I like the service door to the left of the front porch. But, The first thing you see coming in the front door is the powder room? Bad Feng shui! It should be a view of something nice, like through the family room to the back yard. A washer dryer in the master closet should be on the he outside wall so it can vent outside, but wouldn't you worry about the humidity in with the clothes?

Thanks for the feedback. I agree, the placement of the powder room is not ideal, but I do not know where else to put it. I forgot about the venting; I will move the washer/dryer to the outside wall. I think if it's in its own little closet, the humidity won't be a problem, especially since there is a window that can be opened for ventilation. I really like the idea of not having to move clothes to/from the main laundry upstairs.

Oh my gosh. This is similar to what I am trying to work on, however with your dining being a hearth, your music room being the dining.
One thing that does jump out at me that is hard with this living room/dining/kitchen location is getting the foyer to have a view of the living room and in my case, also a view right out a back window :)
It does seem like a VERY large main floor for the rooms included? How many square feet did you get for the main floor?

Just calculated, and it's about 5500 sq ft including the garage and outdoor living spaces. I did not realise it was that big! Really need to shrink it down! I really like the proportions of the rooms though, so am not sure how to shrink it without losing the balance.

I would like to get a better view through the foyer, but that would require losing the living/music room and may shrink the family room too much. May need to mess around with it a little more.

Hi Reah, I like a lot of things about your plan.

The storage area you built into the garage that could double as a hobby area for someone interested, like carpentry etc. and there are a lot of things to store that you really don’t want in a basement or an attic.

The freezer in a pantry in the kitchen, since ours is in the basement and it is inconvenient.

The mudroom out of the garage / The bathroom right in the mudroom / The access from the front porch to the mudroom

Love the covered porch / Love the screened porch and
access from the DR and to the deck

I like the idea of having a washer/dryer on the first floor.

As for how to reduce the square footage….wow, it's like a rubik's cube! That's a tough one. Personally, we have a casual life style and the music/living room and study/library would barely be used. Most people who have social gatherings at home have family and friends who congregate in the family room/dining room/kitchen. Unless someone hosts more formal gatherings that are work related.

Not sure what else could reduce the sq footage. Maybe the hall? It is interesting though, because looking at this plan and what ways I would personally change it, makes me think that every plan has to be custom to the family that is going to use it, because everyone is so different.

For instance, I see three walls in the MBdrm that have no windows out and I would find that claustrophobic. And the kitchen where I might spend a lot more time than in other rooms doesn't have a nice big window to look out. Sink and DW on the peninsula with seating, a personal pet peeve. There are always dishes in the sink at the point where you sit down to eat. Stools with their back to the Dining Room table.

I agree the 1st floor bath needs a new location.

I think I see a linen closet outside the MBdrm, but is it big enough? Will have to hold the linens and towels for MBdrm and DR linens, pillows, possibly an extra down comforter, etc.

Not sure if I would place the W/D in the MB closet. I might want to combine the area where the mudroom is and the first floor bathroom and a linen closet and the washer dryer as a utility area and how close to the MBdrm you want that, I don't know. Where do you store a vacuum cleaner and broom and mop and bucket, etc.? An area for ironing clothes should be included in the area where the washer dryer is and personally I would not want to stand inside a closet and iron. I am in the garden every day of the growing season and come in pretty dirty and often muddy because I am out there in rain. So the washer near the mudroom or in it, would work better for me. And if I were sleeping in the MBdrm I wouldn't want a washer dryer on the wall adjoining to listen to, because sometimes putting in a load of laundry is the first thing we do on a Saturday morning and the spouse might want to sleep in. And we sometimes will put a load of towels in the dryer last thing before going to bed.

I would be interested to see how you end up reducing the size. It is a challenge to keep everything you want and the size of the rooms. Something has to give.

Fun activity though….good luck!

Oh…one other thing….the bay windows on the front porch and deck, will interfere with ideal placement of porch furniture. You want to be facing out and you don't want to place a couch up against those windows jutting out.

If you just swapped the location of the kitchen pantry and the mudroom half bath (and kept the door closed, or rotated it to the hall, and actually put a little wall across from its door to block sight lines from the dining and great room), you could get rid of the hall powder entirely.

Where does the stair go?

I can't find the main organizing idea. The formality of the symmetrical front facade is disrupted by the attached garage wing and the formal entry seems oddly located as if the door to the half bath were a focal point of the house. Pocket doors should be for doors that are normally left open and that is not the case with the half bath.

The complex asymmetrical intersection of the corners of the main living spaces creates a poorly defined space that will probably be difficult to structure, furnish and decorate.

I think several of the rooms are very large and will have a lot of empty space. Maybe place furniture and see how you will arrange it.

The room sizes that really jump out to me

Foyer - short a few inches of the size of some secondary bedrooms. Ours included - although we didn't want them to be large, but at 12x10 they fit 2 night stands, dresser, tv stand and a queen bed in out guest room without feeling cramped.

Master bedroom - again a lot of space. What do you plan on doing with all of it. My first and second house had a master slightly smaller than that. 21x16 without the sitting area and there wer lots of empty space in there. Mostly wasted because generally we spent just the evening in there and in bed, although I did use the thread mill in there too.

The music and study rooms. 18x14 is bordering on an averaged size living room. What do you plan to have in there as well as how many people?

The open 34x6.5ft open hallway. With the other rooms being large I think having 6.5 ft width isn't needed. You have 221 sq ft dedicated to this space alone, plus another 70 sq ft into the master and study hall, which is about half of a decent secondary bedroom size.

Kitchen, dining, family and mudroom areas looks good size wise as does the baths except the powder room by the entry. The master bath is a bit long and I think could be laid out better and not have so much wasted space.

I would consider having the bedroom on the outside corner to have windows on more than one wall, vs bath and closet taking up that premium.

I would post the kitchen on the kitchen forum as I think there are some things that could be improved on.

In general I like the flow of the rooms, with the exception of the powder room in the entry. Do you really need that one?

Great idea to move the MBath/Closet to the inside wall. And I like the idea of having ONE main bathroom aside from the MBath on the 1st floor if you can figure a way to configure it with that utility area I mentioned and leave out the bath in the foyer. I like the idea of reducing that long hallway as well and working on the kitchen in the kitchen forum. There are a few people there who have 3D programs that can give you some help with that.