Consider putting an exterior door across from the laundry room to open to a patio outside the breakfast room. Consider putting a door at the bottom of the steps to the bonus room. Heat rises, and heated automobile exhaust smells with it. Whether summer or winter, you'll want the better control over your heat exchange and any heat/ac bills. You could put a door (perhaps a frosted glass French door or pocket door) on each/both side of the fireplace to access that hallway behind the chimney. This addresses not only visual symmetry but adds an extra door for sound privacy and potential fire escape access. Rather than make your pantry separate and walled off from your kitchen, you should make your "pantry" a walk thru butler's pantry by increasing the space for the pantry by having less of an indent between front porch and garage. The butler's pantry is a short hallway with floor to ceiling cabinets on both sides through which you may access the dining room directly from the kitchen without going through the living room. You could have an 18" countertop beneath the butler's pantry window and floor to ceiling 18" deep cabinets on the rest of the walls. You could make the built ins on each side of the fireplace be more shallow so they could serve as bookshelves for the living room side and linen and/or shared game/toy storage closets for the children's hall side of the wall. You could save some cost by straightening the exterior walls of the home. If you straighten the back wall of the house, you could add a roofed indoor/outdoor living area -- any combination of pergola w/semi-clear roof and/or sun room and/or open porch and/or screened porch the full back width of the house from the master bedroom wing all the way to the left back corner of the home. You might want to swap the locations of the laundry room and powder room, putting the powder room closer to your master bedroom -- the better to enable both his/her powder rooms for the master bedroom as needed. Flipping the locations of the laundry room and the powder room would also move the smells of the powder room farther away from the door to the breakfast/eating area. You could also make that powder room a 3'-4' wide "L" shape, with the longer side against the master bedroom wall and a pedestal sink in the corner angle of the "L" and the toilet in the short part of the "L", enabling you to have more room in your laundry room by keeping you from having an inaccessible base cabinet corner in the laundry room. On the left side of the house for the children's bedrooms, do straighten that left exterior wall of the house (rather than having those unnecessary angles at the front and back corner. Then, rather than three small bedrooms, build two larger bedrooms with a bath-and-a-half and the closets for the bedrooms between them. More sound/privacy issues addressed. (Depending upon the gender of your next child, you could make one of the children's bedrooms larger than the other. As the eldest child becomes a teen, the bonus room above the garage could become an extra children's bedroom.) The bath-and-a-half would be three small connected rooms: a single shared bathtub w/shower in the center room accessible from each side via a powder room, each of which would be accessible from one of the children's bedrooms. Then add a larger closet for each of the children's bedrooms between that bathroom (bath-and-a-half) interior wall and the children's hall wall. (House rules: everyone rinses out the shared tub/shower after each use and no child leaves anything in the tub room other than their towel drying on their assigned towel rack on the back of their own powder room door and/or exterior wall and no one ever leaves the doors to the tub room locked from inside unless they're actually in the tub room.)

shead - I'm going to post a few "hacks" I did. Maybe they have some merit, maybe not. HOWEVER, I need to mention something else. We asked ARG if it is possible to add a window from kitchen to see into side parking/garage/play area. In our current house, we use our kitchen sink window that looks into back yard, patio, garage, etc.. to view the kids riding bikes, playing in treehouse, grill, etc... It's a small window, but in our current situation it is invaluable. Given the amount of time we spend in the kitchen, the ability to see the fenced in back yard, driveway, parking, patio and garage is actually very reassuring as a parent. We picked this house over another when we purchased, for this very reason - as we could work in kitchen and watch small kids at same time. We realize in another 10-15 years, this may not be as important. The new build is a different animal with the terrain in that the play areas will be in the rear - BUT also on teh side of the house with the garage. This is why we asked ARG if possible. He put a very clever change in and provided a conceptual drawing. He pushed kitchen wall out 2 feet, then pulled back landry/pantry wall 2 ft, creating a 4 ft difference - enough for a window. Here is his idea. The net change to the sq ft is almost 0.

Traditional ? you mean true divided windows where each piece of glass was installed between wood muntins? I can't imagine you could even buy a window like that...maybe at a salvage shop. My experience is with Anderson 400 which offers is the look of true divided windows, are energy efficient, and avoids the snap in/snap out vinyl grids, that break and leave holes in the window frame. K H, tell your husband to take a look...he needs an introduction to muntins in modern age. He won't freeze with these. My neighbor mowed his lawn last evening while we were having guests for dinner. I shut the windows, closed the slider (Anderson as well) and it was like turning off the t v.

@Nicole Hodsdon, last anecdote, I promise. Our nearest neighbor is an old farm about half a mile south on the 'kitty-corner' corner. It had been owned by a common rural type - a crotchety eccentric. He completely encircled his boundary with trees over the time it took us to build ours (weekends over five years). He passed away a few years back and it is now an Airbnb, but we don't ever realize it's rented, lol, unless they wander over to see our horses. As for the house down the valley, a few more have joined it. I have come to realize it's nice when our power goes out to know whether we should check the circuit breakers or it's a valley-wide problem. And lights on a snowy evening are rather a pretty thing. Last, solar power wasn't much of a thing when we bought our land but luckily we planned for it in siting. We use it for our outbuildings and hope to add it for the house in the near future. Best.