Buy a different house. Or hire the architect that you need for this multiple hundreds of thousands expense.

Looks darn good to me, but I don't design houses. I just live in them. Nothing looks cramped, and important things seem to be located in convenient places. Losing the bathroom in the guest suite was the only thing that gave me pause. Not a great tragedy, especially if guests are infrequent.

HI Petula67, the construction is only in the red/blue boxes (left side of the house). I somehow omitted the guest bathroom because I was not paying attention to that side of the plan. thanks for you comments.

@verbo we did hire an architect few years back and that is where the plan started. We just kept on changing it from the architect's plan. The mudroom is a new idea not gone through the architect.

I have a house with a stairwell smack dab in the center of the home. I looked into what it will take when I remodel to move the stairs to an outside wall or at least near the front door.....to give the rooms some depth so you can actually have furniture arranged in a functional and esthetically pleasing way... holy cats so much $$$$, foundation, trusses and load bearing walls oh my...It will literally be a complete re-do of the house including down to the foundation.

The house used to be a small vacation cabin that got added onto and I am going to live here at the lake forever so it may be worth it ...IF I can afford to do it.

Look at your goals and budget and talk to several architects to see if they can help you meet your goals and budget can cover it. If not then one of those two has to be modified.

I wonder if you couldn't do the upstairs living space remodel and keep stairs where they are and put a mud room in the basement on the way to the stairs and a mud room on the main floor as well. Less $$ and still accomplishes your goals?

Determining what "Doing it right" is involves knowledge of the budget, the site, the local housing market, existing structural conditions, existing heating ventilating and air conditioning conditions, your current and future needs, your life goals, and several other factors. That is why in a remodeling I recommend engaging a local architect. They can gather the information needed in person rather than over the internet.

My instant thought was that by moving the basement stairs so you're not walking through the basement with snowy, wet shoes is that now you'll be upstairs, walking up the stairs with snowy wet shoes. Just make a place downstairs for them!

Where does the laundry end up? And a place at least for the shoes in the basement, even with all your dreams coming true with the stairs is still a good idea.

The winder treads in the new stair would not be code compliant in the US.

I like your plan. We also sketched a lot of ideas on our own, and the hired an architect to translate that into what was actually feasible (and to show us where what we "thought" would work would not actually work, and to come up with a solution that did work). Agree also highly agree on cost!. We have been in our 1 story house for 13 years, and finally decided to pull the trigger last year. We thought we'd add on to the master wing a bit, perhaps a partial 2nd floor, reconfigure and gut the rest of the existing inside to make the old and new look similar in fit and finish (including all new mechanicals, floors, etc). We had a budget in mind, plus contingency. Sooo... Yeah. That original plan would cost over 4x what we had expected. So we ended up not doing the addition, not adding a partial second story, and we just reconfigured the floorplan within the existing footprint and still spent 2-3x our original budget.

thanks everyone for the comments so far. We do have an engineer coming in and look at the load-bearing walls and stairwell design to make sure it is up to the code. Regarding buying another house, we did look into it for a couple of years, and couldn't find anything; we just love the area, neighbors, and school that we are not looking to move now. We do have some preliminary quotes from contractors and they seem within our budget. Our major concern is changing from a "formal - living room/dining room at the entry" to something different. Also if there is an alternate design based on our "wants" that would be great. Regarding a few other comments - we do have a laundry upstairs, that is why eliminated at this level.

What is your budget?

Re-engage the architect.

The stairs can be built to code, just not as drawn. Gonna need more run and width.

The only thing more difficult to deal with than inspection are the parameters of cost effectiveness. Moving stairs is rarely cost effective.

I've moved the stairs in a house: it worked out very well. You'll have to massage your stair to get it to work. You have created some large, open spans that will need to be dealt with, especially with a second story and roof above. I question the window seat and lack of symmetry in the one end. The new fireplace will look strange off center in that large space. Good luck with your project!

The design of the stair suggests the designer doesn't even have the minimum experiemce and skill required to design a house. You need to hire a professional. It will save you money in the long run.

Can you m/l mirror the existing stairs, but with four or five steps below the center landing? I'm assuming the garage entry is in the area of the red circle, on the ground floor.

I also changed the island to avoid having the seating overlap the fridge space.

I had a project where my client wanted to remodel his house and wanted to keep the cost under a certain budget. I came up with a design that changed the direction of the stair to the basement, but did not change the framing opening in the floor. I showed up on the job site one day and the owner and builder changed the location of the stairs, closing up the opening in the floor where the stairs use to be, without telling me. The last time I talked to him he told me the builder wants more money above the price he originally quoted.

Thank you everyone and especially @mama goose_gw zn6OH for your comments. I have moved the stair based on your suggestion. We had an Engineer come in to check the loadbearing walls and stairs design. It looks like most of the changes we've asked them, can be done... still waiting on his diagrams, and the construction cost thought :) We will need to put a supporting pole (showing as orange circle) where the load-bearing beam will end. Few more questions on the design/placements, and overall comments on if we can design in better.

- Reconfigure the stairs and moved the 1/2 bath. Any ideas on 1/2 bath design placements?

- two pictures on the work triangle option in the kitchen. Which one would work better - The Orange option or the Red option?

As always, really appreciate all your comments. They have been very helpful for us to narrow down on the design elements.

Red. And put some 13" deep full height cabinets on that far wall.

I can see sometime in the future, someone having a house like this:

And wanting to remodel it to look something like this: