Most people including myself do not have a lot of tree's to prune. I only have 2 peach tree,s to worry about, my other tree's are already shaped and do not need heavy pruning any more.I do have a few late freeze's in my area. I do prune my peach tree's the open center and shape them for a lot of sun penetration when they are young. When i buy a peach i usely cut the tree down to about 32 inches and then pick-out the new laterals branches.I descard all the flowers the first 2-3 years and continue shaping and cleaning the tree of small branches,tipping-off strong growing shoots during spring and summer. Then in the spring i usely wait till the last frost that(27 degrees and lower)to do the final pruning.When you have a lot of tree's to take care-off you might do it differently.I have other fruit tree,s to fall back on mostly no spray tree's like persimmon,paw-paw, citrus,asian pear and a few others. I believe in edible lanscaping so my tree,s has to look good too. I am working on a 10 year project to get my 21/2 acres out of 5acres in shape and this is on a slope. 3 more years then i am done.(hopefully)

divine_serenity - the other utility closet is actually my master closet. My husband closet has the gun safe storage room. He loves it too and I love that I won't have to look at his ugly safes anymore.LOL MrsPete- The plans are not finalized and still need tweaking. Some labeling is off and room measuring are also off. I'm waiting right now to hear from our designer with an updated plan with fixes. I posted this plan so the OP could see what I took off of her inspiration plans and how we made it smaller. The tiny baths are because that's what our kids wanted. They are girl 13 and boy 11 and already share a bathroom and everyone hates it in our house. They are always fighting who showers first, who cleans what. So to take away all the fighting we are giving them their own bathrooms although tiny. We also do not like J&J baths either. My two kids do not have that loving sisterly or brotherly relationship, as hard as we tried my husband and I failed in that department. Two small bathrooms are better than one shared bathroom in our house. Closets are fine for us. My daughter has a smaller walk in closet right now and it works just fine. I think they'll be ok with what they are given. Now my closet is not right in this plan. It should be 8'x10' and the laundry room the same size. My husband closet is design as a walk through so he can conceal his gun safes. No fireplace? LOL I live in South Texas. That would be a waste of money to have one install down here. It would never get used. I barely even turn on our heater during the winter months. Instead of a fire place we will have built-ins on that wall between the two openings. We like the master bathroom and have no problems with its layout. The vanity will have plenty of storage. .What are you planning on storing in this much larger space? That space is not a room for hiding. It's for storing my husband actual gun safes which are really large and unsightly. He'll also store his work gear in there. He is a federal agent and has way to much gear! Right now we share a master closet and he is over taking my side with his work gear. So my solution is to give him his own closet to fill up and give me my own space, he's not allowed to invade!. Another place pocket doors would be useful: The family room. This is the kind of door that stays open most of the time I'm not to sure what you are referring to? The only door in the family room is the french doors that lead out of the house. Can you enlighten me please. Like I said the plans are not finalized. The kitchen layout is not correct on this plan. If you want we can start another thread about my plans as not to take over the OPs post. I'm open to suggestions but we really need to keep the house under 2400sf this time.

