Oops let me try this again..

Here is a link that might be useful: Floor Plan

Ok ..maybe I threw to much at everyone. lol. Let's make it simpler...what would you do to make this floor plan flow at little better and give a more defined or perhaps larger dining room space?

I would switch the living room with kitchen and dining. I would put the kitchen at the far end where the fp is and dining close to the entry. I would make a walk though office to get to the kitchen from the side entry. The foyer I would put a wall that extends 6ft so to block the initial entry view of the dining/kitchen and then leave the other area open with columns if needed for support.

The resaon for the flip is you seem to have so much wasted space in the living.

I would also look at re-arranging the bedrooms so the master & bath is on one side and the 2ndary bedrooms on the other. I would not want my master to share a wall with the other bedroom as I'd want some privacy with either space, a bath, or a closet in between.

It would be helpful to know the following before suggesting major changes:

Where's north? Do you have cold winter winds?
What climate/state are you in?
Where are the views? What's the view from the long front porch?
Where are the neighbors' houses? Are you on a quiet street with little traffic?

Anne

lyfia...I agree with the bedroom situation. I think we may decide to use the bedroom next to the master as an office/guest room. We are empty nesters. The idea of having the family/living area on the front is due to the view.

jimandanne...North is on the side where you see the fireplace. We live in Louisiana and bldg on 35 acres in the country. The view from the porch is a 15 acre field.
I've always wanted that old classic farmhouse/country home but its been more difficult than I expected to plan. We are trying to stay with 2300 sq ft. and don't need the additional upkeep of a larger house anyway.

You are definitely right about the nook area being too narrow. It is only a tiny bit wider than the foyer (7'3") so you will only be able to use a little tiny "cafe" table in there - certainly nothing like the 6-seater that your architect is showing... at least not without the table and chairs encroaching on the kitchen and barstool area. A table for that seats six is going to be at least 3' wide, probably 3.5'. Then you need about 3' of space each side of the table for chairs and room for someone to walk behind a chair when someone else is sitting in it. That space just is not going to work.

On the other hand, IMHO, your foyer is far too long. 18' x 7'3" is 130 sq ft. That is an awful lot of real estate to devote to the foyer of a relatively modest sized house.

Having both a side entry door and a back door to the mudroom area again requires that an awful lot of the space be given over to hallways. The office looks too tiny to be much fun to use. My suspicion is that it will quickly turn into just another closet. Meantime, if the closet off the mudroom is only for storage of seasonal items, does it need to be that big? Boxed up Christmas decorations and the tree probably wouldn't fill half that much space.

I'm less concerned than a lot of other people on this forum with having the master-bedroom having a common wall with one of the secondary bedrooms (maybe DH and I just never do it that loudly - lol) but I do think that putting the entire master suite across the hallway from the secondary bedrooms usually allows there to be less "hallway."

I'm not sure what instructions you gave your architect but all-in-all, I'd probably send him back to the drawing board. This particular floor plan just has too many issues for "tweaking." Sorry.

bevangel...agreed, my thoughts about the whole foyer, dining space exactly. I thought more of the living/family room as a square about 20X20. Also, the 3rd bedroom could become a study/guest room and include a small seasonal closet, it would also have french doors opening to the foyer. The seasonal closet was designed for a christmas tree already put together, after 2 major back surgeries I don't look forward to heavy lifting.
Any ideas on the arraignment of the kitchen/dining area given this info?

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Seems to me that--

--There's too much square footage in the master bath for the size house this is. There's a LOT of counter space, although the shower could be larger.

--Bath 2 needs to be wider for a longer vanity.

--Will there be a patio or deck out back?

Since lot size doesn't seem to impose any limits, to make the above changes as well as enlarge the table eating area and reduce some of the extra space where you don't need it in that area, I'd try adding 2-3 feet to the width of the house through the middle of the entire bedroom side. I'd subtract about 2 feet from the depth of the house (front to back), make the family room more of a square, and shift it back to where the closet/office/part of the side porch are behind the pantry. Take what used to be the SE corner of the family room and make it a nice sized office. That would move the front wall that is left of the bedroom area back about 6', which would reduce some of the unneeded space in the foyer. Reconfigure the NE corner area with the laundry, etc. however it makes sense.

Sorry I can't draw this out. Hope you or someone else can if any of it sounds feasible!

