area (decent-still small.). Here are the other 2 senarios: 1. Bedroom#2 becomes playroom and or dining/craft as the kids grow. 2. Bedroom #1 and #2 are made into a Master. The bathroom is still small and we just recently remodeled so I'd have to say no more changes other than considering the door you mentioned. Table seating: Yes, the island would be our primary seating for the kids breakfast and lunch. I do want a screen deck or patio as we live in SC and love it outside but are unable to since the mosquito is our state bird.:) I would LOVE a booth/banquet with a bench-husband hates this idea but would tolerate. We currently have table in the top right off the kitchen area but it's tight. I was thinking we'd have room in the new family room but I may be wrong. For Kitchen: I'm sure you can't tell by my fantastic drawing but I left 4' on the work side of the island and 7'8" on the chair side. The island is approx 4' or 4'8"X 12' I'd like a huge island but this may be too huge at the cost of a table as you mentioned. I'm trying to visualize the switch to bath for the pantry/laundry area (assuming this isn't pass-through) I think I'd have to create a hallway to the bedrooms so the kids can use the bathroom without walking through a more public area. By adjacent to the older home for the pantry location do you mean off the old living room before the kitchen? I do want the kids rooms to be close together. Yes, I do also think the kids as well as guests would use the MBath (I am great with-husband does not want but said he's ok if there is a door to close off the MBed. And, yes the Gigantic bed, No, we are not giants, lol. It is a log bed made from huge log timbers with King mattress(present from my hubby) It's more like 9'long. But if I don't tuck the comforters into the frame it balloons out our room is 13 1/2' wide upstairs and the extra 1/2' would be nice:) I didn't mention the septic is on the bedrooms side of the current home which is why we cannot just bump out the bedroom#1-also gas and HVAC is there too. (why I didn't put the screened deck on that side(noise)...but we will be looking at the vehicles in the driveway for outdoor meals. Oh, yes the inset fridge. I could probably make the window a little larger and inset it 1' so it almost matches the cabinets but allows for full open (it's a french door/bottom drawer freezer) with our budget we're keeping all our appliances and buying a gas range if we have enough $$ left. All our current are stainless and new kitchen cabinets are white shaker style cheap RTA wood that my contractor sells at a really good price. Granite in a whitish (we were going to do marble on the island but can't imagine the etching and marks on a piece this large looking anything other than bad:( with honed black granite for cabinet walls runs as we can't afford soapstone. Thank you for your time and any further advice would be appreciated and welcome. I'll work on your ideas tonight:)

Great update - last Tuesday we were out looking at more houses even as far away as an hour from my office and 30 minutes from DH's (and that's one main reason we want to move is tso get closer to his office) and on a whim we called the builder we've spoken to and he agreed to meet us at a piece of land we had looked at before. The land was OK when we looked at it before but didn't 'speak' to either of us UNTIL.... I was standing on the top of the small dirt road which the property dead ends into and talking to my daughter. We both turned at the same time to look across the street from the land and we realized it has an incredible view, you can see for miles and miles and as the sun was setting behind us everything was sparkling and gold and I got chills and my daughter got tears in her eyes and we KNEW this was it. My DH came out from walking the land and he said this was what he wanted to do even before we told him about our experience. I honestly believe in those gut instincts that tell you when something is right and this was more than RIGHT. I'm sure others had looked at the property and not realized it's potential just as we had but that afternoon I will never forget. The builder said it's a great piece of land, too. I'll share a similar story since I'm in the mood - when my mom moved to Maine about 25 years ago, she had divorced my dad, remarried, went to college at age 50 and moved thousands of miles away. She wasn't sure she'd done the right thing until she went to see her current lake cottage. As she was leaving the drive with the realtor a puff of wind blew the snow from the roof and it sparkled and blew past her and she said it was that moment she knew it was the right thing to do. So... we are now finalzing the contract for the land and have visited again with the builder and I'll have the start of house plans (will be asking for lots of help on here :) starting tomorrow. I thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for your thoughts. I know some of you think we should have taken the house but it had so many obsticles and the fact that my son who is only 8 would not be able to play on the road due to the fast and high volume of traffic whizzing past at 60 mph plus several acres of bottom land which would be unusable I know this is the right thing to do. It might have been different if we were in a larger city but we're looking in a very rural area and there just isn't much to choose from. So.... I'm excited and nervous but feeling more positive about this than I have in a long time. Thanks again, Sunny

