Just a thought: Have you considered a totally separate one bedroom house -- efficiency style -- for your MIL so she is your neighbor rather than the three of you sharing a single home?

Yes, we're very aware that our house will be different than the others in the immediate area. Our goal and request to the architects is to have the outside as understated as possible, so it blends into the surroundings rather than screams "look at me!". That's another reason for a one story, to not fall into the McMansion trap that is too prevalent only a few miles away.

As for neighbors, our lot is extremely private. We have two neighbors with any view of our home - on the East, and the SW. The house is set off from the main road by over 400 feet, so it is not visible to anyone other than the two neighbors, the cows, and the Amazon delivery driver.

@suezbell Just a thought: Have you considered a totally separate one bedroom house -- efficiency style -- for your MIL so she is your neighbor rather than the three of you sharing a single home?

-- Indeed we have. The zoning in the area does not allow any detached structures, so this has to be a single family residence, with all portions connected by conditioned spaces (like the link that we have).

1. Exterior wall angles:

With angles designed into the exterior wall -- some parts of the house extend out farther than others -- do those create a shadow on... block for sunlight from reaching ... other rooms.

Will either the garage or the master bedroom cast shade on the living room windows and foyer door that you don't want?

Will the MIL suite cast shade on the window wall of the long hallway defeating the purpose of all those windows or patio doors in that wall?

2. MIL suite rear facing foyer:

It looks as if the space between the MIL suite and the main house is no more than a narrow sidewalk ... is it only a roof or is it enclosed? If it is only a roof and an open sidewalk, that will be awkward in bad weather.

If the covered space between the main house and the MIL suite is enclosed, it is an unnecessarily small hallway while at the same time you end up with not one but two doors taking space on that wall of the larger ?sitting room? of the MIL suite.

IF however, you made that hallway/breezeway between the main house and the MIL an actual room -- a square room -- it could serve as a second -- but rear facing -- foyer for both the main house and the MIL suite. Then you'd only need one door leaving the MIL suite -- it could lead to the rear facing foyer and then beyond ... either to the main house or to the outdoors.

Think of a 6' square room connecting the main house and the MIL suite as a rear facing foyer (or even an 8' square room if you want to add a hat rack and/or hall tree, etc. in the rear facing foyer). The front facing wall of that rear facing foyer would be window(s) and the exit to outside from the foyer would be facing the back of the house.

The door on the left side of the square foyer would lead to the main house ... making the rear facing foyer usable by anyone in the main house. The door on the right side would lead to the MIL suite making it possible to have only the one door from the larger sitting room on that wall -- no need for side by side doors taking up additional wall or walk space.

Totally put a modern home on that site. What sort of exterio surfaces are you planning? Or is this still tbd?

Thanks, I understand better, and will give it some thought.

We're off on our trip to talk to the architects and the prospective builders, and will be out of communication till Sunday - we'll check back then! Thanks so much for all the tips.

Driveway/garage:

If you put a driveway leading to parking on both sides of the house for your MIL convenience, you risk chopping up your view. If you don't, you risk requiring your MIL to walk a long way to her private space even as she ages and has less ability to do so comfortably.

Have you considered creating a "T" shaped home with a car shelter or garage ... or drive thru garage ... in the center on the north side of the house. You could create a large (open floor plan) great room built directly behind the garage, with the great room taking full advantage of the southerly view and natural sunlight .

On the left/east side of the central part of the "T" with the garage and great room, you would create your private wing of the house -- the minimum space the two of you will need as you age in place in your forever home ... what you would heat/cool comfortably all of the time, even if the rest of the house wasn't in use full time. This would include a front foyer left/east of the great room, perhaps with a rear mud room with laundry closets and tool closets behind that and, in addition to bonus room(s) for your own private study/office and/or gym/hobby room, your own master bedroom suite would be on the east side of the house embracing the morning sunlight.

