It appears that a certain "renovator" is very quick to offer a wealth of picayune knowledge, yet nothing is cited so that one may ascertain the validity of such claims. Self-closing hinges are absolutely necessary for a garage man door. Call the Elyria building department and the inspector will tell you that the project will be turned down if those hinges are not installed. Any reputable contractor knows how difficult it can be to navigate through the code books; as many sections will refer to other sections, or even different code books. Furthermore, many municipalities have adopted their own set of rules that are above and beyond that of the Ohio code; in which case, the contractor must abide to that code. I would be wary, not of your contractor, rather a disputative "renovator" that makes claims that a CO2 detector is a good defense against fire. Even more, to make claims as to what the code says, yet offer no citation for reference. It sounds as if your contractor is a commercial contractor and following commercial codes, rather than residential.

Yes one idea was to create a reading area at the end where the entry doors are from the hallway with a cuddle chair or a couple of armchairs, (we used to use it as a toy area) but this would still mean we had less seating in the actual "living room" area. We think the best option would be to move the doors down the hallway and create a new single opening into this area and move the "living room" area to the front of the house, but before making such big changes just wonder if theres a way to use the room as it is?

Ultimately way back when we did go with Codel. Overall, we were happy with thr quality of the door, purchased through Lowes. HOWEVER, the first door came with the wrong hole drilled for our chosen handle. blame it on mistake by Lowes employee. This was all before Covid… Codel delivered a replacement door in three weeks! install went well, Lowes contractor was great. One note: if you install a door this big and heavy, be sire to use hefty hardware. We experienced some sag about 6 months later due to insufficient bolts from Codel. our handyman easily fixed the problem.

We call those bi-levels here and they are still incredibly popular where I am as new builds - I was surprised when I moved here. These days though they often seem to come with more generous entry areas. I would not move the entry "down", if anything, move it "up" but then be aware: 1. You will have a lot more stairs outside to get in; 2. You will need to change inside floor/stairway a lot to address a staircase to go down the lower level; 3. Reconfiguring stairs is costly; 4. Stairways take up a lot of space (and if you have older stairs, you may expect more space to be taken up due to Code changes since it was built).