Anne

Thank you both for your input.

Bevangel....first off thanks for a guideline so that I can give you an idea of how I want to live in my home. DH and I are 50 with one DD and DSIL (son in law) and 2 granpups lol. No grandchildren yet but hopefully in the near future. The kids are as anxious as we are to build, they are looking forward to spending weekend visits occassionally, hence the need for the nice 2nd bdr. A 3rd bedroom is really not that important but only have it due to resale value - goodness forbid - we ever have to sell, but you never know. We do prefer to live quite simply and don't need a large home, the floor plan we currently have is 2300 sf and we were hoping it would be 2000-2100 sf. Our family tends to gather in the kitchen for coffee time and dinner and later in the evening to the family room to watch tv. However if I were to guess we absolutely spend the most time in the kitchen/dining area. Long discussions take place at coffee time. lol I also cook every holiday meal at my home. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Super bowl, July 4th and Easter. It can range from 4 - 20 people.

The house site...will face NWesterly and this view will be of a field/pasture, the best view. The worst view is probably behind the home which is a line of trees with scrub brush which will be cleaned later on. The area is about 2 ac. where the house will sit is and is flat and level. There is a slight slope on the east side of the house but we are talking probably 150 ft away from the house site or more. No easements, restrictions etc. we are in the middle of 35 acres with a country lane that comes right to the property.

The house...I'm from the south and I just can't help it I love porches. I would prefer to have one not as long as the one on the plan but about 30-35 ft. I'm trying to keep that old classic southern style. We live in Louisiana.

Foyer..I love a dbl door or single with sidelights and a transom above the door, wood door with a rich pecan or similar finish. I do not like a long foyer, too much wasted space as in the plan shown. A small coat closet is needed. And I would like a place to put a small credenza/mirror or french country style bench with rush seating.

Family room...more square than rectangular, square feels cozier to me, with windows on each side of the fireplace. Size maybe 20x20?

Fireplace in family room ..always been my dream to have stocking hanging from the fp at Christmas and the fp will not be for decor only, but will be used. I've always wanted to be able to place my christmas tree off to the side of the fireplace but in front of the window so that we you drive up the tree can be seen from the front of the house.

Office..used primarily for paying bills, place to spread out my photos and put in albums. I would also like this room to have a window.

Laundry...large, space for folding clothes, hanging rods, ironing, sink and freezer. I know it sounds odd but I want a window or two in this room ..see plan.

Mudroom..beadboard with hooks and bench. No cubbies, but a shelf above coat hooks would be ok.

Kitchen...prefer square, level island, no sink, range etc. in island. This will be used for food preparation and sitting space - do not care for the drop down type island. kitchen sink - farmhouse style - on an outside wall so that I could look out of window to the yard. I plan to have small veg/herb garden and would like to see it from here. I would also like to have a door in the kitchen area that would go to the yard. I love, love, love windows and plan to have the 6 over 1 type. Double oven, frig - single door with freezer at bottom. Unsure of the size of range. Probably standard size. Dishwasher. Transom window over kitchen door.

Dining area or room? off of the kitchen - large enough for family - see above - and sideboard with small china cabinet.

Pantry - walk in with 8-10" shelves for cans and deeper shelves for bulk items and large appliance i.e crock pots, stand mixer etc.

Ceiling Heigth - 9 or 10 ft don't know which to go with, suggestions?

I want this home to have an airy sunshine feeling but also cozy. I don't like the "all open feeling" but I do want this home to have a good flow to it. I do like wide cased openings to the areas. I guess the style would be kind of southern/farmhouse.

Hope I have overloaded you with info,lol can't wait to see what you can come up with!

not sure if you're interested or if it will help, but here is the floor plan for the house I'm currently building. We worked with a draftsmen and came up with this. It might give you some ideas...

Here is the original plan. The huge entry foyer is strange and the overall layout is very stiff. Is it built on some kind of structural module or from a European design? Why is the front symmetrical?

mightyanvil....please see my previous comments. I've detailed at bevangel suggestion to explain the type home I want. You are right it does appear that way and that's exactly what I don't want to be said. Here's the important parts of the house - the family room needs to be on the front, that the view. Hate the long foyer and the wasted space needs shortenend. I want a better flow to the house. If any of you have a sketch etc please post it, DH and I are need desperately to get this plan finalized and I'm just not getting anywhere "ugh". Anyone with sketch ups out there?

