First Floor -- You pass my *essential* test! You have a powder room that's near the family entrance and the kitchen. I'd think about replacing the window from the back hall to the screen porch with a half-glass door. I'd put the pantry in the back corner of the kitchen -- push into the garage area where the steps are. Give yourselves a 36" door there (and *everywhere* in the house that you can possibly do it). I can't read the garage door sizes, but hope the single door is nine feet wide (not eight). The width of the Dinette is fine, but it's too shallow. Upstairs -- The MBR is larger than I'd want for just a bed. Do you want more furniture there? (I presume all your dressing needs will be in your closets.) Do you have plans for the long wall across from the bed? (If not, reduce the MBR.) I'd tire of crossing the MBR between bath and closets. I prefer to have closets *between* the BR and bath. (That also frees another exterior wall for windows.) The rear BR has the same back and forth. The master bath shower is ginormous. Do you have cleaning help? It and the tub would be warmer placed on interior walls. Is privacy no issue? Can you leave the windows around the tub uncovered? I prefer an airjet tub to a whirlpool. I'd reverse shower/tub and vanities/toilet. You could then have a separate toilet room w/window too. There seems to be excess space in the middle of this bathroom. I'm assuming the larger (rear) BR is for your DD and the boys will share the walk-through bathroom. That should work fine for boys. Otherwise I'd want the bath divided with a toilet and sink for each child with the shower/tub separated. There's no window in this bathroom. There are several exterior walls in this plan where I would want windows. Builders' plans often have this shortcoming. Do your children do their own laundry? If not, I'd prefer a laundry chute to machines where *I* am during 'laundry hours'. I see 'carpet' listed many places. Can you stretch to wood flooring? Carpet is kaput shortly in any household, let alone one with three young kids and a dog. LOL It's cheap, but it's yards of waste, long-term. We'd love to see the outside elevations!

I wanted to post some after photos and thank everyone who took the time to comment. It turns out that the wall was "indented" when we removed the chair rail so my DH has spent several weekends to build it back up with joint compound and texture it to blend in with the walls. It was a painfully tedious process (first trying to do it by hand, then with a sponge, then with spray-on compound that dribbled everywhere, and finally with a trowel lightly loading dabs of compound on). If you look closely you can still tell, but it's not as glaring as it was several iterations ago. Suffice to say, we are thrilled to be done with sanding, priming, texturing, and painting! Now, I need to figure out what wall decor to put up as the removal of the chair rail makes it a much easier space to deal with! Any and all advice would be appreciated. I was thinking of doing a photo gallery near the front entry, but that is a HUGE wall and I don't know that I can put photos high enough where you can still see them but not so low that the wall looks off-balance. Forgive the quality of the photos, taken without a flash on my iPhone.

"Could I splice into the main wire coming in so that it powers both the outlet and the switch?" What "main wire"? There should be a feed coming into the box with a hot, neutral, and ground. The hot goes to both devices. The output from the switch then goes to the hot of the fixture, and all the neutrals are connected together (one from the fixture, one from the GFCI, one from the feeder). All the grounds are also connected together, along with any switch ground pigtail, the GFCI ground pigtail, and a box ground pigtail (for a metal box).

That's the problem with floor outlets - they have to be installed to match your furnishing plans. But if this is just for table lamps how about batteries? For example - I have a small Ryobi inverter that would probably fit in a drawer or in a decorative basket. You can probably get an inverter, two batteries, and a charger for around $300.