OK... first time all day that someone is not screaming or crying in my house. Crazy day today. Lavender- I wish I could see more pics of that kitchen. It's great. It even has the same cabinet style/color, island color, and flooring that we are planning to have in our kitchen. The 1 car garage is 15'10" wide. Is that big enough to steal space from it? I'm pretty sure we are limited by the property line restriction on the sides of the house. Our lot is 110' wide and 235' deep with untouchable natural green space in the back 1/3 of it. (100'x235' treed natural green space on the west side that is owned by the development.) Bump outs are a bit tricky because of our lot limitations. We hesitated to bump the kitchen out too much because it will limit our backyard patio and landscaping space. A lot of the odd bumps in the floorplan is because during the design process we did a 1' bump out of the kitchen, and several feet to the music room. Both rooms used to be even with the rest of the house. Lyfia- we put the master in that location of the house because of the view. :) Plus, I've never liked the idea of the master bedroom or bath being on the front of the house. Peytonroad- Thanks! Someone else pointed out the wasted space in the mudroom/powder room area. I'll have to keep thinking about that one. You all have given such great ideas and things to think about! I'm not sure if I mentioned this on this thread, but we've hired an independent architect to oversee the build. I'm meeting with her soon so that we can go over any of my concerns. This thread has been wonderful to collect ideas and issues to bring to her. Would love to hear any other ideas if you think of more. You all have been wonderful! Thanks so much!

I knew a lady who had a 'Formal Room'. Her house was known, locally, as "The Castle", and was a Tudor dating from 1925. Anyway, the 'Formal Room' was a large walk-in closet next to the kitchen, where, when the maids weren't doing anything else, they could go and get a 'Formal' (party dress/evening gown), and "iron-on-it" for awhile. The lady's daddy had owned a beer joint, but she'd been Miss-something-or-other, and had snagged the richest boy around. It was real smart of her to have 'The Formals' where the maids could grab one, when the Lady of the House, or her Daughter, called from upstairs, or from the Country Club, and said, "Vinah! Git me thaaayit blue Dior ready. Wuhrrr goin' ta thuh University Club tanite!", or "Git me up some formals, Queen Esther! Tha inlaws are flyin' us up ta thuh KENtucky Derby." That 'Formal Room', now that you've jogged my memory, was probably the house's original Pantry, and is roughly the size of YOUR pantry. In fact, your house is roughly the same size as 'The Castle'. And its facade seems about as complex and expensive-to-build as 1920s Tudor architecture. Yours is a HUGE, luxurious house, by most people's standards. So, I'm baffled as to why the dining table is relegated to a 13'x13' 'Dining Area' off the Kitchen. I'm guessing you're in someplace like Northern Michigan, where people are very unpretentious. But still, there seem to be a lot of people in your life, and jamming them all into that little space, when food seems rather important in the scheme of things (the well-developed kitchen... the large pantry....) would seem to potentially make for tense and unpleasant meals, when the whole family is together. We recently moved back South, when it turned out we'd taken over another corporation (honestly, I didn't mean to...), and someone was offering us too much money on our almost-complete house outside Portland, and somebody else took our lowball offer on a silly, overgrown "Old-South-Style-Dream-Home" (on considerable acreage, with millions in landscaping and embassy-style electric fencing that we were getting basically for-free). As much as I hate Mississippi, all those tempting numbers made the move back home impossible to resist. So, here we sit. This house had the typical tiny, prissy little Dining Room, just big enough to hold the previous Owner's "Mamaw's (Grandma's) Mahogany Dining Set from Montgomery Ward" (C. 1957). The space was too small. It became my husband's Library. Stretching across the back of "The Gracious Mansion" was some bizarre free-flowing conglomeration of space, that was a den/great room... something... I had that space gutted before I even let my Decorator in the door. Didn't want to give him a cerebral hemorrhage... and it's cheaper to let your design team know the raw dimensions from the get-go. They're going to come in and take measurements, and photograph every stub-up and framing anomaly... So I had studs, sub-floor - tutto - sprayed in white primer, before they arrived. Well, I had sold our Portland house before I was able to use my custom table built for 30. But that table (and a kitchen designed for caterers) turned out to have made the house irresistible to my Best Friend's Daughter, who ONLY entertains formally, and otherwise has meals across the meadow at her Parents' house. I have a history of selling my houses to pairs of surgeons. These particular surgeons, despite their youth, paid cash. Seems they'd each been letting their trust incomes pile-up while they were in residency. Good kids. So, here, in my newly-acquired bargain manse, I wanted the same thing: long table, with three big chandeliers overhead... lots of sconces, mulberry silk shades for really soft lighting... but with a big, long buffet, because this IS the South, and we ALL dine buffet-style. In Portland, caterers and rent-a-butlers are fun people. In Mississippi, they're failed actors and musicians, and are bitter, spiteful little bundles of passive aggression. And anyway, everybody at our table here, even when there are 30, are 'family' in some way, and the Caterers really don't need to overhear whatever schemes we're hatching, or whatever dirt we're dishing. Although we use fancy plates and fancy goblets and Whiting's 'Lily' flatware from 1902, we DON'T DINE FORMALLY. Everybody's too busy, and it's basically an open-house-in-the-Dining-Room: arrive at some approximate hour, grab a plate, leave whenever... But the table seats an easy 30 (three feet for each person), with blazing chandeliers overhead, and my favorite ancestor, a banker from Riga, glowering over everybody, from the center of the longest wall. It's a practical room: brick herringbone floors that can be mopped with strong soaps; fractionally non-parallel walls for better accoustics; embossed velvet 'papering' the walls, for even better accoustics; a tented ceiling where it once 'cathedraled', for soaking-up our family's cacophony; sturdy chairs, and a sturdy table... And "immediate family", for us, can easily fill the room. We totally fill up the room with people, at least once a week. I'm thinking that you're happy 'Yoopers' (or some sort of Central European/Alpine types, in a snowy part of America) with none of our Southern pretensions or obsessions. But still: wouldn't you be able to use an old-style English 'Long Room', with a long, rugged refectory/trestle table (a long, narrow, rustic table), in a more expansive space? A refectory table can be used for reading, computing, etc., when not used for dining. What I see on those plans just seems like the 'kitchenette' in a 1950s tract house... a tract house that just grew and grew. Your house is the size of a MANSION, but the dining area is like a breakfast nook in Levittown.

