Thanks for the feedback everyone! A little more information, we live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the local building department allows us to only have an engineers stamp, it isn't required to have an architect. Additionally, our builder (while not an architect) has a lot of experience drawing up plans, and if we could find a floor plan that only needed some modification then he could draw up the plans. Maybe we will end up going to an architect after all, however at the moment I'm just trying to collect some floor plan options to see if we can avoid it. Ideally, we are looking for a single story home that has a large great room, windows in the kitchen, 3-4 bedrooms and about 3000 square feet. We don't need a seperate dining room, or formal living room, though if a plan has a dining room we will turn it into an office, or some sort of other "flex" space. Thanks!!

I am so sorry for you and your family experiencing such a traumatic event. I see in your Ideabooks, exterior elevations that seem to lean to a two story farmhouse kind of style. Of course, you need a licensed architect to bring your new hopes to fruition. However, you can do some good homework first. Start a collection of pictures from Houzz, magazines, home tours and get a large 3-ring binder and save as many hard copy pictures as you can to help “communicate” these looks to an architect. This is very helpful. Your architect will need a survey of your property and a trip to your site to help determine “siting” and then h/she can begin designing rooms and overall layouts for your new home. There are a thousands of decisions you will be making over the span of many months so having as much definition as possible will help ease that crunch. Start also interviewing architects and vetting their references. You want some competent but also someone compatible with your personalities. You will be spending a lot of time with him/her so make sure it feels right. I have developed a document I call “New Homebuilders Checklist” that I would be happy to share with you. It will give you a kind of roadmap of how many items are coming toward you. Just email me at manganflo@gmail.com and I will send it to you. Hope it can help.

Sounds like a gorgeous home. Function informs form. You are going to need some type of lighting at night when the sun won't help you out through your lovely windows. The traditional fussy chandeliers are not as popular as they once were. There are so many options available now. It's hard for us to recommend a style without seeing photos and knowing what type of style you are after. I like to point people toward Visual Comfort & Co at Circa Lighting just because the quality of light from those fixtures is extraordinary. I wouldn't skip putting in lighting in all those places, but if you pick similar styles, then they should blend. No one really looks up at your light fixtures much, to be honest, so it's the effect of the light itself that is critical to get right.

If you can't match the MATERIAL then match the COLOUR. A 'continuous' floor material isn't necessary. But a continuous COLOUR of floor is. You can put down 'brown' tile to match the brown 'wood' in the rest of the house. It can be done easily and without much effort. I tell people to pick their three favourite wood floors (grab samples) and then go TILE shopping. Find the BEST colour match (stone, ceramic, porcelain, cork...whatever). When BOTH are installed you will have a floor that LOOKS continuous. And that's all that matters.