Please Comment on Our Floor Plan

last year

We are in the very early stages. Please let us know your thoughts on our floorplan.

This is planned to be a 2,532 sq/ft prairie style ranch home with 9-foot ceilings (possibly 11 foot in great room), in the mid-western United States, on a one-acre relatively flat lot. The front door will face west. There will be a full unfinished basement (not walk-out) for storage now, maybe someday to be finished. The 3-season sunroom in the back will be on a slab with clerestory windows above a glass triple slider to the house. We are in our late 50’s and this is the last/forever home to grow old in. There is an auxiliary living unit (ADU) for a disabled adult family member. It has a bedroom and living room with a small kitchenette & stackable laundry. We’re doing our best working with our needs, the lot, and our budget.

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Comments (16)

bpath
last year
last modified: last year
Does the adult family member drive? If so, would it be more convenient for them to have their door to the garage on the driver’s side of their car? Also, their apartment’s windows all face due west. Hot and bright.

There is a tight turn at the den and laundry room. As you get older and possible need a walker or other assitive device, it will be harder to navigate that corner. Consider removing one of the den closets and making a notch instead of a corner, and and a door from den to bathroom. It allows the den to possibly be used as a bedroom, and makes the laundry (and the other bedroom) easier to navigate to.

The same corner-navigation holds true for your bedroom entry.

Also as you age, your long narrow closet will be harder to use, especially if there are two of you. Heck, even now when you are young! Consider making it a reach-in. You will have as much closet space, and more maneuvering room.
PRO
PPF.
last year
I'd work to open up the public spaces to the south, and minimize the western exposure.

The following is from an old thread so it's not showing your house, but the concept still applies.

There are better ways to show this but this should give you an idea of how the sun shines summer (green) and winter (red).

In summer the sun is generally overhead shining down, in winter, the sun is much lower in the southern sky.

During the winter, when days are shorter and temps are colder, the sun will shine on your garage, closet and bathroom. Of course you will get some morning and evening light on the front and rear, but most will fall on the southern side of the house.

In summer, when shade is appreciated, your house will get an extra dose of morning and afternoon sun.

