Your home is Federal style, I believe. Maybe Georgia Colonial?? Either way, it MUST have grilles!!! I think the balance of the windows as drawn is just right, and I also think the second floor windows are big enough for the room size you mentioned. You might be able to get away with less window lites/bigger panes, especially on the front door. I think the door and garage panes may be too small/too many?? I would lose the transoms as well and go with a single or double hung in the same height as drawn. Maybe you could have the same height triple windows as drawn but without the transom in a 4 lite over 4 lite. That will give you somewhat bigger panes and still be classic. this georgia colonial linked has 4 over 6, but the windows may be taller than those on your home?? the 4 over 6 looks nice on this house. either way, i think the symmetry of the doubles centered over the triples is just right. i would not mess with that layout Here is a link that might be useful:

May I suggest that you check out a book from the library by Sarah Susanka entitled, Creating the Not So Big House. The next to the last chapter is titled, Creating the Dream House. In 1999, Sarah's architectural firm designed a 2100 sq. ft. dream house for LIFE Magazine. This house was built in Minnesota for a hypothetical family of four in two versions, a scaled down version and a more expensive version, using the same basic floor plan. She discusses what was done, construction and design-wise, to reduce cost but provide a distinctive look and deceptive space-enlarging features. Some examples are as follows: 1. Standard materials were used inside and out in the less expensive version. To quote the author, "Interest and spatial variety were introduced with color and lowered soffits--elements that are relatively inexpensive but have significant impact." The house really does look architecturally interesting, not like a cheap track home. 2. There are almost no walls downstairs, mainly support columns, to open up the downstairs. 3. The front door is exactly opposite the back door, thus visually extending the sight lines. One is also able to see diagonally across the downstairs. 4. The more corners a house has, the more expensive it is to build. The foundation of the main portion of the cheaper home has four corners, a connecting section to the garage, and the attached garage. I really learned a lot from just this one chapter. As far as what personally has worked for me, here is some feedback. When our two sons were growing up, our home was 1900 sq. ft. with no basement but some storage space in the attic. The size worked fine for us as a family and as empty nesters. As a widow, I down sized to a 1475 sq. ft. patio home and would not want to go smaller. Both homes were one story (I hate stairs), contemporary, had vaulted ceilings, and very open floor plans, and rooms serving multiple purposes. For example, none of the bedrooms in either house had typical bedroom furniture. For example, the master bathrooms in both homes have been large and had built-ins for storing all clothes so that the master bedroom serves more as a sitting room. The master in my current home has a hide-a-bed sofa. I sleep in the small bedroom across the hall. The bifold doors were removed from the closet in that small room so that I have my computer, file cabinet, and built-in desk in that alcove so that it also functions as an office during the day. As Sarah Susanka advocates, both of my homes were selected on purpose to be somewhat smaller so that the funds were available to have a more interesting house architecturally and in the interior design.

