It's a very well designed house for an internet company and the cost is reasonable. I recommend buying the CAD file for $1,850 and hiring someone local to make sure the documents are complete enough for construction and meet all relevant regulations and also specify the windows, finishes, etc.

The stone base on the porch columns and beige/brown tones seem a little inelegant for this grand style probably the choice of the renderer. The stone wall cladding stops where it should, at the second floor line, so the floor can cantilever to support the shingled second story wall (ie, the wall doesn't have to set back at the change). This will need to be detailed in the drawings.

Thanks for the advice, Renovator. No notable issues with the layout of the floorplan? I agree about the beige / brown tones and am curious what you would envision as more appropriate.

Overall, I like it. The front elevation is a bit busy for my tastes with all those gables but they're well placed and nicely balanced in size. I'd skip the decorative shutters on the double-ganged and triple-ganged windows. IMHO shutters should LOOK like they're functional and there is no possible way those shutters could shut over those windows.

On the whole, the layout looks pretty livable tho there are a few things you might want to consider altering.

First, noise from 2 story great room and upstairs study will bleed over. Depending on how you plan to use the study area, that may or may not bother you. You should also read up on issues involved with maintaining a comfortable temperature both upstairs and down where there is an overlook into a two story room. And, since you mention a new baby, you might also want to consider the safety factor involved in having a couple of balconies overlooking the great room and foyer when your infant starts walking (and climbing!) You might decide that it would be better to extend the "sloping ceiling" that is on the far right hand side of the great room clear across and then use the area above it (and next to the study) for extra storage.

Second, I personally don't like having to walk through a laundry room to get from the garage into the house. With kids, somehow the laundry never all seems to get done. (I'm sure you're finding this out!) So, consider if you and some friends are planning to go out shopping together. Everyone meets at your house with the intention of all riding together in your car. Your babysitter arrives and your friends put down their coffee cups, gather up their purses and you all head for your garage...and THEN you remember that big pile of dirty laundry on the floor of your laundry room that is waiting to go into the washing machine! It's one thing to escort a friend thru your mudroom with scattered shoes and jackets. Another thing altogether to expect them to step around and over piles of dirty laundry. With a house this size and this nice, I'd expect a separate "destination" laundry room.

If you made the garage a couple of feet longer by pushing the back wall back, you could then also push the back wall of the laundry room back a couple of feet. Then, if you gave up that walk-in pantry, you would have room enough for a separate laundry room in the back half of the current laundry room space and a mud room with cubbies in the front half. Like this:

This would also allow you to make bedroom 3 a couple of feet longer so that it it a bit closer in size to bedroom #2. If/when you have two kids, you don't one child to be jealous of his/her sibling's much larger room.

You may not want to give up the walk-in pantry but, as big as the kitchen is and with as much storage space as it has, you may not really need a walk-in pantry anyway. Especially since you have a storage space under the stairs where you can stash some items that might otherwise go into a walk-in pantry.

I'm a bit concerned that that island is smack dab in the middle of the kitchen "work triangle" so you might find you spend a lot of time walking around it to get to things you need. You might want to run the kitchen past the folks on the kitchen forum. They're whizzes at making kitchens truly functional!

Is that an elevator next to bedrooms 2 and 4? I can't quite read what the plan says. And, if it is an elevator, I'd have expected them to list that as a key feature on the plan specs page and they don't. So while it looks like an elevator, I'm not sure that it is. If it is an elevator, you're going to love that feature!!! When your little one gets old enough to push the elevator buttons (or has friends coming over to play that might do so), you might want to replace the door knobs on the outer elevator doors with locking knobs that need a key to be opened from the outside.

My 4 year old nephew came to visit at Christmas, got into the elevator by himself and opened the inner door (gate) while the car was between floors. Of course the car stopped immediately (as it is supposed to do) and there isn't enough room between the door and the wall for even a child to fall out. But he panicked and started shrieking and couldn't hear us telling him to close the gate so the elevator would start back up again. Had to go in and rescue him - which fortunately is pretty easy to do with a home elevator. But I'm not sure my SIL has quite forgive me yet for the trauma her baby endured. If your child grows up with the elevator, he/she probably won't play with it that much - but his/her friends probably will want to. So...

Other than those few things, I really like the plan. You picked a nice one. Go build it!

Overall, , I like it. I agree the garage needs to extended if you truly want a 3 car garage. Right now there's no room between the bays. I'm not sure how you would open our car doo with he current set up.

I would also sketch out you're furniture to scale in the family room. you may want to swap your fireplace and media.

The bonus room above the garage doesn't seem very functional. Is it just for storage?

I'm also not a fan of 2 story great rooms.

The 2 story foyer seems a bit random. I might just extend the study.

Good luck! You're off to a great start!

