Vinudev, Are you sure it's easy to put the wet bar in the middle of the area? How do you plan to eject the water to the sewage line? We too were considering putting the sink in an island near the steps, but when it came to figuring out sewage connection, we realized that it was better being near the wall where there already existed sewage lines from the first floor. You might be able to find a solution, but just a FYI about our decision process. Also, by putting in a counter there, you cannot be flexible about converting the room to be a long open space when needed. If you are ok with that, that's fine. We wanted to be flexible. So, all the fixed items are on the walls. I hear you about the columns. We have many of them too - not even in a straight line. There's a column right next to the chairs, in the middle of that space. Can you do the same and anchor the columns with the sofa? We anchored the island between two columns. We incorporated 3 others in the inner wall of the utility/bathroom/playroom. We have 3 more columns which are just standing in the room. We covered them with the pole covers found in home depot and just stained it to match the cabinets. Do you have your laundry down in the basement too? Are they under the stairs since you haven't shown them in your design? It makes sense to have the laundry sink near the washer - I love mine :) If you need the space for the workroom where it is, maybe you can move the counter space to the top wall. For normal days you could probably use the countertop as a desk and during parties put the laptop/crafts in the cabinets and use the countertop for a buffett. Good luck deciding. We went through so many iterations :) Every little thing seemed to change our previous decision. But in the end it was all worth it. I hope I'm not coming across as pushy. I just want to help you if possible since we went through so many issues while designing ours. Vidya

The more I think about it, I'm wondering is it odd to walk from the entry through the breakfast/kitchen to get to the living space? What about switching the living to where the dining is and putting the dining/kitchen in the back. It was suggested above but I dismissed it originally b/c of the bar. But I don't know now. Thoughts? My thought process in this has evolved: 1) Make kitchen/dining one to have it be an eat-in area and make kitchen area bigger. 2) Then I went to flip dining to between the living/kitchen and move kitchen by stairs. Then I thought it might be strange to have people walk through that first?? 3) Flip EVERYTHING and put living by stairs and kitchen/dining where kitchen/living are now. But this blows my original image of having a view of the backyard while sitting in the living room, etc. which leads me to... 4) Our architect can kill me (just kidding...we are still in the first phase) and I can tell him to scrap this and go back to putting the breakfast nook where Mike's Den is and the kitchen next to it and leaving the living room where it is b/c it just WORKS there. There HAS to be a way to keep the MBR where it is and fitting the pantry between it and possibly the laundry or the pocket office between the closet and the hallway. Or even reshaping the MBR closet/bath area to do this? Then the bar and half-bath could go UP by the family room with Mike's Den to the right of them against the stairs? Could that work at all? I'm just so much more comfortable with the whole back being open like that. Plus, it's easier to come in and out with groceries, etc. I still don't know what to do about a drop zone though with kids stuff. That's really my only other issue. I can have him do a coat closet up front. Any feedback would be welcome (again! Ha!) Thanks guys!

Thanks for all the input so far. Suero - I didn't understand what you were asking about the entrance being in the office, then I looked at the plans again and I totally see where you are coming from. You can't actually tell from the plans, but the entrance is actually at the bottom of the plans - the stairs go down towards the bottom wall, so that at the bottom of the stairs, you see the TV area to your right and the door to the exercise area to your left. The door under the stairs is a closet in the office where my hubby wants to put the router, printer, fax machine, etc. There are only two small windows - one is behind the furnace (go figure) and the other is in part of the basement that is a crawl space (everything above the "top wall" on the plans is only dug out to half-height, so the floor in that area is about waist high if you are standing in the full-height part of the basement. The round thing in the workshop is the water heater - it's actually not there yet (it's under the stairs) but we're moving it to getit out of the middle of our finished area. There's also a central vac along that wall. The big X in the workshop is an area of indented floor with a floor drain -- the PO's of the house used the area to wash their dogs. Also, above that area the ceiling is crazy low -- the upstairs has sort of a sunken foyer so the ceiling there is probably only about 6'6" or so. We have shelves along the left wall that hold all our paint and are using the floor drain to drain the dehumidifier. The workshop area also holds the electrical panel/breaker box. It's really not a suitable area to finish because of the multi-level floor/low ceiling and all the stuff (w/h, central vac, breaker box). Oh, also, the "top wall" in the workshop is an opening to the half-height area that we plan to leave open. This is really hard to explain - perhaps a pic will help (excuse the mess - we've purged a lot of stuff out of the basement since these were taken): To address some of the other concerns you all brought up, I don't expect that hubby will be using loud saws or whatever while someone else is watching TV (for one thing, the tv is primarily for him, LOL!) The workshop is pretty small (the whole darned basement is cramped, to be honest). I mainly just wanted an area where I could do projects - strip a piece of furniture, use the miter saw for a quick cut or two, etc. And somewhere to store my massive collection of paint cans, LOL! Also, as far as finishing the exercise room, the original plan was to have 3 rooms, one being a dedicated exercise room. But when we got down there with our painters tape and marked it out on the floor, the exercise room ended up being so cramped that it felt claustrophobic. And we don't want to finish that whole "unfinished area" because we still have the furnaces and a whole bunch of well stuff (water softener, a few tanks, etc.). So we figured we'd just omit the wall and leave the exercise area as part of a bigger unfinished room. The shelves/desk along the stairs are for my kids - I envision a long countertop with two kneehole openings to serve as "desks" for the kids. I do plan to use the area under the stairs -- part of it will be a closet accessible from the office and the lower part will be accessible from the exercise area for storage of random stuff. And again, the sliding closets along the top are there in part to incorporate the half-height area. Here's a pic to show you what I am dealing with: I want the closets to be about 2 feet deep at the bottom but where the openings to the half-height area are, the shelves will be deeper, going all the way to the back of the columns that support the ceiling there. We should get a lot of toy storage out of this plan, and I want to build the back of one closet such that it will have an access panel to get back to the half-height area (though we'll have an opening in the workshop area, there are some low hanging pipes and beams back there that would make getting something bigger than a box into the other side of the area very hard, so we want a big access panel to get to the other side if we ever need to (our oil tanks are back there, and someday they may need to be replaced.) So because we want to take advantage of the half-height areas and allow for access back there, those closets taking up the whole top wall seem the only way to do it that I can think of. I did enterain the idea of putting the TV built-in into one of the openings, but ruled it out a while ago when my sister pointed out that putting the media stuff along the "top wall" and the toy storage area at the "bottom wall" means that the first thing people see when they walk down the stairs is a whole pile of toy mess. At least flipped so that the TV is along the "bottom" side, the toy mess is tucked up behind the seating area and not the first thing visitors see! Please do keep the opinions coming - you are all giving me a lot to think about and I'd much rather second-guess things now than after it's built!

