I am at a stage of moving forward so I need make some quick decisions. I feel like it is good for me to sit down and summarize where my plan stands right now and specific areas of concerns needing help. I ended up with something really long and here it is. Thanks for your reading and feedbacks! Jf 1. Family 2 adults, 3 children (13 yr daughter, 9 yr son, and a soon to be born baby boy) Lot constraint and house orientation / zones The lot is close to 2 streets out side the subdivision and it is close to the gate entrance. There would be noise from the street. The traffic is not that bad at this time as there is a T stop on one and there are speed bumps on the other. There are about 40 houses inside the community and being in a corner lot I do have concerns about the flashing light from cars entering the gate and making left turn during nights. Besides landscaping, any architectural considerations for this issue? The bedrooms are to the east and south (except a bedroom for my daughter on the 2nd floor to the front) for reduced noise and better privacy. More public and service areas like study, dining, kitchen, laundry and garage are to the front north and right west side nearing the streets. The living is in the middle to have good view of the backyard and sufficient lights. I am most concerned about the west side wall. It will be very hot in the summer here so I am trying to avoid windows as much as I can. I do think I need something in the breakfast so I put one window there. There is another one in the laundry for drying clothes. Windows in the garage would be ok just for appearance I guess. I may still need a small window in the kitchen for better ventilation as we cook a lot at home. We may also consider skylight in the kitchen if it is too dark there. The garage in the back has rear entry door. I understand we need may about 28ft driveway in front of the garage to have big enough turn radius to enter and backout from the west street. I would love to have a side entry garage. However, I was told that I need 18ft away from the property line and that would push the garage 8ft to the east and block 8ft, or about half of the current living area view. So I gave up that idea. 3. Types, number and sizes of rooms My current house have a living area of about 1600sqft witht the four of us and it has a three bedrooms(14'6x12', 11'x10'6, 11'x10'6), 1 small study (14'6x8'4), one eating area (14'x10'6), a kitchen (14'x10'4). The living room is 18'x14'2. The two bathrooms are kind of small. We having been living there for over 8yrs and it is really not too bad. The new house has a planned living area of about 3200sqft, which doubles what we have right now. So it shall be more than adequate for us. My wife prefers bigger kitchen and living areas over bigger bedrooms. We would also like comftable bathrooms and can never have enough closets and storage space. She also insists on separate dining and breakfast instead of one big eating area. She doesn't mind an OK sized breafast like 9'x9' and we plan to use the dinging as a guest living/sitting area or playroom as formal dining is not something we do often. Masterbed room downstairs. It seems that most of my friends from the north/Canada they have masterbed upstairs and I understand heating in cold weather maybe one big consideration for them. While we love the idea of keeping an eye on the kids, we are mainly concerned as we age we may not like the idea of walking up and down the stairs. We also do not mind letting the soon to be teens to have some of their own activies out of our sight. Gameroom upstairs. We think we need some open area on the 2nd floor to play or just sit down and relax. It is like a gameroom/familyroom multiuse. I understtand it would be noisy to the 2nd floor bedrooms and the living area below. We need carpet flooring and some noise reduction, floor hardening techniques. 3.5 baths. There would be a powder room/guest bath on the main floor. On the second floor, my daughter will have her own bathroom. The issue is bathroom setup for the two boys. I am proposing a shared bath for them and guests in the gameroom. I tried the idea of separate bathrooms by halving the bath nearby the gameroom. It is kind of tight and it maybe more expensive so I gave it up. Lundry/mudroom. I think a decent size there would be of good use. The main constraint is budget here. Staircase As I am planning to use the area to the left of the kitchen upstairs for all the 2nd floor needs, the staircase has to connect to center of that area so that we have hallways surrounding it to access all the nearby rooms. The issue is where it shall start on the 1st floor and which type of stair case is better for us. I tried the idea of curved staircase in the foyer (starting from somewhere close to the dining left wall). it would be too costly to build. An alternative option is to build a L or even multi turns. We did not pursue it as my wife has the diea of being able to see kids coming down from 2nd floor or people entering from the mainfloor going upstairs from the kitchen. Another concern is that while an open staircase in the 2 story foyer looks grand, it has to be done right otherwise it is too striking and blocking everything from the entrance view. The proposed U shape staircase is kind of half open to the living and visible from the kitchen and not directly in foyer. For an area of 11' by 7'2" we shall have enough room to acheive the right rise/run for a comfortable stairway. 5. Powderroom location Once the staircase location is fixed. The next biggest challening is to find the right place for the 5'x6' half-bath. I have tried at least 3 different places. 5.1. Under the staircase off study room. The place can be easily identified. The problem is that is taken space from the study and it has some views from dining. 5.2. Close to the staircase off masterbed hallway and masterbath. It has very good privacy for the guests. However, it is taken some area from the masterbath and make the setup there difficult. It also will have exposure to masterbed room that is not too good. 5.3 Close to the Garage inside the laundry/mudroom area. Privacy is good. Location is OK (it is close to the door to garage). It is taken part of the area from laundry so make the laundry small and difficult to set up. Additional good thing of not putting the powderroom close to the foyer is that the coat closet would be under the staircase and the study would be increased to its original planed size. Right now I am inclined to place the powderroom nearby the garage door. 6. Kitchen Right now the kitchen has a size of 14'6 x 14'. There would be some layout tuning to separte the different tasks of cooking, cleaning, and baking. One thing I would like to do is to recess the right side wall so that the frige is not sticking out to block the walk way. 7. Bathroom Next, I need to examine the layouts of the bathrooms. As kitchen and bathrooms are most expensive and we are using them so often, I would like to make sure we are getting most out of it and setting up them right. Closets and Storage I already mentioned that we never have enough storage space. Make sure we have access to under the stair space. I also have a door to access the attic in the 2nd floor. There would be some unfinished bonus storage space there. Laundry chute. I am not sure if it is doable but we (especially the kids) would love the idea of a chute from the gameroom to the laundry/mudroom.

