Oh, dear! Maybe some of these 'powder rooms' need a copy of the book my DS's psychiatrist SIL gives to young children. Title is: "Everybody Poops". Reminds me of an adventure a friend had while traveling by car in a rural area of Spain. She had some gastric distress and was in dire need. Her DH stopped in front of a modern home. My friend rang the bell. Lady-of-the-house answered. Friend asked if there was a 'bathroom' she could use. Lady proudly showed her three rooms with tubs and showers. Friend was dying. Finally the homeowner said, "Oh, you need the TOILET!" Time to take the pantaloons off the table legs, folks. The Victorian Era is O-V-E-R. Let's retire 'powder room' while we're at it.

As stairs to the basement drop, the space over is called "headroom". To figure out how much headroom you have at any point along a staircase, multiply the number of steps you have gone down by the riser height of your staircase then subtract the thickness of the flooring, floor joists, and ceiling sheetrock. Here is a diagram to help... Typically you will need to have about 11 steps down before you have sufficient headroom to stand upright. In your diagram above, you could definitely turn the storage area into a utility room and use the current utility room area for a mud room with a door between the two located next to the garage wall. There would definitely be plenty of headroom beneath the floor by that point. The spot RIGHT where you have the words "stair line" would likely have a sloped floor but it would probably only extend about 2 feet into that space so you could put a regular height countertop and a false front cabinet there and use it as a drop zone. Alternatively, you could just continue the stairs on towards the right another 4 or so steps and put the landing beneath where the word "Work" in workbench is. If you waited to make the stairs turn until you reached that point, you could turn the entire utility/storage area into one big mudroom/laundryroom and not worry about sloping floors anywhere. Probably wouldn't want to put the washer and and dryer into the corner where the "workbench currently is" because of the need for drainpipes. But other than that, you'd have a free hand. Of course, this would change how the basement rooms would have to be set up but... Then again, depending on how you plan to use your basement and how easy you want access to it from the main floor of the house to be, there is yet another possibility. That is, turn the stairs around by 180 degrees and start them over where the work bench is. By the time they reached the hall, you would have plenty of headroom. You could probably even shift that little closet toward the garage so that it sits over the stairs tho it would have a sloped floor. But, you could put angled shoe storage on the sloped closet floor and make a positive use of that space.

Thanks! I love how bright and crisp the board and batten looks, and it definitely gives you a lot of bang for your buck. Pipdog, please post pictures of your board and batten in your entry foyer. I'd love to see it. I got the rug on Overstock. It's an indoor/outdoor rug and works great in that space bc it's really low maintenance and a nice size. The one thing that I messed up on with the rug is that it's actually slightly too big for that space. Well, it fits exactly, but for the air vent, which I forgot to account for. I don't know why our builder made some air vents flat and flush to the ground and others like the one in the powder room where they stick up out of the floor. Anyway, if you can see in the bottom left hand corner, the rug curls up slightly against the air vent. I've been trying to come up with a solution for this, including binding the rug to make it a tad smaller. Oh well. Funny you should mention Jonathan Adler. I love his design style, his happy chic aesthetic, and so many of his products.

My favorite paint colors are Behr Honey Infusion, Behr Honied White and Behr Yucca White. Honey Infusion is a great yellow based neutral which worked to lighten up a red and brown guest room. Honied white was used after the walls were painted with Killz twice to lighten up a bedroom in med blue and puke green. Yucca White was used on the master bedroom gray headboard wall after it had been Killz.