You've eliminated the dining room and created a small breakfast nook without its own windows. Even if future owners convert the office back to a dining room, they'd have to squeeze past that tight little nook just to bring food to the dining room. You seem to want to create a kitchen tucked away from the living room, which makes your retrofits of that space invariably awkward for most future buyers. (I know...it's your "forever" home. But a lot can happen over a lifetime. I'm on my 3rd "forever" home, and I sincerely believed each one was perfect forevermore...at first.) Try not to get too hung up on creating your dream vision...what you are doing to that kitchen/dining area may make the house into a white elephant that is difficult to sell. I know it would be a dealbreaker for me, unless my husband agreed to spend $80-100k to gut and rebuild the kitchen into something that probably would look like the original kitchen from the original plans. Lastly, you haven't left yourself any wiggle room for future needs. Having eliminated the stairs, you're obviously not going to have a second floor or basement. What if the kids want to play video games while you and hubby have company in the living room? Will the kids have enough room in their bedrooms for a desk and shelves, or will they need a study space? What about a guest room? A play room? An exercise room? Putting back the stairs and a basement would give you options for the future. What about storing the kids' bicycles and sports equipment? Where are you going to store your lawn tractor and accessories? How about expanding the garage to at least 3 bays so you don't have to build a shed that becomes a home to the mice and spiders that will take up residence over the winter? You're building 3800 sf of luxury home without any of the features that would make most people consider it to be luxurious. Again, "forever" homes rarely are forever, so building something others would want to call home is an important consideration, assuming you don't want to keep your house listed on the market for 785 days before that needle-in-the-haystack buyer decides your former home is his new dream home.

I'm currently finishing up my log home construction. The thing is, area prices WILL vary. And perhaps what the log supplier company provides. Mine has provided the logs, the roof, the subfloor, the porch, windows, two of my exterior doors (I opted to upgrade the others), and the drafting work needed to adapt one of their plans to my needs. They were not responsible for any of the log staining, but pointed me at two reputable companies to choose from. My build is 2100 square feet. Anyhow, it's going to depend on your market, your layout, what kinds of finishes you want, and so forth. My contractor charged about double what the price of the shell was - my house is going a little over, not drastically, in part because I wanted quartz countertops, and because I decided to put in a couple rooms in the basement that I was going to worry about later (so as not to disrupt the cats when I do move), and because I will be adding in solar (which I'm contracting for, not the GC). But it all depends on what you what do do, how you want your home to look. There are way more challenges with a log shell. for example, electricians will have to bore through the logs to fish wire. Also cabinetry may have to be very custom, because you can't just hang a box off a curved surface and expect good results. My dad has a log cabin and while the shell was very reasonable, the finishing took forever and was very costly because so much had to be custom. It helps to know in advance where the light switches will be. They will design to pre-drill the logs for any switches, and the outlets in my house run along the baseboard. Obviously, pre-drill by any doors, and on the proper side! As for the kitchen,the exterior wall with the range on it is partially sheetrocked over that section of exterior wall, and they (GC and subs) attached cabinets to that, and did all their wiring so that area can't be seen, and it is effectively like any other house. So you can go IKEA or you can go custom for your cabinetry. (All my internal walls are sheetrock) But you do need to find contractors who know how to deal with the fact that logs, fresh logs, will shrink a little over the first few years. Indeed, my log company insisted I go through GCs that have had prior experience with log, whether their log or someone else's.