Hello everyone, looks like we have fallen in love with this design as well. We went through a new custom build back in the summer (2022) in Perry, GA (and that job transfer fell through so purchase didn’t work out) of this home. We thought it was a true one-off custom until finally found that this home was in fact buildable and ran across the plans for it on Southern Living/Ginn. Anyways, like most on here, I would love a photo dump to us if possible, as well as plan changes that you made for ideas, ccovert@zfgoffroad.com, I truly appreciate any sharing! I know I just started following two Instagram builds from a couple very helpful folks on here too (beautiful homes!), and appreciate the insights shared so far! One question, on the second floor, did anyone finish a third bed/bath from the spaces that the stock plans show? If so, would you mind sharing that and how it turned out?

@doc5md We've been in since May, so plenty of time for second guessing ourselves! A few thoughts: Regrets: Should have insulated with rock wool between the 1st and 2nd floors and all the bedroom interior walls. Little boys are loud lol. Should have put a window in the shower. Upstairs could have been laid out better - space up there for 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, and an office. The "UNFINISHED" area upstairs was supposed be an unfinished storage/mechanical room. It ended up finished and is now my office. It works fine, but we could have made better use of the space. Wish we'd put the upstairs air handler in the attic so the return could have a run of flex duct to cut down the noise. Its loud. Wish we'd put the bonus/play room in the basement. We've still got about 700sq ft in the basement we can finish later. And we can put a closet in the bonus room to make it a bedroom. But I value efficiency more than excess, so it bothers me. Not quite regrets, but might do different next time: Might have been better to have the laundry where the main floor half bath is. The thought was that my muddy kids could come in the mudroom and throw their filthy clothes in the laundry sink and go on. That has worked, but they won't always be so sloppy. A bathroom by the mudroom and carport door (most used exit) would have been nice. In the living room instead of 3 windows and a door we did a 12ft sliding patio door out to the screened porch. Its nice, especially in spring and fall, but it limited space for living room furniture having to maintain a clear path to walk.

some people are bothered by the bathroom door being right off the kitchen In 500 sf, you're not going to place the bathroom door anyplace very private. I see the idea of whether to create a door straight from the bedroom has been discussed ... personally, in a guest house I'd give up closet space to get a door straight to the bathroom. I rarely hang anything when I'm traveling ... but I'd like to have a place in the bedroom where I could lay out my suitcase. if someone else was cooking. Since this is a guest house and the "kitchen" is more of a "kitchenette", I suspect the cooking would be along the lines of fixing drinks or sandwiches ... not cooking real meals. I could see minimizing storage areas in the kitchen so maybe upper cabinets aren't even needed. I was going to say the same thing. How much storage does a guest need? You, the host, would probably want to store plenty of linens, a fan, and cleaning supplies ... but that's about it. Check out specs for a stacked washer/dryer combo since would take up less space. I was going to suggest this as well. A washer/dryer for a guest is a great luxury, but a small one is enough. The one issue might be washing the bed comforter ... but surely as rarely as that needs doing, you can bring it into the main house. But I would rather have storage in the BA. Yes, I'd like to have space in the bathroom to lay out my things. It's unsanitary the way it's designed. No, it isn't. I’d only take 1’ from the living room for the bedroom, the rotate the bed 90 degrees. Great idea. This would mean you'd open the bedroom doors -- barn doors would be nice here -- and you'd be looking at the foot of the bed. Both partners could walk directly to their side /no one would have to circumnavigate the bed. It's only 1', but it would make the bedroom considerably nicer. Other thoughts: - Yes, the newer sketch-up is nicer in that it gives the bathroom a window ... but I'd pretty strongly prefer that the bathroom is close to the bedroom. Both designs have their pros /cons. - I find myself thinking of this as a vacation rental ... but the person who mentioned a grad school apartment makes me question whether I'm right or not. So, OP, what type of rental is this? If it's a weekend vacation spot, storage doesn't mean much ... and I'd say ditch the pantry. If it's near a university, storage IS a big deal. - Are we assuming that a small dining table will round out the kitchen?