So if we were to do a 1.5 story with the master on the main level, where would you put that, behind the garage then? My thought process would be to first determine priority of room placement in the most ideal location for the use of the room and then if conflicts between room placement develop then rank by how much time is spent and how time is used for each room as well as the importance of that use compared to the importance of the uses for the other rooms. If watching the sunrise from your bed pays off with more enjoyment than having the sunrise and morning sun striking your kitchen, then plan accordingly. For instance, do you plan on using your master suite as a parental get-away from the kids, using it during the day or will your non-sleeping uses be restricted to evenings only, meaning that any views from the rooms would be lost to the darkness of the night? If the views are not important, I'd bury the master suite near the garage in the above sketch. If however, views and day time use are important, then I'd move the master to the east/south/west walls, perhaps right off the entry or in the back off of the kitchen. I'm not necessarily saying to put the master off the entry or off the kitchen, though you could, I'm just using these as examples that reference the above sketch. The way I'm designing my own home is to use a very self-reflective process which tries to understand how I actually live my life rather than trying to contort my lifestyle into architectural trends which presuppose how people SHOULD live their lives. So, to continue on the questioning, why exactly do you appreciate a main-floor master? Is it so that you can avoid stairs? Is it so that you can hear the comings and goings of the kids at night as they try to leave the house, is it because you don't want the kids too near your bedroom, is it because you don't want noise transmission from the master to be easily heard by the kids, and so on? Once you can articulate to yourself why you want something then you can find the best solution for your plan, rather than adopting a cookie-cutter approach. For instance, what I found amusing in some plans was a main floor master with a child's bedroom directly over it on the 2nd. Now, to me, if the goal was to reduce noise transmission from either the child's room to the parent's room or vice versa, the separation by floor, while having intuitive appeal, would fail to achieve the mission. The example I used in an earlier comment was to have a master suite separated by a stairway corridor AND a children's hallway which together create a 7'-8' dead zone, possibly with some walls other than the master and child's bedroom walls also added in between. There are no common walls shared, there is a huge dead zone in between and the goal of reducing noise transmission is, I believe, better served than a downstairs master with an upstairs child's bedroom directly over top, sharing common ceiling/floor as well as sound transmission paths down the walls. Of course, if sound transmission has nothing to do with the appeal of a downstairs master suite, then what I've sketched out is a solution to a problem which doesn't exist, or doesn't matter. I was thinking the master/office space on one side and then the kitchen, dining, great room on the other. That makes sense to me. Would you move the great room from the center of the house below to the front where the dining study is and move the study to where the great room is? Lots of configurations can make sense, but they must make sense in relation to how you envision yourself using the space and the particulars of your lifestyle and preferences. I'd say grab some graph paper, or even blank paper, and just block out the rooms and see how they interplay with each other, note how you foresee traffic patterns within and throughout the space, imagine daily routines taking place within the space. Once you have an idea of how you live, or how you want to live in the new space, then get the graph paper and try to get a better handle on size and furniture placement, and traffic patterns and by the end of this process you should have a very good understanding of how you want the space to be configured. I did the same for my house and this has resulted in me doing away with a formal living room from the now traditional LR/FR combo pack and reallocating the space elsewhere in the home, such as combining the entry with the LR space in order to create a larger sense of space/volume, has led me to create a larger kitchen than would be warranted in relation to the size of the informal living room, has led me to other design changes that likely violate what trained architects use as benchmarks for how homes should be designed. Thank you for the garage tip also - I thought 24x24 was rather large? We will be getting an oversize door for sure. I'd say measure your cars, block out a 24 x 24 space on your lawn, use cardboard boxes or something else to fill the space of your cars, then throw in the other junk you're likely to store alongside the walls of the garage, and see how much space you actually need. Try to get out of your car and see if the door bangs the wall or the other car. A 24 x 24 garage is actually pretty good considering that many designed give a 20 x 23 or something similarly ridiculous.

I think it'll be fine, especially if you're careful about the finish. Your house is pretty much now, and so is the style kitchen you've pictured, and the wide arch. The word "transitional" is overworked, but generally fits anything that has past elements in today's design framework, and that's really what you have pictured. The word "Shaker" applies to the simple recessed panel, not the minimalist design philosophy here. The woods in your picture of the stairs are honey colored (medium golden brown) and in your kitchen drawing they're more spice (medium-dark orange brown). Since you're opening up your house rather than separating off the kitchen, I'd be more concerned with making the woods work together than the cabinet style (which by being so simple should go with anything). Just make sure you're happy with the choice you make! There's no point starting otherwise.

I have several in my home, and am working on the vignette on the mantle, but not satisfied with that one, yet. But here, in the kitchen: A half log attached to the wall with a tea set, a Greek-style vase, a blown glass glass, and some little critters you find at Tractor Supply/Agway. PS the main chicken coop has its own little vignette with chickens and a dinosaur up on a ledge. I glued those down. In the dining room, I have the following - from a distance, and just the sideboard itself. The duck is a wood decoy someone gave me, the watercolor came from the Bethlehem Fair a couple years back, The ceramic cat I painted and fired, The little boy is my great nephew (about a year ago). Finally, the hallway's terminal point. Colors are bad in this shot. The base color for much (not all) of my house is SW Canvas Tan, a warm off-white with no blues or purples in it. It is really a light canvas color! The oil painting my parents once had is more vibrant, too. At any rate, I was buying furniture at the stain-it-yourself place back in Connecticut for my move up here, and I saw that wood shelf. Had to have! The two outside pieces were once my parents', and the wood Buddha cat and the jade Buddha were gifts. I am waiting for a bit more sun, then I will see if I can get a good shot or two of my living room breakfront.

a flat screen TV