Your lot and idea sounds like it is very similar to the home we just built. We just finished a ranch with walk out basement home on 3 acres fully wooded with creek at the bottom...I have lived in both a single story and two story. I always thought the 2 story was the way to go until I owned one. With two young boys I hated having to live on 2 levels. Carrying laundry up those stairs, keeping an eye on the kids when I was doing dishes, the utilities (oh man what a difference our ranch has made!) etc. We built our ranch with 3 bedrooms on the main level approx. 2000sf on each level. We left the basement unfinished but plan to finish in the next few years. It has 9'6 high ceilings, tall double windows with transoms in every room except for the storage room and bath. It is very bright and doesn't come close to feeling like a cave. In fact there seems to be more light than the average above grade home. There are 2 bedrooms framed in the basement with a large bath, huge storage room, storm shelter(we are in OK) huge living room, pool table area and bar area. The main level spare bedrooms are on the small side, 12x12 but since we will have the huge basement bedrooms I was ok with that. It is SOOOOO nice to live on one level again. I feel like we really use the space, in the two story I felt like I never went upstairs other than to put the kiddos to bed and dust the bathroom that was never used. I feel like the space allocated on the main level is very comfortable and we were careful to use every inch possible to make the main level very functional. Overall, even with young children I wouldn't have a two story (other than the awesome views from up there, we found out after we built would have been great for a playroom or something) Another thing I hated about our 2 story was the kids being on the upper level with our master on the main level. I always thought about fires and how I would get to them. At least with them down you can access them better if the stairs are blocked. I wouldn't want my boys downstairs by themselves yet but it works out well that they can be on the main level until they are a little older. Regarding the appraisal, we did not get even close to the going rate for the basement that above grade gets. They did a net adjustment for the basement and comped us something like $20,000...not even what our 4 car garage added! Another con if you want to call it that, is the home looks smaller from the front than a 2 story would. Honestly that doesn't bother me much since you can't really see our house from the street anyway, it is about the same as any other ranch out there.

here's our dry bar. it connects the kitchen to formal dining room. this pic was taken before the outlet covers and wine glass holder were attached! the cabinets below have pullouts that hold all the alcohol and mixers. uppers hold all of our glassware and crystal. beverage fridge is a Kitchenaid. opposite the bar is our large walk-in pantry.

I have the same set up that you are planning. My kitchenette/wet bar is 15 foot in length . The area in front of it is tiled and the adjacent living area is carpeted. I had a hard time deciding how much to carpet and how much to tile in the lower level. I didn't want to use too much carpet because our floors are heated and I thought the tile floors would be more efficient. The only reason I have carpet in the living area is because our grand kids hang out down there and I thought carpet would be quieter and more comfortable.

ShadyWillowFarm- It looks great! I don't know why I didn't see the updates/questions from 2 years ago, but just got a notification for your recent post. In case anyone else is wondering, we used "thin brick" in our basement, which are basically tiles made out of real brick material. I'm pretty sure it was Old Mill brand in the "Castle Gate" style. We only used it on the exterior walls of the rec room/kitchenette area to give the look of a brick foundation. I strongly considered doing the faux brick panels on the exterior walls of our guest room and bonus room and painting them, but was nervous that it would look too fake and the seams would be obvious. Yours turned out really nice :) motherof3sons- If you happen to see this thread at some point, I would love to see how your kitchenette turned out! That's great that you have a perfect recessed area for a fridge to sit flush with the cabinets/counter. I wish we had that in our regular kitchen (instead of a fridge that sticks way out).