Generally, placing the garage and other utility spaces to the west to block the summer afternoon sun, and spreading the house out so the public spaces face South is a good place to start.
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Please comment on plan of my first floor
Q
Comments (11)
Without dimensions on the plans, it is difficult to tell exactly how big the Living Room area is but, it LOOKS to me like you should have plenty of room for a reasonable amount of furniture in there without it looking or feeling cramped. I think the way the master bath is designed is very I personally would not want to devote as much square footage to the bath as this design requires but it is different and looks fairly functional. If your shower won't have doors then I suspect you'll get a bit of water splashing onto the floor outside the shower but with tiled floors that probably won't bother you. I don't think you'll be able to switch the laundry and toilet as Yillimuh suggested tho unless you're willing to lose your hall closet. Too bad because it would have been good to have the toilet a bit closet to the bed and nice to have the laundry closer to the closet. Since you mention you're retiring, have you given much thought to the possibility that you or your spouse may one day become wheelchair bound. One problem with "toilet rooms" is that they're usually too small for a wheelchair to get in/out of. So, people wind up having to tear down the walls surrounding their toilets. While your toilet is tucked back out of the way, consider if you had to take the wall with the pocket door out completely to allow wheelchair access, would you still be okay with entering your master bedroom thru the bathroom then? Do look into sound insulating the wall between the game room and powder room. The game room is nicely positioned to be repurposed as either a formal dining room or a formal parlor if you or a future owner should ever decide to do so. If used as a formal dining room, you wouldn't want to be able to hear the sounds from the powderroom during dinner. Finally, do you mind my asking where your garage is? At first I assumed it was next to your kitchen and I was going to comment that your kitchen might be a bit dark since the only natural light would filtering in from the sunroom...but then I noticed the window over the sink - so the garage can't be on that side. Then I thought it might be at the front of the house (in front of the kitchen office) but, again, you have windows there so that can't be it. Is the garage "semi-attached"? (i.e., connected to the house only via the mud room? If so, please be aware that if you're on a slab, the mud-room section of concrete may be highly subject to cracking. That piece of concrete slab like a small bridge between two very large slabs of concrete. It is natural for monolithic slabs to tend to shift around a little bit. As long as the entire slab moves as a whole, you don't get cracking. But with that "bridge," the garage slab and house slab will basically be two independent slabs and will probably move independently of each other. The bridging section probably won't be strong enough to force the garage slab and the house slab to "move together". And, if they move independently, cracks will show up running across your mud room floor. Even if you have cuts in the concrete to direct cracking to a specific spot, it may not work. I know because I have a similar design with a screened porch connecting my garage to my house. The screened porch is 10 ft wide by 14 ft long. (14 ft from house to garage.) We got our first crack across the screen porch slab within two months of the foundation being poured! After almost three years, the cracking and shifting seems to have pretty much settled down - but we have a half-inch wide crack running clear across the screen room floor in one place and a second smaller crack (maybe 1/8 inch wide) running across clear the screen room floor in another spot. The cracks look pretty ugly but at least it is a porch floor and eventually we'll put down composite pavers (made of recycled tires) to cover the cracks. I'd have been sick if the cracks had been in my nicely tiled mud-room floor. Just thought you ought to know.
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First Real Post - Please Review/Comment on Floor Plan
Q
Comments (22)
Some responses to the items I pointed out earlier... 2 - Foyer closet--I personally prefer hooks + a bench BUT now notice that you don't have a coat closet in the mudroom area. As it is, you will probably hang your 'current season' coat on a hook in the mudroom and store your 'off season' coats in the front closet. Since your foyer closet is so close to the mudroom, I think this will work! :) The foyer does have a spot for a bench which I think is ABSOLUTELY essential (unless you want your guests to wear their shoes indoors at all times.) 3 - Depending on your lifestyle, having space to have guests over to watch TV is nice when you have small kids. It's hard to get out to see a movie and/or friends, so inviting friends over for a movie kills two birds with one stone. We were never 'TV people' before our son was born. It is amazing all of the small ways a person's lifestyle changes when a baby arrives! I'd suggest talking to other parents in your lives (your own parents and your friends who are parents) to try to get an idea of what your life will be like once children enter the picture. 