Agree with Virgil about context being everything, so without that, there's lots of guessing. We also have a house on a narrow lot (vintage 1919) and houses nearby, though not as close as in one of the photos above. We did take into account which windows line up with which of our neighbors. On one side, we used obscured glass in the bathroom window and the other window has a cellular shade that is always down. It still brings in a wonderful soft light. the other side of our house is downhill and we leave the dining room window shades halfway down to obscure the roof of the one-story house, but open up the view to the sky. My point is that you just want to make sure you've thought all that through so you are not surprised or disappointed. Our house is very light for this climate, but it might look odd on a floor plan to see where the windows are placed. I would like to see some sketches of your house with a gabled roof, though.

I haven’t read through all of the comments so there may be some overlap but a few details I noticed… Reach in closets should be larger than 2’. Kudos to your draftsmen for at least accounting for the drywall and adding an inch, but particularly your coat closets, when you get bulky coats in there the sleeves stick out and take up more than 2’. A minor thing but honestly I don’t think you’d regret giving it an extra 4-6 inches. With the guest coat closet placed there, you have a large grand foyer but you walk in and face bi-fold doors that probably aren’t closed all the way or are coming off the tracks. You have this nice stairwell but it is completely walled off except for the bottom 4 steps. I would try to open that area up and bit and remove the closet so you can see something better than closet doors when first walking in. I only see one area for a mechanical chase on the first floor and it looks a little small for water, drains and HVAC ducts. On the second floor will your ducting be in the floor or in the ceiling? If ceiling you need a continuous chase from first floor to second. If vents are in the floor on the second floor, anticipate having a bulkhead on the first floor to accommodate ducting. Upstairs bathroom – I grew up in a house with a separate room for the sink and then a tub & toilet room. Some probably find it a little awkward as they don't know “how” to use it and they closed both the doors but in a house with 4 kids (1 boy and 3 girls) I’m pretty sure having the sink area that everyone could use WHILE someone was in the toilet/shower was the saving grace in our house. Plus, that bathroom also has a lot of wasted space as is, I’d rework that and the laundry. Master bathroom, I’m guessing that’s a freestanding tub, it looks like a pain to clean around. You’d have to either sit in the tub or stand in the corner to clean back there. The mudroom is large but the layout doesn’t look very efficient at all and it functions more like a hallway. The island in the kitchen, it looks like there are no cabinets under it? I don’t see a lot of storage other than the pantry and the pantry style dish storage. I’m sure it’s been said to review it with the kitchens forum :) 4’ for the upstairs hallway seems wide, especially since you have the second stairwell so it’s not the ‘prime’ access to the bonus room. I would bring it down to 3’6 to match the stairwell. I’d also consider switching bedroom 4 and the bath/laundry area. The sitting room is a little awkward, I can see a chair going in here or there for a person to read in, but in my house it would turn into a chair full of laundry too quickly. Plus no one would read there because it would be right down the hall from the open bonus room (I’m guessing that is a play room.) The closets in the shared girls room… will they fight over who gets the bigger one? The closet in bedroom 4 needs to shrink a bit too, the door frame will be right next to the wall there. On the front elevation, do full height sidelights instead of the windows. Get chunkier columns in there. Spread the 2 garage windows (or at least see if that looks better). Back elevation, reconsider the column placing. You’re stepping out a French door smack into a column and looking out a kitchen window into a column.

