A couple thoughts: - You have quite a few unnecessary bumps around the perimeter; these will drive up the price of the house (and complicate the roof line) without adding anything to the function. - I don't get the point of the messy kitchen. I mean, I understand the concept, but this one seems too many steps away from the "real kitchen" for efficiency, and it's right by the front door. It's also very far from the dining room. - I'd move the master bath door to the left ... this would move the door further from a sleeper's head and would place you a few steps closer to the closet. - The great room won't have a lot of space once you allow walking aisles on both sides. - Where will the TV be placed? - Is the screened in porch the largest room in the house? - With all the friends and relatives you mentioned, is that dining room big enough?

Not to be mean Callista but I don't like the plan for either situation you've stated for it's use. Maddlelee's floor plan are more in tune for an ADU but yours is just awkward to say the least. Put a Kitchen/dining/living room with a 1/2 bath on the first floor. Put 2 bedrooms and a 3/4 or full bath on the second floor. You will maximize the return on your investment as a rental and when and if the time comes for any old folks to move in just add a stair lift for $3-5 grand if it's needed. What you have now is awkward if not impossible for entertaining and a tough situation to live in. Scrap the loft, the division between the kitchen and living room and reconfigure the stairs, bathrooms and closets. I really think you've tried to include features you like but are not right for a small apartment, and it should be more functional for someone to live in, and a better use of space. And if that round thing behind the coat closet is a hot water heater it should be on the other side closer to the bathrooms and kitchen sink and not 18+ feet away.

Again thank you everyone. Your comments are very much appreciated. We have not yet had an engineer look at it. That’s our next step. We have had a builder part of the design and discussion process from the beginning. He’s a good, longtime friend. Good-hearted, very experienced professional and a straight shooter. He has been honest about costs potentially going north of our budget. I think my husband is anxious to move just get started because he knows he, thankfully, has a career in which he can work a lot of overtime opportunities and potentially fill budget gaps if needed. First, we considered a smaller 1 bedroom ADU mostly just over the garage with just a very small amount (a 2-3 feet) lapping over on top of our living space. But my husband floated the idea of a 2 bedroom and our builder said that building a second story from beam to beam (one side of the house to the other) instead of over just a portion of it would actually save money in not having to beef up the foundation so much. It was a more bang for our buck type of thing. Forgive my lay terms. I’m doing my best to summarize the conversation. Personally, I am more comfortable with the original smaller 1 bedroom ADU idea. But I think the difference in rental income we could get for a 2 bedroom was what did it for my husband. We are probably naive to move forward without scaling back on the design. This is exactly why I value all this feedback. Thank you.

The land is actually an awkward layout. The giant X is where the house is currently marked. We’re purchasing the piece where the shading begins until the red line. The other land is just an empty field. Most of the land drops into a valley in the back. We’ll be planting a lot more trees behind the house to make a forest as its currently a field for cows. Off to the right side of the house my husband would like to eventually add a shop/barn. To the left of the house is giant hill which blocks most of the view of the side of the house. The house is currently laid out to sit back and catch the natural drop for a walk out basement. We’ll also probably add in some trees following the fence line to the left and probably some along the other property line. This is the front of the house. Bottom left is the office, bottom right is the laundry, then the top windows are for the master, hallway, and other bedroom. These are the other windows. This is the only picture i have from the view at the top of the hill. The house faces south. We went with Amish builders because of the quality and reviews. When looking at builders it was almost $200,000 over budget to do custom. Our first house was 1,300 sq ft and we didn’t use all of space. It was the layout and lack of space outside I didnt like. We went with two story because it was easier to make changes without adding sq ft which would’ve taken us over budget with the price of site work needed.