6 - Is there seating room at the island? I know guests can get a little uncomfortable (both physically and socially) standing around while someone is working in the kitchen. I think seating makes their presence seem more comfortable for everyone. :) 7 - As an voracious reader, I find it unlikely those chairs in the study will be your favorite reading nooks, since the natural light will be coming in at your face instead of at your back. Think about where you gravitate toward for reading in your current home. For me, anyway, during the daytime I like to have natural light from behind or next to me. If it's evening, I like a LOT of BRIGHT light above me (can lights galore!) 8 - I also work on the computer. (I work from home full time as a web developer and stay-at-home mom.) Side-by-side is different from back-to-back. If you both spend a lot of time at the computer at the same time, you'll just want to make 100% sure your computer nook is comfortable for everyone. Don't just think about once you're settled in---thinking about coming/going for trips to the kitchen, bathroom, and nursery. (If anyone plans on working at the computer while caring for the baby, I'd recommend a computer set-up near the nursery, at least for the first year of each baby's life.) 9 - If the stair layout is the most economical way, I'm sure you'll get used to it. I just know it would drive ME crazy to have to make a U-turn when I'm SPRINTING to the baby's room to take calm him down before his 'sleep fussing' turns into real crying. :) 10 - Our builder's opinion on the pocket door to the water closet is mostly that they're a pain to use if they are frequently closed. At the risk of over-sharing, our master bath door only gets shut when one spouse worries the aroma will offend the other spouse's senses. So, for us, the inconvenience of sometimes operating a pocket door is worth the aesthetic of having it out of the way 99% of the time. Again, it just totally depends on your lifestyle. I think our builder charges about $150 more for a pocket door vs. a normal door--it's worth finding out what your builder charges before going crazy adding them all willy nilly, of course. :D 11 - If you're not bothered by it, I think skipping a closet door in the bedroom would be fine. For aesthetic reasons, I'd recommend having any closet areas that are visible from the bedroom be anything but shelving. My husband and I are neat freaks and we both worked retail so we know how to fold and stack clothes neatly...and our shelving still never looks tidy. Hanging looks better by far. (I'd personally have a closet door that swings into the room, but that's just a personal preference, not a game changer.) Hope that helps! It's all just my personal opinions. We're only in the planning stages too, so I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination. :) (Hope you'll go comment on my floorplan since it sounds like we have similar lifestyles.) Here is a link that might be useful: Floorplan of my 4BR 2-story Minnesota home
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Floor plan comments
Q
Comments (10)
Even on your enlarged images, it is still impossible to see any dimensions so that makes it a bit harder to comment. It looks like TinyPic is actually posting a screen-wide image but that your picture has a huge section of white space on the right. In the future, before you upload an image to TinyPic, first make sure that it is cropped as closely as possible to the actual image you want to post...no extra white space on any side. Then upload that as a 15" or 17" wide image to TinyPic. Ultimately, only YOU can decide if a 1st floor master is right for you. For resale value purposes, a 1st floor master is usually great b/c many buyers who are a little older don't want to make the trek upstairs all the time. And, many folks with older kids prefer the additional parental privacy. With a toddler tho, it makes sense that you would want your bedroom on the same floor as hers. Still, by the time you get moved in, she'll already be moving out of the toddler stage and, as a previous poster pointed out, you could use the office upstairs as your temporary master bedroom until your daughter is a little older. It it were me, unless I was considering having more children in the future, I'd probably decide that on balance, the 1st floor master was a good thing. If I'm reading your roof lines correctly, it looks like one OUGHT to be able to expand that 2nd floor bathroom back at least another 3 feet or so for almost no cost. The space behind the bathroom is attic with the same amount of headroom as there is at the back of the bedrooms and that line across the bedrooms at the point where the dormers attach usually indicates the 7 foot headroom line. Or, for a much larger outlay of additional cash, you ought to be able to add in a third dormer which would give you a huge space for your upstairs bath. As for the dormers themselves, dormer windows and sloping ceilings give bedrooms a charm not attainable with a standard perfect box shaped room. The question for me would be whether these dormers are so deep that light from the windows can't really penetrate to the main portion of the room. If the plan is one your builder has built before, perhaps you could see the previously built model. Without being able to see dimensions, I can't comment on whether the nook is large enough or needs to be bigger. Some concerns I would have with this plan that you don't mention are: 1) Is the kitchen really large enough to do what you want with it? Bear in mind that a kitchen island must have aisle space clear around it. On the sides facing perimeter counters that include any major appliance, you're going to want at least 4 feet of clear aisle space...and remember that fridges can stick out as much as a foot beyond the perimeter cabinet. On sides of the island that don't face any major appliances, you can usually get by with a 3ft aisle UNLESS you want a bar and barstools on that side. Where you want barstools, add another 1.5 to 2 ft to the aisle space. You can estimate how large a kitchen island you