Floor Plan Feedback Please!
Emma Tianga
2 years ago
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Mrs Pete
2 years agolast modified: 2 years agoEmily
2 years agoRelated Discussions
Floor Plan feedback Please
Comments (3)We are a family of 3 (my husband, my daughter who is 5), going to be 5 in a few days (twins are expected). with this plan, we are at maxi. lot allowance. what I like about this plan is it gives everything we wanted. 4 bedrooms, an office/in law unit, a quite/living room, a bigger, open kitchen.What I don't like is that it is a little different than most of the house floor plan where you can see the great room right away when you enter the house. I am a little concerned that it may not feel so open when you enter the house. We plan to have a skylight at the entry hallway, put a big art/wall mural on the wall of dinning room. this way the entry will be bright and there will be a focus point which is the art on the wall. Another concern is the dinning room/area. i have hard time to visualize what it will feel like since there is no window nearby although we will put 2 skylights (one is b/w kitchen and dinning, one is near the wall above the dinning area before entering the bedrooms hallway). what improvement can be done to make the dinning area more pleasant and normal. thanks....See MoreFloor plan feedback please. (crowd-sourcing my house design ftw)
Comments (12)kirkhall the north side/wall is at the top of the drawing, the south at the bottom. (the north arrow is shown to the right of the first floor). The wall facing south is the one with the front door, so its where the sun comes from most of the day. just fyi, there is about 7.5 ft ceiling height 5 ft from the south wall in the master bathroom, and there is a dormer in the center, which adds extra ceiling height (although not where the toilet is shown) (Also the dormers are not very clearly drawn...sorry about that....these are my drawings, so you know...drafting standards are lax, or rather non existent....) having the master suite upstairs in these cape style houses is tricky, in my opinion. the layouts in these houses are really constrained with the reduced ceiling height at those walls. however, the overall style has a lot of appeal for many reasons for us (appearance, energy efficiency, cost to build, etc.) the ridge runs east to west, and there is a lot of height there (entrance to master bedroom, loft overlooking below, and guest bath) I was originally advocating for the master suite on the first floor, for one floor living if necessary. DH has successfully argued for keeping all of the "public" areas downstairs, and "private areas" upstairs. Upstairs will have a cozy feel. He says we can always put an elevator in where the closet by the stairs is (1st floor) if we have too (I bet that's not cheap!). I'm with you on walking into the master bedroom facing the closet. it doesn't seem ideal for sure. I'm open to ideas. just keep in mind, that big window in the dormer on the north wall in the master bedroom looks out over the property and has views of the mountains. I don't want to block it with a closet. kelhuck re point 1) - i didn't even think about that. We toured a house with the stairs arranged just like it, and thought it was great. That's a good point though. I've thought about the stairs quite a bit, but never from that angle (odd in retrospect). They also had a little more space between the stairs and front door than I'm showing. 2)laundry - yeah, this is a big one for me. I go round and round on this:) The trade-off is to just have a laundry closet, but have the laundry upstairs, or put it in the mud-room, have more space, but have to haul laundry up and down stairs all the time. right now, i'm leaning towards not caring if the laundry clutters up the loft a bit, but there is not much room there at all, its only barely works. currently, my washer and dryer are in our garage, which is not conditioned. I bring baskets of laundry back into our bedroom, and process everything there. S, its not far fetched to have a small closet, but the appeal of a little room I can close off is strong. I swear I want a new house just for a space conditioned laundry room:) 3) pretty much, yes. the appeal of timber homes is showing off the structure, those gorgeous timbers. all timber homes I've seen have a least some two story view inside. however, there is strong sentiment on this board against it, that its loud. since I've never lived in a house like this, I'm inclined to listen. its a valid point, especially when its more than just the two of us (guests and/or kids). even just making the open to below over the foyer instead of the tv/family/living room may solve that. I dunno yet. I'll have a chat w/ dh about it later. 4) dont' worry about insulation, the entire house is going to be wrapped in SIPS. initial calcs for the efficiency we are looking for are calling for 10" SIPS, whereas almost everyone uses 6". No worries, this house will be tight (and require mechanical ventilation). we are focusing heavily on the envelope, so our budget is focused on SIPS and windows. I may even hae to sacrifice my nice kitchen initially (blasphemy!) in order to pay for it up front, but we'll see. liriodendron - that's awesome that you are using PV. the price is coming down, so its actually starting to make sense to pay for it, instead of just being for people like dh and me, who just have non-mainstream tastes and interest (energy nuts, sort of:) the property was logged 5 years before we bought it, so it doesn't have many trees (no trees anywhere near the home site) (and its an ugly mess, we've just now started re-planting). the south facing garage roof will have full sun all day. if it weren't for that, we would angle the house more, so the back faces the mountains a bit better, but we didn't want to sacrifice the front/south wall of the house with respect to facing the sun too much. we like PV just cause we think its neat, and we're trying hard to justify it, but it may be a few years down the road before we consider actually paying for it....See MoreFloor plan feedback please!