On the right/west side of the house, include the guest bath and bedrooms as well as the MIL suite on the far right side of the house at the end of the hallway ... with a door in the hallway between the two sections for privacy.

That would also remove the "motel" vibe of the long narrow house.

Unlike some others, I'm having a hard time accurately visualizing the house on the lot, or at least to any degree that I trust.

Do you have any 3D views of the house on the lot? These days any architect with his salt will have built a 3D model of the house sitting on the site, even if it's rough.

Heading to the airport, but to answer @Architectrunnerguy - yes, here are some of those views:

That's a big help, at least for me. It looked like from the elevations posted earlier it was a flat roof but the 3D shows valleys and ridges. If it's a sloped roof, I'd get the pitch up and the overhangs to 30-36" for that low slung prairie house look. That's going to require some rethinking however regarding the raised roof/clerestory window feature.

I assume it is designed as a flat roof, with only enough pitch to shed water. I think it would look better with a 3/12 roof pitch and the large overhangs, but I like Prairie and Usonian architecture. I agree with ARG.

We stayed at the property for a few days this past week, getting a better feel for the place, talking to prospective builders, talking to our architects, and getting to know our neighbors better. Most of all, we tried to picture ourselves in the new house as located and laid out by the architects, to see how it would feel to us.

Some of you expressed concerns as to how our house would fit in with the rural/neighboring surroundings. We looked around, and ended up concluding that a modern house, if properly designed and finished, will be beautiful at the location. True, it won't look like anything else in the area, but the surroundings there are not a row of identical cookie cutter houses, with ours being an obvious outlier. Rather, the area is a bunch of buildings scattered at all sorts of random locations and angles to each other, and ours will be just one more random building, that no one other than our immediate neighbors will see anyway.

For what it's worth, one of the builders we interviewed took us to a house that he just completed in Portland. This was a stunning building, a very modern 7,000 sq ft house, screaming modernity at every turn. Think lots and lots of floor to ceiling glass, entire kitchen pre-assembled and shipped from Germany, you get the idea (and definitely at a higher $/sq ft mark than ours will be). What I found interesting was that the house was surrounded on all sides by much more modest houses, ranging from just old to downright decrepit. And unlike our secluded flag lot location, these houses surrounded the modern house on all sides, as well as across the road, making the contrast that much more obvious. So I figured that if these folks feel comfortable building a 7,000 sq ft $4-6M house surrounded by houses that look (or cost) nothing like it, why can't we build something that will stand out much less in comparison?

We still will try to make our house as understated as possible. To answer the question that @scout asked earlier, we'd love to side the house with very dark stained cedar, although cost constraints might steer us to a different material. Still, a dark (almost black) color is what we're thinking, and coincidentally is exactly how this modern house in Portland was done (they of course sprung for clear cedar T&G siding, stained in black).

@3onthetree, we also checked out the driveway and garage access concern that you posted earlier. After an hour or so of maneuvering the rental car all around an obstacle course I laid out, I convinced myself that indeed there is no way to pull into the first couple of spots in the garage without doing a three point turn. That of course is unacceptable, so I spent the flight home sketching alternate concepts, mostly along the lines of what you sketched up above, with the garage rotated 90 deg and the garage doors pointing north. I'm struggling to fit in some of the other rooms that get affected by doing this, so I will post what I'm coming up with and maybe you guys can help me out. And yes, I know that we have architects that should be doing this for us, and obviously we'll challenge them to fix this - but then again, they are the ones who created the original design with the "3 point turn" garage access, so...

I'm also studying and pondering the comments made about view lines. We spent much time looking out from different areas of the future house (yes, I walked around the property and used pavement marking paint to lay out all the rooms on the ground :)). There might be something deceiving about the pictures I posted above, because we kept coming back to the same conclusion, that we do want to minimize and avoid West and SW views - there's just nothing enticing about that direction, and the neighboring houses are relatively close (about 400 feet away). In contrast, when we look South, we look at the wetlands (that's the County term, since they are protected, not to be confused with Florida Everglades). They may not be beautiful, but they are nature, and are full of singing migratory birds, so it's very peaceful and relaxing to look and listen in that direction. Further East is the large pasture I alluded to earlier. Agreed, it is not the "as far as the eye can see" emptiness that perhaps I erroneously implied - but the view in that direction is mostly of cows grazing. The closest visible house is about 1800 feet away, so just a speck.