can fit into a given kitchen by first sketching in 2 ft wide perimeter cabinets on whichever sides you want them. Decide which wall(s) you think you want your stove and fridge to sit on... you don't have to have an exact placement. Sketch in a 4ft wide aisle on the side where the stove will sit of and a 4.5 to 5 ft ft wide aisles on the side where the fridge will be. Then sketch in 3 ft wide aisles on the other sides. The space that is left over in the middle is the maximum area that you can devote to your island PLUS bar and barstools. Is it as big as you want? If not, you'll need to find a way to enlarge the kitchen. As your children get a little older, do you envision that they will take their noisier play into the space over the garage and use their bedrooms primarily for sleep and study? If not, will the noise of children playing overhead bother you if you're trying to entertain adults in the family room directly below the children's bedrooms? With two kids and a plan with the staircase clear across the house from the garage entry (which usually becomes the main entry for families) I would definitely want a REAL mud room with cubbies for all the kid's jackets, hats, shoes, bookbags, sports paraphernalia, and other "stuff." Otherwise it'll wind up scattered on the dining room table, across the backs of family room chairs, and over stair bannisters...especially since, given where the door to the garage is located, the only closet near the garage entry is in the opposite direction from the normal flow of traffic into the house. If you can afford it, I would recommend pulling the nose of the garage forward about another 3 feet. (This should be relatively cheap additional square footage.) Move the wall separating garage and house forward by the same amount so that your garage space doesn't change and move the entry door so that it is down closer to the laundry. Put a 5x5 walk in pantry clear on the left (closest to the dining room) and the powder room (5x5) immediately to the right of the pantry. This would leave you with a nice sized mudroom on the between the garage and laundry and traffic will flow thru the mudroom on the way into the house. You can even add in a door to separate the "hallway" from the mudroom and then, when you have guests they would be able to use the powderroom while any mess in your mudroom remains hidden behind a closed door. Even if you decide you can't afford to add square footage, I'd still shift things around a bit. Put the Pantry on the left, then the "closet" and then the garage door. Then, instead of a closet, put in cubbies with hooks for coats and bookbags and stuff. Kids then to actually use cubbies with hooks for their jackets and stuff far more than they do closets and if the door is situated where they have to walk past the cubbies on their way in/out of the house, all their "stuff" is much more likely to stay contained in the mudroom instead of being scattered all over the house. AGain, I would probably put a wall with a pocket door between the pantry and the "mud room" area...just so I could close off the mess if need be. Of course, if guests must go thru the mudroom to reach the powderroom, they're going to see your mudroom area anyway. However, if your house doesn't have a basement, you COULD fit a guest powder room under the staircase so that the one by the garage is for family use only. The space under the staircase itself is plenty wide enough for a toilet. You just need to make a little bumpout on the side to accommodate a vanity. And the hallway next to the staircase is plenty wide enough that a little bumpout wouldn't matter. Or, if you really like having that wide hallway leading from bedroom to bath (maybe envision it as a kind of dressing room area), then move the closets over next to the staircase and have the hallway run down next to the exterior wall. Then the bumpout needed to allow a vanity for a powderroom under the stairs would fit so that it only cuts out the corners of the two closets. And, since closet corners aren't all that useful anyway, you would lose very little useful closet space. Plus, making this switch would also allow you to put some windows into the hallway/dressing area thus making it a more pleasant space! Just some ideas...
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floor plan - please comment!
Q
Comments (6)
Think twice about the corner lot. I live on one, and I won't again in the future: Your backyard privacy is reduced, and the kids' bus stop is on my corner . . . which means they're cutting through my front yard and sometimes leaving trash in that area. It also means we have to cut the grass in the ditch on two sides. On the positive side, parking is easy when we have guests. Oh, and we have the fire hydrant ON our lot, which does reduce our home owners insurance a bit. Front window: I do think it'd look better if it matched its mate on the opposite side of the door. Yeah, I see that it's just a window into the utility room, but so what? What you care about here is the outside look. Yes, a 4x4 shower is fine for a simple, plain shower. My current shower is 3x4, and I never touch the walls when I'm in there (Admittedly, I can still buy pants in the children's department, but my husband who is normal adult size doesn't complain about its size either). A 4x4 isn't a showstopper that'll earn a spot on Houzz, but you won't be irritated every time you step in either. We are going bigger in our new house only because we want space for two shower heads and a stool -- we're thinking of our elderly years. In fact, looking at your closet, I'd suggest you steal a bit from the shower and widen the closet. A walk-in closet that has storage on only one side is a waste of space. If you steal 1' from the shower you'll still