It's a big house but with a very small living area. When furniture is floated and traffic must go through a room, there is very little space left for furniture. Think about this. I like to sleep in, too. Since your house faces East, you won't get morning sun in the bedroom and can still have more windows/light. My own very large bedroom faces west and has two windows on that wall and one on the north wall. I also live in KY and morning light comes late here unless you're in the Central time zone part of KY. Even then, it's not broad daylight at 5 AM in the summer the way it is on the East Coast! The way the plan is now, you're ruining what could be a lovely master suite. With two teenage grandsons and having had two children of my own, the last thing on earth I would want is the garage entrance right next to their bedrooms! Even the nicest, best child WILL sneak out at some time and you're inviting it and also inviting "guest" you might not want in your house at an inappropriate time of day. You have acreage - for heavens sake get rid of that garage where it is now! That plan is for small subdivision lots! I can see the reason for the two baths if this is truly your "forever" home - when children are married and come home with their families, an extra bedroom will be very welcome. In a big house with the bedrooms on separate sides, I'd want my main laundry to be near the children's bedrooms as that is where the majority of laundry will be. I'd also want a stacking w/d in the area of the MBR so you don't have to haul your own sheets/towels/clothes all the way across the house. Do you really want your master bath right on the front of the house? With the tub at the front window? I'd want it on the back where I could bathe with no window covering and look out at my property, not the driveway and a guest who might arrive early! There is a reason that houses had halls for many decades - even centuries! It means one does not have to walk through rooms to get to another. It means there are walls on which to place furniture. It also separates space. I know - "open concept! open concept"! Sometimes separation of space is a very good thing! If you're having adult entertaining, do you really want children walking through the living room/great room? Your dining room is VERY small! My own DR is 13x13 and I'd kill for an additional 2 ft in length and width! It's very tight when people are at the table - I can't even walk all the way around the table to serve. And I hate passing plates across someone. If my lot were not so narrow, that's one wall I WOULD knock out and expand that room, but alas, not to be. You have a huge lot - make that a room that you can seat your entire family at someday when your children are grown. As others have said, the drawings are faint and my old eyes have had trouble reading the plans. I agree with all about that gigantic roof. You'll thank us someday when you have to re-roof that thing and it costs a year's college tuition to do so! And it won't be In-State in KY! Okay - wife wants a vaulted ceiling. Your living room will be cold in the winter and hot in the summer. Your heating/ac bills will be enormous. It will be noisy. You live in KY - it does get cold in the winter and Lord knows it gets VERY hot and humid in the summer! If I were going to spend this much money to built a large house, I would hire an architect and I would listen to his advice - especially your wife needs to listen. My own house is only about 2800 sq feet but I have more true living space than you do - bigger rooms. You can do better than this.

I know that there is a lot of discussion about the location of laundry rooms. I grew up in a house with the laundry room right next to the kitchen, and that was fairly innovative for the time the house was built in our area where laundries were typically in the basement or in a room near the garage. In my own places I've had to put laundries in two of them, the previous owners used a common laundry facility or the laundromat. I have had three different locations 1) off the master bedroom in a large walk in closet 2) in the kitchen 3) in the basement (currently) In each case location was dictated by where it would fit best. I think there are pros and cons to each. In the house I grew up in, while laundry was done regularly by my mother, when I was little there was a baby sitter who also got paid to iron because everything in my house got ironed at that point. Later there was a cleaning lady who did sheets towels and blankets as a part of her job, and as my mother became increasingly disabled it was good to have the laundry off the kitchen because she literally came downstairs in the morning and did not go upstairs all day long if she was home alone, her mobility was very limited. So off the kitchen was great, she could do laundry next to the two rooms she spent the most time in, the kitchen and the library. (The cleaning lady also set the ironing board up in the library next to the laundry room so she could watch TV while she ironed, which took hours) When I had mine in the master bedroom closet, honestly it was very convenient, but on the other hand things rarely ever got fully put away, because it was all right there, dirty clean, everything. For me it got sort of disorganized, and if I wanted to iron shirts or something, I didn't want to iron in the closet. So I dunno, that location was okay because the laundry was done where it was generated but it became very disorganized for us. In the kitchen, the benefit to this was you had to do it and put it away, and you would rarely do a washer load and then forget to put it in the dryer or to start the dryer. Other than that I did not like it right in the kitchen. Ours will currently stay in the basement because the rest of the house isn't laid out for it to go anywhere else but I don't think it will bother me too much. If I was able to put it anywhere I would probably put it in a separate laundry room near the kitchen if my house was big enough to do so. For us the current convention of having it closest to the bedrooms was not optimal for us in terms of keeping things organized.