Hi, Judy! I've been in the car most of the day, so I wasn't able to thoroughly reply sooner. I'm glad my drawings were helpful to you. You had some questions. First, I think the second floor deserves the chunk of the budget in your house--dormers, a shower-- so I encourage you to keep your eye on that prize. ...what can I do with the screened in porch? Would you leave it? Or what about if that becomes my laundry room? For now, I'd leave it. Maybe in construction phase 2 you could turn it into a laundry room. What program did you use... Just MS Paint ...what about extending the kitchen into the porch area and just making it a complete working kitchen and using the dining room as my main eating area? I'm not a professional, but it's my suspicion that absorbing the screened in porch into the kitchen is a lot more expensive than your budget can handle. I would also remove the wall between the new living room and dining room and really open it all up. I caution you against totally opening that wall between the proposed dining and living rooms. You'd effectively be turning your 3 bedroom house into a two bedroom house with a disproportionately large living space. If you want openness between the dining and living, I recommend an opening that can be easily framed in and drywalled. If you need to sell, you can stage the bay window room as a dining/living space and the backroom could still be closed up and marketed as a bedroom. One more advantage to this idea is less floor or ceiling patching. You're going to have the back of your sectional there anyway, so I'd save the $$$ and keep the wall. I would really love a fireplace!! What about a nice corner one somewhere? I've had a corner fireplace and I am vehemently opposed to them. YMMV I LOVE the washer and dryer where you put it!!! And what if I removed the wall between the living room and small den and make the living room bigger and take the other part and turn it into a mud room/washer dryer drop off area? I love your enthusiasm for the washer/dryer idea, but I don't like it. I think a better long term plan would be to turn the screened porch into a laundry room. Deleting the hallway and removing that load bearing wall... these things would kill your house IMO. The first floor bedroom is very valuable. At some point your girls will probably share the upstairs and you'll be in the main floor bedroom. I would preserve it. I redrew your floor plan with structural changes in pink. I re-thought your kitchen and to avoid a change to your exterior window you could move the screen porch door all the way toward the front of the house. The fridge could g on that open end of the kitchen making it easier for door swing. If budget allowed further kitchen modifications, you could move the sink to under the window next to the fridge:

What do you all think about having fridge, cooktop and sink on that side where the sink is now. Would that be much inconvenient? That way the peninsula can be left alone for seating and prepping. Maybe we can place the prep sink there. I think it may work if you can leave enough room for prep b/w the main sink and the cooktop. I don't think it would be efficient to get your food from the fridge, either go the main or prep sink to wash, prep on the peninsula and go back to the other counter to use the cooktop. But if the heaters can't be moved then having the cooktop in the mudroom area with a narrow aisle would be insecure. In that case I'd suggest either mama goose's Sunday at 1:44P layout or something like this with a range

Yes and yes. Basically anything so my kids dont have to go outside and get eaten by bugs or laundry get rained. Just want access from the inside. I thought along those same lines. Opening up my room that joins the Laundry room. We called numerous contractors and all seem to come up with the same...55k not counting/considering the structure engineer, planner and every Tom Rick and harry that wants a chunk out of my money. I said forget it, considering that I bought my house for 110k and to knock down a wall or cement a wall to enclose it would be almost half of the cost of the house???!!!

I would be inclined to slide the w/d over to the right so that it was just inside the door, then have full height cabinetry about 24" deep across the far wall. The diagonal part would be great for the Dyson. That would allow 12" doors to open fully by the washer. If you can live with the backpacks on the hooks, you could instead leave the washer in place (or only scoot it over 18") and build cabinetry around it to the ceiling.