Here's what I came up with. Since you and your family spend most of your time in the kitchen area, I moved that to the front of the house where the best views are. I think this has pretty much everything you mentioned except that the family room is a little smaller and the fireplace isn't centered between two windows.

I hid the measurements because they're too hard to read anyway when copied to "paint" to upload here. But, the grid squares represent 1 ft x 1 ft so you can get a close guesstimate of sizes. According to my program, overall heated square footage is 2400 sq ft.

If you chose a covered side porch, you could use a simple hip roof to cover the house and just have a gabled section stick out over the front porch area. Side porch should probably be another couple of feet wider for maximum use. With a hip roof, widening it out (which would also allow the office or laundry room to be wider) shouldn't cost very much extra.

I put in loads of windows just to show the possibilities. All are 36" wide. You might want fewer, wider windows but that is a detail that can be worked out later.

Curious to find out what you think.

bevangel...I love the kitchen and foyer arraignment with the screened area of the porch. I also like the christmas storage in the hall area. Would there be a way to offset the master suite to allow the family room to have the fireplace and windows on the back wall?

Is this what you were thinking of re offsetting the master suite? Note that with a section offset like this, you'll have a more complex roof which will be more expensive to build. But you gain a lot more exterior wall so you can have more windows if you want them.

Since you live down south, you might want to be careful about putting too many windows on the south and southwest walls as those will get the most heat. But you can reduce those problems if you have trees on those sides to throw some shade.

My program indicates this is just slightly over 2400 sq ft heated and cooled space.

BTW - All doorways are at least 32" wide except the door to the pantry and the door to the toilet room in the masterbath( both 28"). Hallways and aisleways are 48" or wider to allow easy wheelchair access. I would recommend making the shower a "roll in shower" now. Then, in the event you or DH are ever wheelchair bound, the amount of remodeling necessary to make the home fully wheelchair accessible would be resonably minimal.

bevangel....the plan looks great! It has much more interest than mine. One question, if I wanted to open up the back of the house to a patio could that been done? Also, am I looking at the front of the house right, is it about 45 ft across the front of the house (excluding the side porch)?

In the bathroom between the 2 bedrooms, you might want to switch the toilet and sink to the opposite side. Then move the door to the right and have it open against that wall. This way you won't see the toilet from the front door!

Also, the toilet room in the master bath will be a little less confining--and easier to clean--if you make it 42" wide instead of 36".

There's still a LOT of counter (and floor) space in the master bath. You could reduce the width of the MBR wing by about 1.5' and still have plenty of space.

Anne

If you put a patio at the back, you could use patio slider doors or replace one or both windows with French doors to access the patio. Or, for a bedroom, you might look at using a "half light" door and a window that is the same size/shape as the window portion of the half-light door.

The master bath could also be rearranged to allow you to have patio access from there as well but only if you were willing to have smaller vanities and give up the symmetry that the bathroom has now.

And of course you have a door from the laundry room that opens to the back yard although you may not want to extend a patio clear across the back.

You could also plan to have a patio in the corner created by the MBr and Living room that was only accessible from the master bedroom if you wanted to.

Yes, the plan shows the front of the house at the bottom of the page. The dotted lines represent an entry porch which I visualize as having a couple of columns supporting a eaved roof extension. Not counting the side porch, the front section of the house is slightly more than 45 ft across. Sorry but I'm at work right now and don't have access to my program or I could give you exact numbers.

If you take this to your architect tho, he may tweak it a little bit to get the dimensions to be multiples of 2ft as, I hear, you save money if you do that b/c there are less wasted materials.

Note that I designed this with 6" thick exterior walls rather than 4" walls. 2 X 6 construction allows you to have more insulation in your exterior walls than 2x4 construction. However, the cost of windows and doors to fit 2x6 construction walls is somewhat more expensive than ones that will fit 2X4 walls. The interior walls are all 2X4.

If you decide you don't need/want 2x6 exterior walls, it is easier to change a design to 2x4 exterior walls than to go the other direction. Making exterior walls thinner, just means you gain an extra inch or two of floor space in various rooms. Going the other way sometime screws everything up because suddenly doors won't fit or hallways become too narrow for comfortable use or whatever.