Here are a couple of photos that might make things more clear - the first is a Google maps view of the area. You can see our property outlined in red, then the major blocks of the proposed house and ADU in various colors, and you can also see where the neighbors are located. See how much closer the W and SW neighbors are compared to the ones at S and SE?

And here is a panorama shot that I took, starting with the small building at west, the neighbors at SW, then the wetlands at South, and the pasture at SE. Not sure how much this helps - it's really hard to convey views through photos.

The point about potential future subdividing and construction is valid, I don't know what may happen there in the future. But for now, as we looked around the property, we kept sensing that our sight naturally drifted towards the south and south east. And that we didn't find anything pleasant to look at on the west and south west directions. So all in all, I don't think that we are robbing any locations in the house of pleasant sightlines.

I still plan to mess around a little with the layout, possibly moving the ADU south (or the guest wing North), as suggested. And I do need to figure out how to rotate the garage. Finally, I agree with the other comment that the drop off area in the front is not workable - you can't really turn a car at such a small radius (maybe our architects own Smart cars). So I think we'll change that circle to two side by side parking spots, that seems like a much better solution.

@3onthetree it still seems that too much emphasis with the original footprint is being placed on putting blinders on the viewpoints.

-- I agree about the "blinders" comment - I want the "focus" to be due S and SE, but I don't necessarily want to have blinders in the other directions. I'll ponder this while I ponder the garage rotation.

Two of the best examples of a modern architectural form in a rustic setting (in my limited experience) is the Jackson Lake Lodge by Gilbert Stanley Underwood and the Craig Thomas Discovery & Visitor Center by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson. The are not houses, but they are man made structures in nature. Take a look or visit them if you can, they are inspirational.

@Mark Bischak, Architect Thanks for that, these are obviously architectural landmarks that were designed by renowned architects. I think our project is in a different league, for a number of reasons (cost and timeline being the primary). Concrete formed by sandblasted plywood to create a faux grain is super cool, but again, outside of our wheelhouse.

I should also add that I am very interested in the comments here on our project, and am very carefully thinking about all the suggestions. But if I didn't make it clear earlier, we are past the SD phase, and pretty deep into CD, which means that major changes at this point will incur major costs and delays. Many of the thoughts discussed here (is this a good piece of land to build on, is this the right style for the property, is this the right size house, etc etc) are things that we considered and made decisions on as part of the design. They may not be the decisions that others would have made, but they are ones we made knowingly :).

So given all this, what I'm really hoping for here for are the "oops" things that if not caught, will make us miserable - impossible-to-access garage layout, difficult to reach light switches, and things like that. Sure, we could have made the house two story, made it rustic, or had a totally different layout - but we didn't, and I feel at peace with those decisions.

Having said that, I continue to welcome all comments, and I do continue to look for anything that we can still change to improve the design - things like window and door sizes and locations, kitchen layouts, HVAC system, etc. So please keep them coming - I just wanted to make it clear that we likely won't be going all the way back to the basic layout of this project :).

I am truly enjoying your thread and your openess to getting the best house possible. I've no doubt it will work well for you and your family when done.

@Mark Bischak, Architect - thanks for mentioning Underwood. His National Park lodges, along with Mary Jane Colter's designs are our inspiration for our CO build - a modern house that still relates to and respects the land around it.

I have read that Mary Jane Colter is a fraud. Here are the real architects:

Here is a good book to read, False Architect: The Mary Colter Hoax by Fred Shaw

Wow, I might put that on my Christimas wish list! DH already gave me a book on midwestern MCM architecture, though. (Last years book was on Stanley Anderson, swoon)

Oh no! So our design motto of "What would Mary Jane do?" will be changed to "What would all these other really cool architects do!"