Thanks for the ideas and questions. Sorry it has taken me so long to respond. I’m reworking my plan and really trying to take Marcolo’s ice-water-stone-fire into consideration while doing it. I’m probably not going to be able to do much more work on this until after Thanksgiving. I will probably start a new discussion with my new layout sometime after the holiday. I’ll post a link here when I do so, hopefully, you all will pop into the new discussion and give me more of your great insights. Individual responses to you all, below. I fear my responses sound argumentative but I don’t mean them that way. I just don’t understand where you are coming from and possibly need more clarification to help me see what I’m missing. Thanks again: hollysprings said: It's confusing as to what area is ''kitchen''. Is it the laundry area? If so then more than half of your appliances arent actually in the kitchen. Is it the area at the top right? Same thing. You've got stuff that you need that isn't where you need it. Either way, I don't think that takng down the wall is doing you any favors if it leaves the whole house so ill defined. @hollysprings: Right now the laundry room is just a big catch-all room which also tends to collect clutter (which drives me batty) and traffic route. If I had a use for the extra space in the laundry area, it would make sense to keep it but I don’t. I don’t sew or do any crafts that would require me sitting in a separate room to do. At 8X16 it's really just a big, wide hallway that is almost as big as my cramped 15.5x10.5 kitchen (see photo in one of my posts above). So it makes more sense to me to eliminate the big hall and put that space in the kitchen where I need more of it. Or do you mean the wall we’re taking down in the picture above, between kitchen and dining room? I don’t understand why that’s not a good thing. The kitchen is too small to expand or make many changes to the current layout, feels cramped, and the dining room is too small to be very useful either. It seems that I then just have two rooms that both function poorly. What am I missing? ---- aloha2009 said: Have you considered removing the entry wall also, since semi-imposing on access to the front door would happen only when you are seating a full 12 people (3-4x/year), I think that would open up some options for you. It would really open up the entryway, unless you are against that. I'm not sure why you are against having your stove be a focal point. Many, many,kitchens make the stove/vent the focal point which looks great! My current kitchen the frig is the focal point. I've yet to find one kitchen pic with that. I understand your love of your windows. I personally am going to add 8-12' of new windows in our kitchen into our medium sized kitchen. With or w/o the new windows I have a functioning kitchen. There's give and take in any kitchen remodel. @aloha2009: I’m not fond of removing the entry wall. I really dislike front doors that just open into the house itself without some kind of separation from living and entry areas. I’d also like to avoid that because I really like the original wood used on the entry side of that wall. It would make me sad to see it go. The prior owners already removed too much of it as it is, imho. I could make the stove/hood the focal point or I could have nice, lighted cabinets in that same location that show off some of my fun collection of serving pieces, pitchers, and my colorful “in-between” dishes. If I have a choice, I’d rather have the latter. I’m not big on appliances as focal points in general. I was really striving for more of an “un-kitchen” look, as much as practical while still having a functional layout. ---- laughable said: It will be really helpful to see your plan on graph paper. It would also be helpful if you labeled your graph paper with letters and arrows in reference to the photos taken. Label your photos: A, B, C, etc. Then label the drawings where the pictures were taken with an arrow showing the direction you were looking when you shot the picture. Like this: A---->, B---->, C----> to help us get a better feel for things. : ) I've popped on and off a few times trying to see where your thread might go and to see if I could offer any help. The one thing that comes to mind is to ask if you can put the washer and dryer anywhere else since it seems to be eating a major portion of your kitchen. Can it go where your coat closet is, or in a bathroom, or in a part of a bedroom, or in the basement (and install a laundry chute)? Anywhere but in the kitchen, LOL. We'll be able to help you more with the graph paper version, surely. @ laughable: After T-Day, I’ll work up something like you suggest with photos and such. Thanks for that suggestion. I’m surprised that the laundry area is bothering people so much. I just don’t see it as an issue. I have no place else on this floor to move it. If we put it in the coat closet, we’d have no place for coats and I see no good place to build a new closet. The bathroom isn’t big enough. I LOVE having it there as it’s close to the bedrooms, close to the kitchen where I spend a fair amount of time, so I never have any laundry piling up. If I moved it in the basement, it would be inconvenient and I know I’d keep forgetting to move the laundry along. Plus, it would mess up the Man Cave. Except for more pantry storage, which I don’t really need, I don’t see what else I would even use that space for. I mean, I guess some of the stuff I do now have in a cabinet in the basement could come up to a pantry area there but this is stuff I seldom use or things like the huge package of Costco paper towels which, because I don’t use them much, takes me about two years to go through. I’m just not convinced that the convenience of having seldom used items closer to kitchen outweighs the huge inconvenience of hauling laundry up/down stairs. Plus, I am in my late 50’s and we hope to age-out here. Carrying the laundry up/down may not be as easy when I’m 80 as it is now. Or maybe doing that will help keep me young, lol. If it helps, we are planning on putting a counter over w/d and then adding some louvered, bi-fold doors to cover the front. Does covering them up help make you more comfortable with placement?

Yes, Benjesbride, there is a main level, which is what I have in the layout, and a lower and upper level behind as well as a fourth level above the kitchen with two more bedrooms and a bath. It does boggle my brain how, even in the 1950s, they built such an awkward kitchen for a 4 bedroom home. There is a lot I love about our home. For the most part, the layout suits our family, and we have entertained large numbers (75+) well, but the laundry room and kitchen are challenges. We have a 1.75 acre lot that back to a nature preserve within 20 minutes of my husband's work, which is quite a find! I'd like to find a way to make this work. And really, if I have to use my original plan, it will still be an improvement over what we have. dan1888, that is really interesting. I will definitely pass that option along to my husband.