Be prepared for someone to tell you that it is bad to have bedroom 2 and the masterbedroom share a common wall with nothing to muffle sounds. I personally don't think that is a big problem unless you're a "screamer" and any other arrangement of rooms wasted way too much space on hallways.

Glad you like it. If you decide to build, do post pictures so I can see what it look like in real life!

;-)

The original design was not very good. There is nothing worse than a long thin foyer. A foyer should be relatively fat and only large when needed to accommodate staircases (unless the home is super large in which the foyer becomes like an entertaining hall.)

Concerning the design dated Sun, Apr 5, 09 at 2:26, the kitchen is far too spread out. The work triangle is huge (I'm presuming the sink is colored turquoise on the left.)

Another problem is that I don't a place to put a big TV with matching sofa in the Great Room. All Great Rooms should be set up with a place for folks to watch TV from a sofa. I'll admit that it's difficult to do as well as put in a fireplace and lots of windows. Perhaps you could move the fireplace to being in between the Great Room and the MBR (like you did in the last design, except that the MBR would be adjacent, not pushed back), and site the sofa 3' in front of the windows. You would not be able to look out the windows in front, and it might be a little hokey with the sofa in front of the doorway.

bevangel....so the only access to a patio on the back would be to come from the bedroom, bath or back door. My original thought was to have a long front porch and a small back patio, if you can imagine kind of an open air feel from the front door to the back. I suppose that would only work if the family room were to be at the back of the house? I love the large kitchen.

swampwiz...I agree about the long thin foyer in the original plan it's not a very good layout. bevangel addressed the foyer in her plan as a wider "fatter" foyer which I too find more welcoming.

Having an "open feel" from front to back does pretty much require that you do one of two things:

1) On the part the house that you want to be "open", you stack "public spaces" from the front to back and open those areas up to each other. (Public spaces can mean kitchen, dining room, family room, living room - whatever you're comfortable having open to view ALL of the time.) You can't put any private spaces (bedroom, laundry room, bathroom, pantry etc.) along that line. They all have to go in other parts of the house.

2) Alternatively, you put in a big WIDE open hallway/foyer that runs from front to back. This is the solution I think your architect tried to give you. But, he made the foyer too narrow - probably because to do this right, the foyer/hallway needs to be about 10 to 12 feet wide which is way too much space to devote to what is basically a hallway in a 2500 sq ft house. Especially since you then usually need some secondary hallways that run around some of the private rooms in order to reach other private rooms. And with all the private space clumped, you either have to do lots of bump-outs (which gets expensive) or some of those private rooms end up with very little or no outside walls in which to put windows.

So that brings us back to alternative 1 which pretty much means moving the kitchen and dining nook to the back of the house behind the living room or moving the living room to the back of the house behind the kitchen.

I could maybe swap the locations of the kitchen/dining nook with the two secondary bedrooms and bathroom. Since you want the kitchen sink by a window, the kitchen section would need to be on the outside wall so the dining nook would fall into the space between the kitchen and great room. Thus it would not have windows nearby. You would also have to choose between having several upper cabinets on the exterior wall of the kitchen -and therefore only the one window over the kitchen sink - or giving up upper cabinets in favor of lots of windows.

Moving the kitchen would maen you would lose access from kitchen and dining nook to the screened porch. If we kept the screened porch, the only access to it would be from the bedrooms or maybe a hallway running between the two bedrooms. The two bedrooms could be stacked where the kitchen and dining nook are. Not sure where I'd fit in the X-mas storage, office and laundry room but I can play around with it if you want. My suspicion is that you would wind up having to have several additional hallways to get from one area to the next resulting in either more overall square footage or smaller rooms. And I doubt that I would be able to find exterior wall space for both the office and the laundry room so that both could have windows. One or the other, and maybe both would probably have to be stuck into the interior portion of the house.