I'm still working on the issue of the garage reorientation, but wanted to bounce off a proposed master bedroom change. As we looked around the property, we felt that the master bedroom bed would be better oriented if it faced the East, instead of West. That would make for better viewing out the window, as well as address that bad feng shui of walking past the bed when entering the room.

The new design would flip the bed so it's facing the bedroom entry door, and would have us looking out the window mostly to the SE instead of SW when in bed. We'd lose some closet storage space, but I think it should still be sufficient. We're retiring, so who needs more than one outfit, right?

One option would be to get rid of the door in the SE corner to extend the wardrobe further, though we'd the light coming in from the east. We'd also have to change the window to allow emergency egress, but that's not too hard.

Left side is now, right side is proposed. Thoughts on this change?

Think about how often you'll be admiring the view from the bedroom. Our current house has an ocean view from the bedroom, but the shades are almost always drawn (east-facing) and at night, obviously, it's dark. I would much rather have the room function better and let the view from other rooms dominate your design decisions.

I personally think it's a better design as you don't walk into the room into the bed. (I think I had said that already.)

One more thought. Have the bathroom vanity go to the wall. Who wants to clean that small space to the right of the vanity?

Our bedroom had two possible places for the bed:against the wall, facing the door and a closet, or against a window, facing a closet. We placed it under the window, and love it. We wake up in the morning, look up, and see the trees and sky. That is pretty much the only time we are awake in bed that we can see out the windows. Love it.

@LH CO/FL Think about how often you'll be admiring the view from the bedroom. Our current house has an ocean view from the bedroom, but the shades are almost always drawn (east-facing) and at night, obviously, it's dark. I would much rather have the room function better and let the view from other rooms dominate your design decisions.

-- Funny you say that - our current home also has a 180 deg unobstructed ocean view. And because we're on a hill, we actually keep the shades open even at night - and even at night, we can still see the moon, clouds, airplanes, etc. I think that in our new place, with pastures replacing the ocean, we will be able to do the same and still feel very private.

Of course I totally agree, I don't want the view to take precedence over function. But I think that the function of the updated layout feels better, even aside from the improved view.

@cpartist I personally think it's a better design as you don't walk into the room into the bed. (I think I had said that already.)

One more thought. Have the bathroom vanity go to the wall. Who wants to clean that small space to the right of the vanity?

-- Thank you for your comment, and yes, you've pointed out earlier the bad feel of walking right by the bed when entering the room. See, I do listen!

And good catch on the vanity to wall gap! I think that was a leftover relic from when we had the shower in the corner where the closets are now, and failed to adjust it after moving the shower to the new location. Thanks for that!

@bpath Our bedroom had two possible places for the bed:against the wall, facing the door and a closet, or against a window, facing a closet. We placed it under the window, and love it. We wake up in the morning, look up, and see the trees and sky. That is pretty much the only time we are awake in bed that we can see out the windows. Love it.

-- Good point, we also pondered putting a window in the wall above the bed, now that the closets are on the opposite side. Only concern is will there be too much unwanted solar gain, since it's the west facing wall?

Our architects replied to our questions about the garage and said that there is ample room to swing even a full size Suburban into the garage. They drew a sketch to support that argument, which I find a little underwhelming - basically I'd have to bring the car right against the north fence, swing the wheel all the way to the left, barely squeeze by the edge of the hammerhead, and then come into the garage at an angle, straightening out only at the end. On a bad day, I can see broken mirrors or worse.

They also pushed back on our idea of replacing the circular drop off area at the front entry with two parking spots. They drew a sketch showing how a car can turn around in the circle, and said that they think the dining room window would be better suited to look at landscaping than at parked cars. Again, I think their sketch holds up in the strict sense, but falls apart in practice - what if I have two guests visiting? The circle becomes gridlock. And as far as dining room view, I agree with that, so we can put the two parking spots on the East side of the front entry, out of sight from dining room.