A residential elevator system should not allow the cab gate to be opened when the cab is not at a landing. An automated tambour type gate that retracts when it hits an obstruction is best. The elevator shaft seems too small for a shaft-mounted lifting mechanism and I see no separate machine room.

If you dress up the entry space from the garage perhaps the half bath could enter from it. It's a trade off between kid use and and guest use, utility and elegance.

Because of the large volume of the house I would probably push the exterior design toward Colonial Revival and away from Craftsman/Mountain Rustic but I don't know anything about the site, surroundings, climate etc.

This house will have a large half-story attic/3rd floor space. I know that filling it with trusses is the standard developer approach but to me it is ridiculous to spend the money to create such a space not be able to use it.

It's a pretty fair plan, but it will be a pretty expensive plan to build as well. You didn't mention budget, but be sure that you have a firm idea of what you can spend and if this will be in that range. I'd expect it to be in the upper tier of costs in your area.

Thanks for all the feedback. I read through some of the posts here about two-story great rooms and the shortcomings. The original build would have been within budget, but toward the top -- and had a lot of space that we don't need quite yet. We're looking into this floor plan now:

We like the flow better than the original design. I've never had a house with a door that separates the toilet from the rest of the bathroom; are these practical and desireable? I can see this in the master, as it would spare the spouse from some unnecessary odors and sounds, but in smaller bathrooms throughout the house?

Here is a link that might be useful: House Plan Page

To answer your question about toilets... I like having them separate. What I don't like, is that your plan has the toilet door open into the toilet room. This is "bad" for a couple reasons. One, it makes the room really cramped for getting the door closed while you are standing in there (Master in particular), and two, if something should happen on the toilet to where you'd need medical care and you were incapacitated, the paramedics would have a very difficult time getting the door open. Toilet room doors should be outswing, or pocket, imo.

I really like the toilet/bath room separate from the hall vanity in the hall bath. This lets children still brush teeth, use vanity mirror, etc even while another child is using the toilet.

I also like having the toilets separate. Overall, a decent plan. I do refer this elevation.

I would widen the back hall by 2.5 feet to add lockers and closet on the right. you can also widen the master by 2.5 feet and it will be a great size.

Not loving the kitchen layout, but that can easily be changed. I'd probably put in an island.

The great room might be too small considering that you will need to float the furniture so that people can walk from the foyer to the kitchen. You might as well extend it back 3 feet or so. The covered patio is only 7' deep and that is not functional. I would cover the patio as well. I would remove the door from the eat in kitchen to porch and move it to the great room.

The bedroom wing on the right is not bad, but the rooms need more windows. I might switch to reach in closets to make the rooms bigger. bed #4 can have 2 walls of windows if the closets were repositioned.

I like the overall plan, with the following changes:

I'd move the door of the 1/2 bath towards the utility room and put the toilet and vanity on the stair wall, so the view into it from the main living areas is more protected. Then move the stairs back, taking at least 1' from the MBR (which doesn't need to be that large in that direction) and putting it into the utility/laundry room (which can never be large enough!). Then take 6" to 12" from the laundry and 1/2 bath and put it in the hall, so there's enough space to put a narrow bench with hooks over it on the right wall for the mudroom.

I'd add 1' to the right side of the house, giving each bedroom an extra 1' (12' is better than 11', IMO), and a little more space in the tub/toilet room. Then to balance the front elevation and loosen up the kitchen/dining space, I'd add 1' through the breakfast/kitchen/pantry areas.

The extra 1' would give you a nicer eating space in the breakfast room, especially if you don't use the flex space as a dining room. You could then shorten the kitchen, which is plenty big, by about 1', making the breakfast area longer, which would be good since people would be walking through there a lot from the 1/2 bath or garage.

The flex space is probably called that, because it's not a particularly attractive room. To change that, I'd get rid of the storage and pantry and square off the corner into the kitchen which has a lot of wasted space, and which would allow the window to be more centered. This could now be used as an attractive dining room or study, with cabinets or a buffet along the "north" wall.

This may sound like a lot of changes, but they're easy for a designer to make.

Anne

I was playing with the layout on FloorPlanner. Added a bit more square footage and tweaked a few things.

Before:

The dedicated dining room has arches to the foyer and the great room. Widened the back hall and added the locker off the mud room. Tweaked the storage off the garage and the master closet set up to connect to the laundry room. For my work, I've often nasty things on my clothes and boots that I'd rather not track through the house and having access to the master off the laundry would be very beneficial. Not sure how that would play out in reality though. Any thoughts there?

What was bedroom 4 got a pretty big size increase and the other two got small size increases.

The great benefit of the first plan was that it provided exterior walls with windows on 3 sides of the main living areas (including the kitchen) and put the majority of bedrooms upstairs for greater privacy and security. It also had a sense of arrival and good zoning between living and utility spaces.

