Feedback on floor plan
Sumod
2 years ago
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feedback on floor plan
Comments (12)I'm also having trouble reading the plan correctly, so my comments may or may not be appropriate: - First, I'm with bpathhome in saying that the entryway is vastly oversized. This is essentially a hallway, but it's as large as your living room. I'd also go with a straight stair. As it's shown, the little turn looks like something over which people will trip -- or move the stairs to the corner, so that the little turn will work. - At a glance, I'd consider scooting the dining room left into the entryway. This would give you a view of the lovely stairs (which at Christmas would be a focal point with greenery and lights), and it would be a much better use of space. Then I'd bring the garage front /left into what's now the dining room -- but keep the side entrance so you don't have the garage door as a front-yard focal point. Given that you're looking at an oversized garage (why?), you could have one driveway with two cars turning left into the two-car garage and one car going straight into a single garage straight ahead of the driveway. Dividing an oversized garage cuts down on its massive appearance. - Or you could drop to a two-car garage and have nice big windows in your kitchen. As your kitchen is drawn now, it will be a bit dark. - Your plumbing is strung all over the house -- kitchen in one corner, laundry way over by itself, master bath as far from the kitchen as it can go. This is an expensive choice. If your plumbing can "back up to" other plumbing (i.e., if the kitchen and the master bath can share a wall), you'll save quite a bit. It's cheaper NOT to need to run pipes all the way across the house. Also walls that contain water must be thicker than plain walls; thus, keeping water in only a few walls saves you on space. Finally, if you have water pipes everywhere, you have more potential spots to leak. Consolidating your plumbing would be a huge improvement; and don't neglect "stacking" your upstairs baths above the kitchen or another bath. - Still kind of on the subject of plumbing, your laundry is placed in an inconvenient location. Most people like to have the laundry adjacent to the bedrooms (where the dirty clothes tend to be discarded), or close to the kitchen (where people spend the day). You're going to grow tired of carrying baskets across the house and down that little hallway. Your laundry room is fairly large, but you don't have any space for folding clothes. For so much space, you can have a more efficient room. - Is your pantry wide enough to allow storage on both sides? If not, I'd steal a bit from the dining room, which looks plenty big, to make this happen. - Why two doors out to the back? Doors are more expensive than windows, doors are less energy-efficient, and doors are easier to break into. I'd go with a bank of large windows and one single door to the back porch. - I can't read the dimensions on the master bedroom, but it looks like lots of wasted space at the foot of the bed. You can't really put furniture there. - Will the living room TV be on the wall shared between the master and the living room? If so, be sure to insulate well to avoid the TV keeping people in the master bedroom awake. - Is that the master bath, and then the master closet? I'd reconsider this. Corners are prime space -- they allow you to have nice windows on both sides. Light coming in from two sides is always nicer than just one side, and they make a room more comfortable and spacious-feeling. I'd not waste a corner on a closet. - On that same subject, I'd add windows to the back wall of the master bedroom. - I hate those double-doors. Think through this: You enter the room, push open the two doors, and reach for the light switch . . . where is it? It's behind the door. So you must enter the room, close the door and feel behind the door in the dark to locate the switch. Why? Because electrical items tend to go in before the doors are placed. As first-drafts go, it's okay, but it's time for revisions!...See MoreRequest for Feedback on Floor Plan
Comments (3)@chicagoans You make an excellent point about that bedroom. I will definitely make that change in my next revision. Having the master so close to the kitchen has been a slight concern of mine but with our budget I don't think we can add more space between the two. Will ponder over this some more... As for more info: Currently it is my wife and her disabled brother (blind). We do plan on having a few kids after we build the home (at least that is the current plan). We are also wanting a unfinished basement to add on square footage later. And I can pretty much guarantee we will be having my wife's parents living in the basement in the next 5 years after build is complete. The recession pretty much wiped out all there life savings so I need to be prepared to have space for them (thus the unfinished basement). We are still searching for the perfect lot but we just fell in love with this floorplan. We will probably build on 1-2 acres in middle TN. As for budget, we would like to keep it around 300k with moderate finishes around the home (i.e wood flooring, basic carpet in bedrooms, no crown molding) with most of the money going towards the kitchen. We would rather spend our money on things in the home that will be very hard/expensive to change later. Thank you for your input!...See MoreDesign feedback on floor plan for new build