My wife and I brainstormed a little bit on how to rotate the garage, which would require a 90 deg turn from the driveway instead of 180 deg - and also add 10 feet to the clearance from the north fence to the garage. A huge improvement in pulling in ability.

Now:

Proposed:

This adds about 100 sq ft to the garage, but I think the old layout was a little tight for opening car doors, and the utility room protruding into the garage was odd. I think I like this a lot better.

What do you think of this?

I mentioned my bedroom layout because view from the bed depends on your habits. I like that your new idea has you walk in and see the headboard.

Can we talk about those closets? What are you planning, for storage, lighting, flat surface, doors, drawers, etc

Personally, I would want the ability to have the vehicle 90 degrees to the garage door BEFORE entering the garage. And I would want three single single car garage doors instead of the single/double combination garage doors.

Can we talk about those closets? What are you planning, for storage, lighting, flat surface, doors, drawers, etc

-- To be honest I feel like we're always playing catch-up, barely keeping up with the next decision to be made so we can get the plans submitted for permitting.. So aside from the general location of the closets, and the idea of using a wardrobe system (e.g. Ikea PAX or similar), we haven't thought about the layout and lighting inside.

Do you have suggestions or thoughts, I'm always curious to see what others have done.

@Mark Bischak, Architect Personally, I would want the ability to have the vehicle 90 degrees to the garage door BEFORE entering the garage. And I would want three single single car garage doors instead of the single/double combination garage doors.

-- I couldn't agree more about the first point, I was thinking that I would really like to be able to have a car parked in front of the garage (without actually driving into it), and not block the driveway. I think that with the rotated garage layout I sketched, which provides 30 feet between the north edge of the driveway and the garage door, that is achievable, at least for shorter cars. I'll have to try it out in a parking lot though to see how realistic that is.

My concern for the "circular" approach is how much real estate it takes. I do like your red turning circle better than the architects, because it does have the car come into the garage straight on, but it requires 60-70 feet of additional driveway, which seems excessive (I thought even the basic hammerhead was far from elegant, but it's required by the fire marshal for fire truck turnaround).

As for the garage door combination, I like the flexibility of the double door because I can park a car in the middle of a two-car space if I want to do major work on it. I do hope to build a separate workshop at some point (depending on how much this house sets back), but for now, I'd like to be able to use the garage for such projects. Perhaps a wider garage door?

My sketch was an attempt to recreate the sketch you posted showing the path of the vehicle. My circle was not meant to be a full circle, only to reproduce the path of the vehicle further out to allow a vehicle to position itself at 90 degrees before entering the garage. Sorry for the poor illustration and confusion.

That makes sense Mark - but with the garage facing West, I'd have to swing that type of a circle or do a three point turn, right?

Be sure you totally understand the design before submitting plans for permits.

FWIW, I much prefer both your revised bedroom design and Mark's garage design with individual doors.

Years ago, I read a blog post on "Life of an Architect" about hatchet bedrooms. Your earlier bedroom design is an example of what Mr. Borson meant by that term. Since then, we've had two architects propose plans with hatchet bedrooms and were surprised by my negative reaction. I made sure our new home will have no bedrooms like that.

As for the garage, I chose to do separate 10 ft wide doors in our attached garage after nearly taking out my car's side window in our temporary home's garage with narrower doors. At 30 ft wide, this two-car garage has sufficient space to access each car. A detached garage/workshop where my husband will park his truck has a 12 ft. wide door.

Good luck with your new home. We are slogging through our build and cannot wait to be finished. Reading your posts about the location, with those photos, has helped me recapture some of my own enthusiasm.

The street isn’t right in front of the north fence, is it? In that case, the front-facing garage might be the best solution. You don’t see it until you drive up to it. You might add windows along the left-hand wall.