The new design places the bedrooms so that they enclose the main living spaces on two sides like blinders eliminating windows, forcing the kitchen into an interior corner of the living space and providing easier exterior access to the bedroom windows. It also has no sense of arrival or zoning.

I realize this approach is the most common one found in pre-drawn floor plans but in my opinion it is a seriously flawed because it chooses space efficiency over personal needs for light, air, security and privacy. I might also mention a less obvious but important concern: young families might want to gather together in one large multi-function space but relationships in families change as children grow up and parents age and these spaces can prove to be terribly inadequate.

A good designer should be able to find a compromise solution between space efficiency and personal needs. At this point I'm not sure if the OP wants bedrooms upstairs or downstairs but if the bedrooms stay downstairs moving some of them forward or back might help quite a bit. That might also create a more interesting house massing. But whatever approach you use don't forget the human need for private spaces and house zoning that avoids the need to walk thorough the main living spaces to get to them.

Of course, it is virtually impossible to arrive at a good solution without having a written program and the site plan showing zoning restrictions and relevant features in front of you. Therefore, pre-drawn internet plans and internet chat rooms are not the best places to start the design process.

A couple of comments about the new rendition you did.

The master closet/door to the laundry room will not work as drawn. Make sure you mark off 2' out from each wall where you will have hanging rods. I would assume you would have the long exterior wall with rods on them.

Also, that is a pretty small laundry room. If you are having a laundry ROOM, I'd want a place to hang up some clothes, a place to fold clothes, etc.

Master bath layout is awkward. I don't think the toilet room is large enough and I don't like it's placement. That door will always be getting in the way of the closet entrance and the sink. Perhaps you could swap the shower and toilet room. A shower door normally stays closed and if you use glass walls, it will help that area not feel so cramped.

I'm not sure on the dimensions of the closets, but if you intend them to be walk in with hanging rods on both sides, they will need to be at least 7' wide ideally. You can do smaller depths and have rods on 3 sides, but the door needs to be positioned correctly for this to work.

I think you really need to play with furniture and look at the traffic patterns around it and what the view will be of. I don't like that from the great room, your view of the guest hall will be the bathroom door.

Will you have a pantry? Not fond of the kitchen, but don't know if that is the basic shape or if it's just because it isn't too functional as drawn with the major pieces in those locations. When you get your house plan more finalized, I would suggest taking the kitchen layout over to the kitchen forum. If nothing else, just make sure you understand the different zones in a kitchen such as cleanup, prep, and cooking. Right now, your prep sink and your cooking stove are overlapping and not really giving either area enough room. Moving the stove back to the same wall as the fridge would help. Keep the prep sink on the island, but I would center it or move it to the opposite end to be closer to the stove.

**Just wanted to end by saying that access to the master area from the laundry room has been great for my parents that built last year. They enter a large combo room from the garage - it has a large area for laundry, 2 reach in closets, and a 4.5' wide niche that has a desk in it. There are two routes from here - one door opens up into the main hall directly across from the pantry; the other door goes into the master bathroom. This house was designed with their specific needs in mind, so much of the plan is probably not what other people need so you can ignore that, but thought I would share their basic floor plan so you could see an example of a laundry room connecting to the master area that is working out.

One thing to keep in mind, when rearranging/making larger an existing floorplan...

Carpet comes in 12 foot wide rolls. You took a floorplan which had every "minor" bedroom with at least 1 dimension under 12 feet and converted them to greater than 12 feet. A) minor bedrooms rarely need to be that large (unless you are going to stuff 8 kids in 3 bedrooms, you have very large bedrooms now). B) you will be spending more and wasting more on your carpet purchases for the minor bedrooms where a child may want to choose their carpet color.

It's great that you can play around with the plan yourself! Here are a few more suggestions:

The front windows need to be realigned with the front porch posts on the elevation.

In a dining room with a centered window and centered doorways, the lighting fixture is usually centered on them, and the table is then centered under the fixture. So the room then needs to be configured so that a buffet and extra chairs also have a place along a wall, without throwing off the symmetry.

I'd put a good quality double pocket door to close off the MBR suite/back hall from the kitchen/breakfast area. If you and your spouse go to bed or get up at different times, or if one of you is sick, it is nice to not hear the kitchen noises/kids as loudly as will otherwise be the case. I did this in my last place and this one, and although most of the time the doors are open, there were many times when they really came in handy!

I agree with the comment about the 12' carpet width. You can go to a 15' width, but I believe your choices will be limited and the price will be more. Also, it would have to be pieced in the guest BR, and will probably be noticeable in the daytime as you walk into the room.

I had a similar long hall to the BRs in my last place. I would definitely put a flexible skylight (Velux SunTunnel or SolaTube) in this hall and the garage hall.

I'd take 1'-2' from the bath toilet/tub room for the vanity room since 3 BR will be using it, and have the door open into the tub room.

Anne