have an adequate shower . . . and you could have shelves on that closet wall, which would DOUBLE your closet space. This closet, as it's drawn, isn't particularly "master". If you keep the bedroom this size (and squarish), you could even insert a reach-in closet on the wall shared with the secondary bath. In addition to the extra storage, this would give you some "sound insulation" from the bathroom. Another option, more expensive than a closet: Built-ins. You could have a massive number of drawers on the bottom and bookshelves on the top -- it'd look great and provide massive storage, and give the modest closet, that would be useful. I'm completely ambivalent about the transom window. I think your dining area looks comfortable now. Not oversized, not undersized. If you're thinking it might not be big enough, consider inserting a built-in bench across the whole back wall . . . that will take less space than chairs against the wall, and it'd look great in that area. This would garner you more usable space without increasing your square footage. However, I think I'd slice a couple feet off the back end of the master bedroom anyway. It appears almost square in shape, which doesn't do anything but give you empty space in the middle of the room. I'd flatten it out across the back of the house, which will save on building costs. Width matters more in a bedroom (and this one looks wide enough for a king bed) than height. Figure up how many feet you'll have at the foot of the bed and decide if that's adequate. Looking at the back wall again, I'd definitely straighten it out. It'll save you money, and I see no reason for the jigs and jogs. Sorry, I'm not "getting" the concern about the kitchen wall. I don't see a problem with a portion of the kitchen being "hidden from view". In fact, I think it might be good to have the stove out of view when it's full of messy pots! I think the fireplace needs to be on the back wall. This would allow you to have two sofas oriented towards it comfortably. If you place two fireplaces in the room as it is now, you'll have a big empty space between the seating area and the kitchen. Oh, wait -- you were asking about the fireplace in the basement . . . I was answering for the main floor. However, I think the advice is applicable to both areas. I would suggest that you "stack" the two fireplaces. This is a pretty substantial money saver. Actually, considering the use a fireplace actually gets, I'd keep the second fireplace at the top of the "I could do without this" list . . . or consider an enclosed gas fireplace, which is MUCH cheaper than a full-out masonry chimney for the secondary unit. Other options might be a wood stove (which doesn't have to be real wood -- can be gas), which is more efficient than a real fireplace and is incrementally cheaper. Or, if you really just wanted it for the looks, consider a fake fireplace with an antique cast iron front . . . or flowers in the summer, candles in the winter. Basement bathroom: I'd move it to UNDER an upstairs bathroom (or kitchen plumbing) and then adjust the bedrooms to fit. Plumbing is always expensive and difficult, so place it first -- it'll save you money, and if you have short plumbing lines, you have fewer problems in the future -- fewer areas to leak. How to arrange areas in the basement? How many people will live in this house? What spaces do you actually need? I don't think any of us can answer this question without this information. You seem to have ample space upstairs; I'm not really seeing the need for the huge basement. Those were your questions. Here are a few thoughts of my own: I don't like that angled door going into the secondary bathroom. I think it's going to feel odd to walk in the door and be essentially pushed towards the wall. I think you could do away with it by incorporating the little hall linen closet into the bathroom itself. Anyway, storage INSIDE the bathroom is better than storage outside. You've planned a good-sized kitchen, but no pantry. A pantry is your best and cheapest storage. I also don't like that when you enter the house, you must walk all the way around the staircase and through the great room to get to the kitchen. So often you're carrying groceries, and this is just more steps for no reason -- your garage is RIGHT THERE. I'd want a more direct entrance. I'm not loving the elevation, though admittedly this is partly a matter of taste and preference. It just looks kind of wide and boring with so much roof and so much garage. It'll take a ton of landscaping and upkeep (says the person who currently lives in a long ranch house . . . and isn't going to do it again). Consider your sight lines: When you walk in the front door, you're looking the side of the fireplace. When you walk down the bedroom hall, your view is a bathroom door . . . and angled bathroom door. From the garage, I assume you're looking at a pretty hall table -- good. And once you're in the great room, the sight lines are top notch. Why is the master bedroom door scootched up to the right? It's already conflicting with the closet door, and this seems to make it worse.
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rockybird
last year
There is only 2.5 feet between the island and the counters on one side. I would add another door to the master closet on the opposite side, or make it a panel of sliding doors. At 5’4” with 2’ of clothes hanging, you will only be able to use the side against the bedroom wall.
YouTube's Mountain Home Rookies
last year
I like the 1 flight of stairs. No landing. Also I LOVE windows. Maybe more windows facing east in the master? Morning sunshine? Lots of closet space too.
PRO
Mark Bischak, Architect
last year
last modified: last year
Are you looking to build a "Prairie Style" home . . .