Comments (23)Is the house oriented towards the road with the garage "poking out" in front? Garages pushed out in front tend to overshadow the house and become the focal point. Likewise, the long, narrow entry (with a view of the side of a kitchen cabinet ahead of you) isn't a welcoming view. However, once you're inside the house, it's a nice little layout. With a "dead end living room", you're able to fit in lots of comfortable furniture, and I like that you'll have natural light from two sides. I like the arrangement, but I would want a fireplace somewhere in the room ... or perhaps a wood stove. Because the dining room serves as a hallway to the living room and because it holds the only door to what I think is the back yard, you're only going to be able to use a small table. Is this an okay thing for you? I don't see it as a make-or-break; I'm planning on a small table, but we'll have a gate leg table behind the sofa, which we can pull out and use when we have large indoor gatherings. I don't see much space for books, games, etc. in the public spaces. I'd consider adding a set of shelves across the whole dining room -- I'm thinking of the very popular squares-bookcases that you see everywhere these days. This would give you mega-storage ... and you could continue it on into the living room (maybe at a shorter height) as a built-in seat and/or something for "under" the TV. The kitchen shape looks fine, though I agree with the above poster that your appliance layout needs some work. In general, you want to keep things moving in a straight line: Storage of food ... food prep, which includes the sink ... cooking of food ... serving of food. You'll want to serve from the bar that overlooks the dining room, so it makes sense for your "cooking flow" to work counterclockwise. Your kitchen doesn't have great storage, so the good-sized pantry is essential. Since that pantry door is going to stay open pretty much all the time, I'd consider using a pocket door. I'd always rather have a large pantry instead of a large laundry -- as long as you have room for the machines and an area for "waiting baskets", you're fine with laundry; it's one of those places in a house where junk accumulates to fit the available space. Idea: How about opening up the laundry and pantry as one long, narrow room? Moving on to the laundry, I would shift the machines to the wall where the hot water heater is now so that the dryer can vent directly outside. Of course, that creates a new problem with the laundry "backed up to" a bedroom -- and you have noise issues. Maybe the machines under the window? Walking "through" this kitchen to reach the bedrooms doesn't bother me. The entire kitchen is located to the left, so it's more like you're walking PAST the kitchen. In another layout, this might bother me. I would flip the whole secondary bathroom -- meaning move the toilet and sink to the opposite wall. Why? Because then the door would be moved a few feet to the side, and it would be "hidden" from the public room's view. Both bathrooms are minimal in size, and that's a bad thing. You have no storage -- no place for a hamper, to store towels, to store anything beyond an extra roll of toilet paper. I'd make the whole house a couple feet longer; or I'd even steal a foot from each bedroom, if necessary to make the bathroom comfortable. Still on the subject of bathrooms ... you have four rooms in this house that use water, and they're spread across the whole house. The most economical plans arrange the bathrooms, laundry room and kitchen so that they're "backed up" to one another. This means shorter plumbing lines, less expense, and a smaller potential for leaks in the future. Does this have to happen? No, but you're clearly looking for an inexpensive house here, and that would be one way to keep the budget in line. I'd definitely turn the linen closet towards the bathroom/bedrooms rather than the kitchen. I don't have any problem with a potential child's bedroom being "far" from the parents' room. First, in this house "far" isn't really all that far. Second, you're going to hear the child, and you'll be plenty close to respond to him or her. I like that the children's rooms are placed away from the living room, so they'll have quiet to sleep. The bedroom to the right is going to have a problem with the door banging against the closet door. I'd consider a sliding closet door. The bedroom to the right is forced to have a smaller closet because of the need for the door's swing. How would it work to place the closet where you have the bed? It'd make for a longer, more narrow room, but it'd take care of the door problem....See MoreFeedback on floor plan of proposed addition?
Comments (15)I thought the same thing as Virgil on the hallway, but having a desk there by the window near the bedroom at the front of the house makes sense. Instead of placing a new piece of storage furniture in that hallway like you mentioned, I'd build a storage closet that would open into the hallway. (Right beside the closet in the bedroom in the front of the house.) That's wasted space anyway. And you could store office-type stuff in there since it would be close to the desk. Or you could do open bookshelves instead. I'm not sure the expense of moving the doorway of the existing bedroom is justifiable. Unless the door is in the way of the laundry closet across the hall. Other than that, I like it....See Moremainenell
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2 years agoMark Bischak, Architect
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