Comments (9)Thanks for the feedback so far! I was trying to figure out a way to get aonther closet on the main floor too. My thought is that I would keep the broom in the pantry... I also considered moving the mud room door to the left and putting some more storage on the other side of the pantry I will definitely be taking it to the kitchen forum! My husband really like the angled island, i prefer rectangular and would love to see if we could get the main sink out of the island. That is a window in the DR. Our thought is that we would do built in and center seating on in the LR on the TV perhaps adding two small higher windows on that side and then change the single window on the DR to two small windows as well to keep it balanced. We ruled out a two sided fireplace as we felt this gave us a better option to expand the dining room to seat large dinners when needed! As far as entry guests would almost exclusively enter through the front door! I do think we need the second laundry room as I dont want my 18yr old bringing her laundry up to me! That way she can be totally responsible for herself and it would give guests a place to do thier laundry as well. Additionally we want to keep the option to suite the basement in the future (as we are a 10 min walk to down town and university) I was thinking of adding windows along the wall in the game room in the basement. with both front porch and rear garage and porch there arent alot of options for windows. Alternately i considered adding two more closets along that wall for more storage..... Perhaps I could do one closet and one window?...See MoreNew build floor plan feedback please
Comments (48)Wow, a body dryer! That sounds so nice. Off to google... Yeah, I'm pretty excited about that. We are almost empty nesters /close to retirement, and we are planning a house that'll be elder-friendly -- the body dryer plays into that. But it's also just cool. JR, what you're doing is similar to getting an awful haircut and then pulling a few strands into a rubber band, covering it with a bow and thinking no one will notice the bad haircut. Yeah, that's a good analogy. You may cover it up for the day and at first glance it looks okay, but underneath you still have a bad haircut. It doesn't function: you aren't able to style your hair in whatever way you please; you've become a one-trick pony and all you can do is pull your hair back ... or pay more money and get someone to "clean up" the bad haircut ... yet you're limited in what you can do 'cause your hair's now short. Mine has a sliding bar with a shower that can be handheld so that I could have a very low shower (which I wanted) but have it be adjustable for "some day". Yes, that's what I'm planning too. With a handheld model on a bar, you have options. You can shower standing up, or -- if you're sick, elderly, or just lazy today -- you can sit down and still use the same shower head. While we're on the topic of showers, be sure of these basics: - Place the controls in such a location that you can reach your hand in to turn on the water ... without walking in /putting yourself in the path of the spray. - If you're not building in grab bars today, spend the pennies necessary to put solid plywood behind the spot(s) where you would place a grab bar. It might one day save you from ripping out all your expensive tile. - Consider where your towels are going to hang. How many Houzz pix have you seen of lovely bathrooms ... yet the towels are hanging across the room or behind a swinging shower door?...See Moresuezbell
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