Ultimately, all design requires SOME compromises. Well, maybe not if you're building a 10,000 sq ft home! LOL. But, in light of the above considerations and your desire NOT to have a McMansion, let me know what your priorities are and I'll give it another shot.

bevangel....well McMansions definitley does not fit my pocketbook, don't care for them either. Ok, so here's the compromise. I'm ok with losing the screen porch, I'll just put a screen door on a back door somewhere to satisfy my taste of country. lol Split plan is ok too if that works. The 3rd bedroom could be smaller since it wouldn't be used and only need for resale. Then it could be come a craft/hobby/office room. The office could maybe be in an area off the kitchen or family room somewhere, whatever fits. And yes, please play, play, play! lol. I'm open to moving the breakfast, nook/dining rm bedrooms anything. I do think we would use a patio off the back of the house and I would like that area to be open if possible - we grill alot. I really like a nice flow not totally "walled up" and not totally "open" but rooms that have distinctive areas. A nicely arraigned kitchen w/island and front porch is a must though (preferably 35-40').

So here is a whole new plan. For some reason, when I started over fresh, I set my background grid to 2'x 2' instead of 1'x 1' so take that into account when looking at the plan. This is about 2700 sq ft.

I think this fits almost everything you said you wanted including

* fireplace between two windows in Great Room (which is almost square,
* lots of windows (you could remove any you don't want and I would actually suggest limiting the number on the southwest wall unless you have nearby trees to shade that side.
* Dining area with room for a hutch
* Kitchen with large island (w/o any appliances on the island)
* Walk in pantry
* Big closet for storing Christmas tree
* Laundry room with room to fold clothes and hang things up and a window. (Window could be a door if you wanted access to the back yard. A half-light door would serve both purposes. Or, you could add another window over the folding table.
* Mudroom with a 1/2 bath and a bench area (no cubbies)
* A "fat" foyer with a small coat closet
AND Last but not least...
* a nice sense of openness from the Great Room to the Dining Area thru the Kitchen to a set of doors opening to the back patio. (I show sliding doors but you could use a French doors if you wanted since the fridge is far enough from the doors it wouldn't interfere.

The only thing I couldn't really work in was the "credenza" you said you wanted in the Foyer. Couldn't quite figure out how to manage room for that AND a closet. But, an old fashioned half-round table would work there very nicely - so I showed that instead. You could put a mirror over the half-round table and it would reflect a part of your great room to the front door and vice versa. So, for example, if you put your christmas tree up in the corner on the left side of the fireplace, it would be perfectly reflected in a mirror hanging on that angled wall to someone entering the front door. I think that would be kind of neat!

BTW, all hallways and doors are wide enough for easy wheelchair access and the shower is a "roll-in" shower...

I could probably shave off about 200 sq ft if you were willing to have a smaller island and a bit less cabinet space in your kitchen, a slightly smaller laundry room, and give up the separate office and using bedroom #3 as your office instead. Actually though, you could probably enlarge Bedroom #3 by bringing the wall out even with bedroom #2 for almost no additional money because it would get rid of one jog in the ceiling and foundation making the house almost perfectly square except for the mudroom entry section.

I know you said you could live without the screened porch but the spot was there for one when I finished everything else, so I put just had to put it back in. In the south, a screened porch is a major blessing - especially one that is on the north or east side of the house which tends to be the coolest area in the evening when one would usually to sit out on a porch anyway. So, it's there. But you could eliminate it if you wanted to. And, if you want me to "squeeze the plan down by a couple of hundred square feet that spot for a nice wide screened porch is going to disappear anyway.

Let me know what you think

bevangel...I've been away for a few days..thanks for adjustments..nice! Ok, I have a few questions. Is the hall 5' in width? 38' to the end? I do love the wide foyer and the square shape allows for my "not so long" porch. I like that. I do love the idea of the angled wall with a mirror, you are right it would look great at Christmas. Ok..If and only "if" you are up for another challenge. Can you open up the back of the house with french doors to the patio? Master suite on one side of the house and the 2nd bedroom on the opposite side of the house. Move the rest of the rooms as you wish and combine some if needed. Example - the 3rd bedroom could be smaller and double as a computer/craft/hobby room. etc. Hope to hear from you soon.

The hall is 4'4" wide. It is 38' from the front wall of the foyer to the laundry room wall. That IS a pretty long hallway, but I think of the hallway as actually beginning where the angled wall ends. If the 38'unbroken length bothers you, you could put a wall with a cased opening across the hall at the point where the angled part ends to delineate the foyer from the hall. From that point back the hallway is only 24' long which, while still long in not out of scale. If properly lighted, a 4'4" x 24' hallway would provide a wonderful space to hang artwork or family portraits.