I feel the most important thing you should do is visualize, as well as reherse, how you like to move and function within a home, including electrical switch placement. Sometimes square footage is "wasted" in someone else's eyes, but the feel it gives the home makes it wonderful to live in. A little extra space here and there may also give you room to set up a card table for extra guests if you need extra dining space for special dinners, or to place a sofa bed. I like your version 1 plan the best, but again, you need to determine what would make you happy. (NOT what someone else thinks you should do). Your gut feelings will tell you what is right...for you. We recently built a log home ourselves, and opted for larger rooms, and less of them. Our children are grown, and we chose to have only a large master bedroom and no other bedrooms. It is the most wonderful bedroom to sleep in, and I open the blinds many mornings on the sliding glass door and go back to bed for a while just looking out at all our trees and our land. We have one full bathroom and one powder room. Having a large walk in pantry and a dedicated laundry room was important to me. Our home is about 1700 square feet and has a full wrap around porch. We joke and say we have a porch with a house on it. We use the porch as much as the interior of our home. We have never once felt the need, nor wanted an "away" room, despite raising 5 children. If I want time alone I take a walk. Our children were raised to respect others and tone it down. If they wanted to make noise they did it in their bedrooms or outdoors. We did not encourage TV and they learned how to play creatively.They built tree forts and played bseball (even the girls). We do not own a TV now at all. We live in a friendly climate, and there are trails to hike, rivers to canoe on, and wonderful books to read. If we lived in snow country still, there are places to cross country ski as well. I do have a good sized area that is open to and part of the great room for a sewing machine and some armoirs for storage, or bookcases, once I figure out how I want to do this. It is what would be a "foyer" in some homes. I feel foyers are a waste. Others like them and that is fine. Since my kitties like to build nests on every available piece of fabric, we are going to build a sewing studio onto our barn, but I will always have the inside area for when it is very rainy and I don't want to walk outside, or have something cooking that needs to be watched. In hindsight, we should have expanded the house just a tad to allow for the comfortable use of glass french doors to close it off from pets. Putting a wall in now would cramp the room too much, and besides, I love how it all flows right now, and I refuse to mess up our porch with an addition. If you have children, they can certainly share, but eventually a boy and a girl would need their own room. Same sex children do not ever need their own rooms. There is nothing wrong with girls sharing a room, or boys sharing a room. If you build your house so that you can add onto it in the future, you can start out with one bedroom less, and then add on later if you feel the need. We did not want a "guest" room this time, and yes, we do have guests from time to time. We have a lot of fun, cook a lot of good food, and no one has once complained about the air mattresses in the great room scenario. Someone not comfortable with this arrangement does not belong here. That's why there are hotels. Because of the way we did the layout, the house feels huge to us, and is homey and relaxing. I dislike homes that have a stuffed feeling because too many rooms were crammed into the floor plan. We did build this house so we can age in place. Putting in 36 inch doors instead of 32 does not add much, if any, cost. Because we didn't cram, we have a bathroom large enough to move a wheelchair in, and a huge shower. I haven't decided if I want a tub. It's rarely that I would use one, but the space is there. I just need to decide if I'd like a nice makeup station or a tub. I think I'd rather have the grooming area and buy a hot tub. My husband and I are people that think about what WE want, and have never once cared about some vague resale. There is always a market for a well thought out and constructed home. Don't cut costs here. We have built and sold 2 other homes that did not go along with the neutral mentality, and sold both in record time. Basically what we hear when someone comes into our home is "This is awesome!". No one has ever said "what, no bathtub?", or "ewww......no guest room or away room?!". They do comment on the nice laundry room or how they always wanted a large walk in pantry, which I could not have had if we had added extra bedrooms. I get to look outside instead of walls leading to extra rooms. We do hear, "do you mind if I spend the night...I don't mind the couch." Think carefully about what would make you happy and then do it without second guessing. If children may be in your future, by all means plan for them. If you are not sure about all the built ins, have pieces made that can be removed and put elsewhere, or have some beautiful free standing pieces made unti you live in the house a while and see what you want. What has surprised me the most was how I changed my mind about a few things, and am glad I didn't have them done initially. The hardest part for me was going through the process of getting rid of stuff and keeping only what I really loved or needed. I wouldn't trade having less wall space and more windows for anything....and I find I don't miss all the extra "stuff". Opinions on floor plans are fun to get and can give you some great ideas. In the end though it is up to you to decide on which side you want your range and how much counter space you feel there, etc. Incorrect switch and outlet placement can be very annoying, so think those out carefully as well. For some reason I found I like my range to the left of the sink, but I had to carefully think this out. I built huge cardboard boxes and labeled them refrigerator, stove, etc. and moved them around as soon as we were "dried in", and before we did anything final. I also propped plywood "counters" on saw horses in between the "appliances" to make sure I had the amount of counter space I wanted. I ended up making some changes, but it saved thousands doing it at this stage, and I am happy, which is most important. No kitchen designer can take the place of you rehersing some things. Also accept that no matter how carefully you plan and think this out, there will ALWAYS be some things you would have done a little differently after living in your house a while. The upside is that with this amount of planning and thinking things out, the changes you would have made if you had a crystal ball at the time, are so minor it doesn't matter. Build a little flexibility into some areas if you just can't decide for sure on something immediately. You have too much going on right now to pefectly decide every last thing. You may also find trhat with money saved by not adding something to your home just because that's what you "should do" for "resale" may most likely leave a litte extra cash for something else that you truly want and would love. For me that thing was a 48 inch ruby red BlueStar range and a beautiful matching french style exhaust hood that actually does what it's supposed to do, and would otherwise have been out of reach financially (at least for a while). Boy do I enjoy this range! You say you may sell in the future. Build the house as if you were never planning to move. No one can predict the future and you may want to, or have to, stay in this house "forever". In other words, live in the moment, and do not borrow a cent more than you absolutely need. The interest, and the possibility of circumstances changing and making that loan a burden, are not worth it. I cannot emphasize that enough.

Yowza! That's a bigger change than we ever made. We went from 2000 to 900 one time and I'll tell you what we did that you shouldn't do. We were only going to be there for a few months while we built a house. That few months turned into 2 years when the developer turned out not to have done everything he needed to do to get the land ready. We didn't get rid of anything. Our rent house was 2 bedroom and also no garage. We put everything in storage except clothes, toys, beds, sofa, table and chairs, 2 dressers. In the kitchen I kept dishes & silverware for 4, crock pot, skillet, dutch oven, sauce pan, and a few basic utensils. After all, we were going to be driving 45 miles to our build every day and wouldn't be home, or so we thought. As the months went by and we saw that the county was in no hurry to approve the plat our land was in, we began to need some of the stuff in storage. But it was packed in there so completely that everything had to come out to get anything. So we brought it all into our little 900 house. Then it was like living in a 2nd hand furniture store, with a path through the middle. But again, we only thought it would be a few more months. If I had it to do over again, and wanted to keep stuff for a 2000 sq ft house, I would rent 2 storage units, both climate controlled. Ours wasn't and our furniture suffered for it. An antique table crazed and the veneer warped. I would put the furniture in one unit and the boxes on shelves in the other, labeled so you can get the stuff out when you need it, or exchange winter for summer stuff. You can stack Rubbermaid totes to the ceiling, but if you need the one on the bottom, it would be easier if you invested in some metal shelving to line the unit for your boxes. I would have been much happier if I had been living 2 years with less stuff. Not only was I miserable when at home, and I was a SAHM, we eventually had to go to a lawyer to get the developer moving so we could build. It would all have been easier if that home had been a haven instead of a hoarder's pit.