Hey, thanks for all of your fast feedback - it's fun to wake up and find postings waiting! Okay, "Honey, stop the car" is out. I have never seen a sign like that used before and thought it was amusing, but can see how it could get on someone's nerves. I hate cutesy realtor-speak as well. I specifically do NOT want to announce my bed/bath count right off the bat. We have a 3/1.5 which isn't unusual for our area. However, we had two couples that were very interested, yet ultimatley decided they wanted two full baths. No one is going to want this house because of it's bathroom count or three ordinary bedrooms. Why will they want it? Because of the wonderful floor plan and our family room addition (we added on a beautifully designed FR with loads of windows, skylights, FP, built-ins). Because of the 1st floor laundry or large eat-in kitchen (both are unusual around here). Because everything expensive has been replaced or updated recently - roof, windows, furnace, a/c, hwh, electrical, new paver patio, new landscaping, garage door & opener, fence. The baths are new. The kitchen cabinets are 15 years old and everything else was updated when we did the additon. I feel the kitchen is in a good place in that you could rip it out without feeling guilty, but it isn't so old and ugly that it would be painful to live with if you had to keep it. How do I say that on a sign - LOL! Back to wording... you all have convinced me to drop "maintenance free". I was trying to convey the idea that everything has been updated, and "Updated throughout" is probably better, non? I'll probably go with "open floor plan", simply because "great floor plan" sounds like there isn't anything else positive to say! BTW, this is a 50s ranch, so there were no wonderful architectural details to preserve and the renovation really does fit the flavor of the house. We were very conscious of that going into our project and hired an architect to make sure it was done right. Of course we will have an info box with the sign, as we have had the entire time. I played around with the sign and could put another line of info on there, so it would read... for sale 1900 square feet open floor plan updated throughout 555-5555 www.blahblah.com Any thoughts? Nicole

@tatts I came here for informal design help as I lay out my house. I think some people understand that and others do not seem to understand that. I understand that details about the house location and whether it is sewer or septic are lacking to some folks. I appreciate that me just moving things around in a house in a photo editor doesn't make any sense in the real world. Just because I post an idea or edited floor plan of something does not mean that is is going to be built that way or built at all. I have a site engineer, my GC, and a design & structural engineering firm. @roccouple Thanks for all of your thoughts! I really appreciate it! I'll think about axing the fireplace as it definitely eats some space. We like having a fireplace but we don't plan on using it often. We consider it our secondary heating source in case we lose power but maybe we could do something different. The garage is a little out of proportion of the house..We tried to find a balance. :-) you guessed correctly we have a couple of cars, 3 motorcycles, and will most likely end up with a couple of snowmobiles in a year or two. I have a decent amount of tools to go with the toys and we also have lots of outdoor gear. The garage is actually going to be pretty tight space-wise! @mnmamax3 Thanks! We were thinking about trying to put the W/D inside of cabinets or something similar so we could potentially close a cabinet or closet door. I'm also thinking we could add a door at the entry of the mudroom (from living room) just how @mama goose_gw zn6OH did in her most recent post.