So what I'm hearing is that you're building for every contingency, you're building for your house's most busy moments -- so that if both kids AND a guest are present at the same time, everyone has a private room. Realistically, how often is all that space going to be needed AT ONE TIME? I suspect most of the time that space is going to be standing empty, yet you're going to have to pay for it and maintain it all the same. We're also planning for our retirement home, but our thoughts are different: We're planning a bedroom for ourselves plus two more. The first will contain a queen-sized bed and will be for guests OR one of our girls, if she's staying over. The second will be a "bunk room" for the grandchildren whom I hope will appear in future years; it'll also have space for toys and books. If we have BOTH girls over at the same time, some adults can sleep in the kids' bunks, and we can move the kids to the floor. And if push comes to shove, someone can sleep in the (air conditioned /heated) teardrop camper just steps outside. I don't know how your family stacks up, but I've slept at my mom's house only a dozen times or so since I was 18 -- and that includes when she was ill last year, and I went to take care of her. My husband's father is out of town, and we sleep at his house maybe twice a year. If one of them needed to come home for an extended stay, she could have one of those bedrooms . . . or, we're building a bonus room but don't plan to finish it /furnish it. Other possibilities that could help you consolidate while still being prepared: - Install a murphy bed in an office, so the room can do double duty. - Go with a day bed /trundle underneath in a den. When you pop up the trundle, it's a king-sized bed. - Build-in a twin-bed sized window seat in a hallway. It'll be a lovely feature most of the time and can be a bed in an pinch. I can see why the developer wants to go ahead and build all the houses NOW. It's more economical for him, then he can move on to another area. He'll never pay the plumbing crew, for example, for half a day's labor -- when they finish this house, they can go across the street and get straight to work. However, serious question: If you don't build now, what's the penalty? Does he fine you? Force you to sell the property? What's your time limit? I think typically in these situations you have 1-2 years. I would be concerned about the private roads /HOA is responsible for snow (I assume you're in a snowy climate?) thing. Some HOAs function well, while others . . . don't; and if your neighborhood is new, this group is an unproven entity. Thoughts on living in an "older community", whether it's officially a retirement community or not: I live in a kind of odd neighborhood. It was the first neighborhood built in this area, so our houses are mostly large ranches on 1-2 acre lots; there's definitely a 70s vibe: Monster-sized rooms, tiny closets, formal living and dining rooms in every house. More than half of the houses have never been re-sold (that is, MANY of the original owners are still in their houses), so LOTS of my neighbors are older and retired. It has made for an odd dynamic for my kids: They don't have lots of playmates within walking distance, Halloween has always been dead here, and with so few riders the school bus only stops ONCE in the dead-center of the neighborhood (which happens to be my house). I foresee that we're heading for a crisis: MANY of my neighbors are reaching the age that they won't be able to live alone much longer. Funeral signs aren't uncommon. More than a few of these large houses are inhabited by widows who live alone. Most of these neighbors can't maintain their large yards anymore, and the same guy comes and does most everyone's lawns on Wednesday-Thursday. I feel fairly sure that within the next decade, this neighborhood is going to clear out FAST . . . and this community of solid-but-currently-unfashionable all-brick ranches is completely surrounded by newer neighborhoods with newer, cheaper houses on 1/4 acre lots, with community pools and playgrounds -- and that style appeals to many people. I fear this is going to become a rental community, which will lower the value of the houses. Does that have anything to do with you? I don't know. My neighborhood may be an oddity; I do think it's rather odd that such a large percentage of these houses have never "turned over" in terms of ownership. But when you live in a place where the MAJORITY of the residents are senior citizens, it does change the feel of the place. If I had my druthers, I'd live in a more diverse community.