As for French door to the patio, In the design above, you could use french doors in the kitchen where I showed a slider. They'll fit just fine.

But, if you're wanting a second set of patio doors from kitchen to patio, you're limited by the amount of exterior wall space that is left AFTER you put in your sink (which you said you wanted under a window) and necessary cabinetry around it. It might be possible to put in a second set of patio doors but only by making the kitchen about 6' wider - which I think would look funny and would not be a very useful kitchen shape. OR I suppose it could be done by removing the whole mudroom/office/side entry thing so that the kitchen has a second exterior wall and then turning everything in the kitchen around. But, then you would probably need to have a wall between the dining room and the kitchen just to have a place for your refrigerator and that wall would ruin the "open look" you said you wanted.

I could pull the mudroom forward so it is about where the screened porch is now to give the kitchen a second exterior wall - but then you lose the windows in the dining nook and it becomes in "interior room" - especially if you have to have a wall of cabinets between the dining nook and the kitchen.

IF you're not asking for space for a second set of french doors in the kitchen, then I'm not sure I understand what you're wanting with regard to the request to "open up the back of the house with French doors".

Are you asking if the masterbedroom can be moved to the back and have French doors opening off of it to the patio? That might be doable by basically swapping the master suite with the laundry room and 2 secondary bedrooms. But then the master bedroom will lose the view to the front. Also if I move the one of the secondary bedrooms and laundry to the front and middle of the house, are you going to want the same number and size windows (which I envisioned as nearly floor to ceiling) in the secondary bedroom or laundry as in the Great Room? If not, then then the front elevation will lose the sense of symmetry it has now. Symmetry may or may not be important to you so you have to let me know.

Also, if one of the secondary bedrooms is moved to the other side of the house, it has to connect to the rest of the house somewhere. I know you don't want it to go up against the left living room wall because that would cause you to lose the windows on either side of the fireplace. A bedroom could connect to the dining room (unless we've pulled the mud room area forward) but then that also makes the dining room an "interior room" instead of being flooded with light like it is now. Also, it is kind of weird to go from dining room to bedroom and, with the bathroom so far away, you would need to put in a 3rd bathroom OR make the 1/2 bath in the mudroom into at least a 3/4 bath. That leave putting the secondary bedroom up against the left-side kitchen wall (where the mudroom is now) which means the mudroom has to move forward. If we do that, then you still don't have a second exterior wall for the kitchen... so still no second set of patio doors, and you still need to put in a 3rd bathroom to serve that bedroom.

I guess there is one other alternative and that is to leave the mudroom where it is but take out the office and attach the second bedroom to the mudroom (either against the left wall or against the back wall of the mudroom). The first would make the house much wider and it would probably look like the bedroom had been a garage that was later converted to a bedroom. Putting the bedroom at the back would make the house form an L around the patio. In either case, you would go thru the mudroom to get to the bedroom. I've seen a few plans like that but I don't care much for them as, to me, a bedroom opening off the mudroom seems like maybe it was meant to be servant's quarters or something. Also, moving a bedroom to either or those locations would DEFINITELY give the house more "bumps and corners" so the per square foot cost of building would go up dramatically.

I'm ALWAYS up for a challenge but I'm not seeing any way to do what I think you want.

I did play around last week with making the plan a little smaller which resulted in some interesting differences (although none that gave you more back-patio access). I think I got the plan down to just under 2500 sq ft.

If you want, I will post the reduced square footage plan when I get home to my own computer instead of this laptop. (Am on a trip out of town right now myself.)

From all the changes that you seem to want in the preliminary house plan, you might as well start over. Find youself an artchitect that will listen to YOUR wants and desires and draw one for you.....but remember, when you change one thing in a house plan, that changes something else....but make these changes while on paper....it gets costly to do it after you start.

bevangel..ok have you ever seen a house when you walk to the front door you can almost see through to the back french doors and beyond that a patio? That's kinda of what I like but I just don't like a floor plan with one huge open living area where the kitchen, family room dining room is all one big area. I would like for this house to have it's distinct rooms (if that makes any sense). These are the rooms I need: wide foyer, 3 bedrooms with one being a transitional room that could be a computer/craft/hobby room (but turned into a 3rd bedroom for resale). Mudroom, large laundry, powder room and of course the side stoop coming from the kitchen or mudroom area. I hope I'm not being too picky or confusing?