I am firmly in the camp that believes having things too sterile is actually bad for your immune system. My great aunt, who lived to be 101 and a half, could eat things out of the refrigerator that none of us young people would touch. Her resistance to bacteria was good and built up over time and exposure. All that to say that if you are not phobic about what lurks in your laundry room, then having it serve mutliple purposes can be fabulous. If you, like several of my friends, constantly use hand sanitizer and try to eradicate every lurking germ, then you are not likely to be happy with having other activities happen next to where you wash soiled clothes. We recently did a renovation and decided to turning an old garage apartment into a multi-function space. It includes a laundry area, mudroom, pantry, office nook, and a small bathroom. The mudroom's French doors are where a garage door was 50 years ago and now open onto a smallish front porch that connects to our driveway. The mudroom is modest in scale. The doors let in lots of light. It has a little stool for the kids to sit down to take off their shoes, a low shelf for storage, several pegs for school bags, coats, and my cloth shopping bags, a small table for important papers the kids bring home, and a small tower with basket that hold sunglasses, a brush, pony tail holders, mittens, hats, etc. A large pantry opens at one end and the kitchen is up two steps at the other. From there a wide hallway opens into the laundry area in the middle section. The washer and dryer are front loaders and mount under a long counter with a deep sink at one end. There are cabinets above the laundry area that hold detergent, stain stick, vases, cleaning supplies, unmatched socks, tools we use often, seeds, etc. Eventually I hope to add a wall mounted drying rack to a space I left blank. I have had my eye on one in the Ballard Design catalog, but cannot yet spend the $$, The ironing board is mounted into the opposite wall and has a lamp, an intergrated plug, hook for hanging a couple of items, and a place to store the iron, hot or cold. The whole set up works beautifully for sorting, folding,and ironing laundry. Seems everyone is willing to help with the laundry now, because it is a pleasant place to be and well laid out. We have deep shelves built into a sort of wall cubbie. There we store two large laundry baskets on each shelf. Dirty clothes are on the bottom shelf, clean on the next. We also use the other cubbies for beach towels, pool bags, my "gift closet" and clothes that need to be donated or mended go on upper shelves, as they are culled during washing. My children never want to get rid of anything, so I have to sneak these out of their sight. I use the laundry sink for flower arranging, cleaning out coolers after a trip, and sometimes as a place to store wet dishcloths and dust rags (on a little rack that fits inside the sink) so they don't stink up the rest of the laundry until it is time to wash a whole load. The countertop serves mutliple purposes too. When clean laundry is put away it becomes a place for weighing food for our monthly co-op splits, drying art works, starting seeds in trays, polishing silver, etc. Instead of a powder room, we located a small, but full bathroom directly across from the laundry work space. Though we often set up a drying rack in the large shower, especially in winter, it is great this time of year to come in from the garden or back from the city pool and be able to take off dirty or wet clothes, hop in the shower, and throw stuff in the wash without tracking through multiple rooms. Towards the back of the house, still open to the laundry area, I have a built in desk with large triple windows over my work space. My computer, filing cabinets, and office supplies are there and it overlooks the prettiest part of our back yard. When I finally finsih cleaning out my boxes of files, we will be able to get to the door that leads out to the terrace. Other than the kitchen where I spent most of my time and even with boxed, it is still a nice space. If I had it to do over again, there would only be two changes I would want to make. First, I might make it a little bigger, as the children always want to be here with me and I would love to have a work space for them too. Second, I would add a bar for hanging up clean clothes until we take them upstair. I asked the cabinet contractor to do this as part of his work, but it didn't happen. I have since decided I would prefer the drying rack for now anwyway, but if I had more room, I would add a small closet or hanging bar. Happy deciding! Perhaps I can post some photos soon.

Follow-up questions and comments for cpartist and meyerk9: Master Hallway: cp - It's only 4' wide (48"). The floorplan is showing 5' 5" because it's including the depth of the niche. Water Closet: cp - It's showing 7' 5" deep, but that includes the space occupied by the 18" deep floor-to-ceiling cabinet opposite the toilet. So it's effectively just a 6' water closet (a little less actually). Toilet location: cp - I agree that my preference would be to put the toilet along the other wall, but I've put it there for purely aesthetic reasons. The large 60" window looks terrible from the outside if it's positioned close to the next bedroom window. Plus, the current location gives me the room for the laundry-cabinet-niche which I maintain is so important to me! :) Master Bedroom Size: cp - Agree that it is not huge. Unwilling to spay for more square footage in a room that I'm primarily asleep in. The chair and ottoman as shown is wishful thinking on my part and I will remove them (or at least the ottoman) from the next iteration. His and Hers Walk-In Closets: meyerk9 - great feedback, keep it coming! I've already elimanted the idea of a bidet long ago. But I don't understand why you don't think I'll be able to have AC in the closets. Why can't I have both a window and an AC-supply in the same small area? FYI - windows will be impact-resistant low-e glass with window treatments chosen for light-diffusion and light-blocking as needed. I'm not comprehending what you're warning me about here. Thanks!

Sounds like you're asking for help designing an entire master suite, including bedroom, bathroom, office, closets, and even mechanicals. You might get more/better responses in the "Building a Home" forum (this is just the "Bathrooms" forum). But you're also going to need to provide more info, including: - a full floor plan of entire house showing how this addition will relate to everything else; e.g. Where is the noisy kitchen? Where is laundry room? Where is other existing plumbing? - in the new addition, where are you open to having Windows, how big can they be, and where don't you want Windows? An elevation, or drawing of exterior of house with the addition, would help - which direction is N,S,E,W for sun issues?. Geographic location? What's your family situation? Etc... - is 14x30 the interior or exterior dimensions? You'll get amazing feedback and help here the more you share.

Well sure, nobody can predict the future. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try! Our first home was intended to be short term. It was in an area with questionable schools, but we didn't have kids yet. Our plan was to be there 5-10 years and move before we had a kid in kindergarten. We were there seven years and moved when our eldest was four. Our second/current home was intended to last us "until the kids were in college" but we lacked the foresight to know we'd LOSE OUR EVER-LOVIN' MINDS and decide to have two more kids. And we realized when our dog developed a disability that it's extremely unfriendly to the mobility-impaired. (Plus side: she weighed 100 lbs so we got a LOT of exercise the last year of her life. :/) So we're moving forward and applying what we've learned over the years towards our best guess is about what will work for us. What more can you do? Important to note: I've come to love this plan (which isn't very bright, not yet knowing if the BRs will fit upstairs yet, but what can you do?) The only reason I wanted a first floor master was for eventual mobility issues (3/4 of our parents have health problems which make stairs difficult), not because I want my bedroom on the main floor now. The major drawback to the rough sketch we started with http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/4345095/floorplan-feedback-very-early-stage is a lack of playroom space on the main level which means, IME, all the toys will end up in the living room. A main level master would make an excellent playroom/craft room. It's close enough to the action that it would actually get used, plus there's a door. At this point the biggest drawback I see is the possibility that both we and an elderly parent might need to avoid stairs in which case either a small guest room on the main or planning for a future elevator might be a good idea. (Could whoever has the crystal ball please pass it my way?)