Fascinating read about "Hatchet Bedrooms", I'm glad we'll avoid the bloodbath with our new design (or at least we'll see the bloodbath coming ahead of time) :).

I'll have to ponder the 3 10-ft garage doors vs 2 doors. I can see pros and cons to each.

@bpath right, there is no street to the north of us, we're butted up against the neighbors' pasture. And yes, a window or two on the west wall might be nice!

I'm curious how our chat with architects will go tomorrow. They mentioned that any changes at this point will impact schedule (and I assume will have associated fees), which I guess makes sense. But as said above, I don't want to rush forward just to get a poorly thought out design permitted.

Wise advice about not rushing. Our current home has an awful layout of one of the garages and driveway, and sometimes it requires a 5-point turn, even with a small sports car. :( Every single time I back out, I curse the architect. Our house is an architectural showcase, but things like that make me scratch my head. (And potentially, wheels and mirrors...)

-- Good point, we also pondered putting a window in the wall above the bed, now that the closets are on the opposite side. Only concern is will there be too much unwanted solar gain, since it's the west facing wall?

You could do what i did which is put stained glass windows above the bed. Of course you'd need to have a contemporary style window design versus my more traditional craftsman style.

But it really isn't necessary on a west wall. We purposely kept our west wall without windows even though our bedroom could have had windows on 3 sides.

WIth that wall of glass, I don’t think you will need anymore glass. I would extend the windows to meet the wall where the bed is now located. If you keep the exterior door, you could make it a glass door, but I don’t think you need it and I might extend storeage into that space.

Intersting discussion about the hatchet bedroom. However, feng shui principles state that you don't have your feet pointing toward the door because that is how they bring out dead people - so .....

there's a lot of focus around dying in our own bedroom here that is informing some "rules".....

hmmmm,....

For the closet system, take an inventory of the things you keep stored in the bedroom and closets, and how you store them. You won’t have a dresser so anything you keep ”out” now has to go somewhere. Does an open PAX door allow the neighboring doors to open 90° or more, too?

I have not been following this discussion real close, but what was the reason for not placing the garage at the east end of the house to potentially provide a shorter driveway?

However, feng shui principles state that you don't have your feet pointing toward the door because that is how they bring out dead people - so .....

"There's something in feng shui called 'the commanding position,'" Cho explains. "If you're sitting up in bed with your back against the headboard, you would want to be able to see the door without being directly in line with it. Usually that means you're looking diagonally toward the door. That's generally the best position."

@bpath For the closet system, take an inventory of the things you keep stored in the bedroom and closets, and how you store them. You won’t have a dresser so anything you keep ”out” now has to go somewhere. Does an open PAX door allow the neighboring doors to open 90° or more, too?

-- We'll definitely need to look into this more closely to make sure the closets are functional for us. But I figure we can do that later, it's not on the critical path to getting the plans in for permitting. Good point about PAX doors, I think if you open two adjacent doors that are hinged next to each other, the handles will hit. We have them in our current bathroom, and the door hinges are staggered to avoid that.

@Mark Bischak, Architect I have not been following this discussion real close, but what was the reason for not placing the garage at the east end of the house to potentially provide a shorter driveway?

-- We had some earlier efforts to do that, but we always had trouble squeezing in a garage and the workshop on the east side, without having it look too industrial. We didn't want the mass of "utility" elements (garage, workshop) be the first thing we or guests saw when coming to the property.

Idea on counter space for the ADU: In addition to any other improvements you make, please consider a pullout board, probably cutting board type, but it can be used as prep space.

@qam999 thank you, that's a good idea.

We got an updated plan from the architects with all the changes we discussed implemented (hopefully). Some interior details, such as door handing still need to be discussed, we're mostly focused on items that must be resolved before going ,for structural engineering and permit submissions.

By rearranging the garage orientation, we will be able to save a huge 40 year old pine tree in front of the house, which will be in front of the dining room and computer desk locations - much nicer view than the neighbor's fence.

Here's the tree we'll "save" (hopefully):