. . . or are you looking to build a house that has prairie style decoration applied to the exterior?
millworkman
last year
Going to be a monster of a roof for sure.
palimpsest
last year
last modified: last year
I would have an exterior door into the ADU, not just a door into the garage. Or maybe not a door directly into the garage at all.
bpath
last year
I think that depends on the needs and desires of the resident of the ADU.
vinmarks
last year
The kitchen is not functional with the narrow aisles. Your master closet is very narrow so you will only be able to hang clothing on one wall.
LH CO/FL
last year
Careful chosing materials for the west-facing front door. Our current home came with a gorgeous stainless steel door that heats up and expands almost every afternoon to the point that it can't be opened or closed easily.
cpartist
last year
Who designed this?

Does the person in the ADU have a wheelchair or walker? Does the person have issues with bending?

Your kitchen will not be fun to work in and as noted, the aisles are too narrow. And why do you have an angled pantry breaking up the space?

Your master closet can only have hanging on one wall since clothes take up 2' of space and you need 3' for walking.

A 22' long entry is longer than most people's living rooms. And it will be a dark passageway. In fact the whole house will be very dark. (See PDF''s comments above.)

I post this all the time. Anything in bold really needs to be rethought.

The best houses orient the public rooms towards the south for the best passive solar heating and cooling

The best houses are L, U, T, H, or I shaped.

The best houses are only one to two rooms deep. And covered lanai, porches, garages, etc count as rooms in this case.

The best houses make sure kitchens have natural light, meaning windows so one doesn't have to have lighting 24/7 to use the kitchen. (And no, dining areas with windows 10' or more from the kitchen will not allow for natural light.) (I'm bolding this because your only natural light is a small window facing east, meaning you'll only have a few hours of bright light early in the day.)

The best houses make sure all public rooms and bedrooms have windows on at least two walls.

The best houses do not if possible put mechanical rooms, pantries or closets on outside walls

The best houses do not have diagonal interior walls making for odd spaces. (I'm including this because of the pantry.)

The best houses keep public and private spaces separate. (The ADU bedroom shares a wall with the foyer.)

The best houses do not have you walk through the work zone of the kitchen to bring laundry to the laundry room.

The best houses do not have the mudroom go through any of the work zones of the kitchen.

The best houses do not use the kitchen as a hallway to any other rooms.

The best houses do not put toilets or toilet rooms up against bedroom walls or public areas.

The best houses do not have walk in closets too small to stand inside.

The best houses have separation, such as closets, between bedrooms and between bedrooms and public rooms.

The best houses do not have roofs that are overly large, and dominate the exterior of the house.

The best houses do not have stick on exterior materials only on the front façade.

The best houses have an organizing “spine” so it’s easy to determine how to get from room to room in the house and what makes sense. Meaning they don’t have meandering circulation paths.
T Rouse
Original Author
last year
bpath Does the adult family member drive? If so, would it be more convenient for them to have their door to the garage on the driver’s side of their car?

cpartist Does the person in the ADU have a wheelchair or walker? Does the person have issues with bending?

No on both, so those are not issues for our family.

Consider removing one of the den closets and making a notch instead of a corner, and a door from den to bathroom. It allows the den to possibly be used as a bedroom, and makes the laundry (and the other bedroom) easier to navigate to.

Great idea, thank you – yes!

rockybird There is only 2.5 feet between the island and the counters on one side.

vinmarks The kitchen is not functional with the narrow aisles.

cpartist Your kitchen will not be fun to work in and as noted, the aisles are too narrow.

Thanks all – yes, so we moved the bench and small desk area in the drop zone further down, which created more room in the kitchen for the refrigerator and counters/cabinets and now we have a minimum of 40 inches in all aisles. It is what we have now, had in our last house, and will work out better.

ppf I'd work to open up the public spaces to the south, and minimize the western exposure.

cpartist The best houses orient the public rooms towards the south for the best passive solar heating and cooling

After 33 years we’ve lived in houses facing NSE&W. We are evening sunroom/patio people who enjoy our time out back on the East facing backyard side of the house with no sun.

Thank you everyone for all of your terrific feedback. We considered every suggestion which got us thinking about other issues as well. Next step is drafts of exterior elevations and more "tweaking"!
cpartist
last year
and now we have a minimum of 40 inches in all aisles.

That is still not nearly enough. 42" is minimum for a one person kitchen. If you have more than one in the kitchen, you really need 48". And the measurements need to be from whatever sticks out furthest to the island counter. Not cabinet to cabinet. So from the door handle of the dishwasher to the edge of the counter on the island. Or the edge of the island to the door handle of the stove.

It is what we have now, had in our last house, and will work out better.

Did you build your last two houses? If you're building a house now, and spending 6 figures, why not make it work right as opposed to, "this is what we got used to because that's just the way it was?

After 33 years we’ve lived in houses facing NSE&W. We are evening sunroom/patio people who enjoy our time out back on the East facing backyard side of the house with no sun.

So what you're saying is you really don't care about heating and cooling bills and a way to make them work more efficiently.

David Cary wrote this on someone else's thread today and it's so true.

The south has the most sun in the winter which is when you need the light the most. That also helps heat the house - for free. Then as the sun gets higher in the sky, you get less sun during the summer. Sun that is easy to build overhangs to block out.

I have a number of these and is great to have sun cascading into our kitchen in the winter and then perfectly blocked but visible all day in the summer. "

Thank you everyone for all of your terrific feedback. We considered every suggestion which got us thinking about other issues as well. Next step is drafts of exterior elevations and more "tweaking"!

I'm going to add one more to my best houses: The best houses design the inside, the outside and how the house sits on the site all at the same time.
David Cary
last year
I am not a professional and I have commented on many floor plans over the years. Many times there are so many things to comment on, the challenge is trying to pick the most important which is obviously opinion.

Orientation is so important and so often neglected. Thank you so much for being crystal clear about orientation. West facing glass is not ideal and your house is dramatically west facing glass. You should try to sleep in 65-68 degrees which will mean a/c in the ADU bedroom many times when the rest of the house won't need it. And it will need opening windows and then closing them during milder times. And obviously I completely agree with cpartist.

Now - onto smaller items. Sliding doors to closets. Is this a regional thing? Sliding doors are terrible generally. You are limited on handles - hard for arthritic hands I expect. The tracts are annoying - to clean/maintain. I haven't seen a sliding door on a new house in decades. It is one of the things that I work hard to remove on older houses. I have a house that is a rental with my MIL currently in it. I am literally considering moving walls or something dramatic to get rid of the sliding doors. Is this something that you have "lived with" before and specifically requested?

And I completely agree that long closet is a mess to live with. Again - something done in the past that you don't see anymore. Partly because houses are bigger so you aren't forced into it but also it just isn't ideal.
AnnKH
last year
I certainly understand the pleasure of a patio on the east side of the house. Our previous house faced SW, with a deck on the SE side - pleasant morning sun, but comfortable shade in the afternoon/evening. We ate most of our meals on the deck in the summer.

But our living areas faced SW, with bedroom in the NE and NW corners, and no windows on the NW side (not only a close neighbor on that side, but prevailing winter winds). It took full advantage of passive solar in the winter, and had minimal direct sunlight in the summer (thanks to well-placed trees in the front yard). We spent a lot more time indoors than outdoors, even in the summer.

I completely agree with David Cary that orientation is paramount. You have very specific needs for your build, and meeting all those needs while optimizing orientation is quite the challenge. But I think I would prioritize the interior space, and if you have to use a screen or umbrellas to shade the deck in the afternoon, so be it.
Mrs Pete
last year
That is still not nearly enough. 42" is minimum for a one person kitchen. If you have more than one in the kitchen, you really need 48".

Test this for yourself: Go down to Lowes and walk through their sample kitchens ... you'll find that most of their aisles are 42" apart. Seeing it for yourself will allow you to determine your own comfort level.

Random thoughts:

- This is a complicated perimeter, which will lead to a complicated roofline ... these will add expense without any real benefit.

- The entryway is quite a bowling alley.

- This is for a couple heading towards retirement, right? Do you really need a living room AND a sunroom AND a den? Three living spaces? And the disabled relative has a living room of his /her own.

- In contrast, the only eating area will be next to the kitchen? It looks a bit small.

- If I'm reading the master closet dimensions correctly, it's only 5'4" wide? A hanging rack needs 24" and a shelf for folding needs 14" ... so if you have one of each, that gives you a 14' long 26" wide walking aisle. Not wide enough. You could maybe open a double door in the middle and put your hanging racks on the two far ends ... but changing the dimensions of this closet would be better.

- The master bath looks more reasonable than most. Where do you see towels hanging?

- I'd move the washer /dryer to the end of the laundry room. This'll give you more "standing space" as you work.

- The hallway to the guest bedroom looks narrow ... imagine bringing a headboard or mattress down that hallway, especially through the 90 degree turn.

- Since you intend to be old in this house, I'd want an exterior door in the master bedroom for fire safety.

Please Comment on Our Floor Plan

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bpath

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