All in all, a nice plan. Would love to see elevations!
I'm all for having a large Master Suite, but there's more square footage there than in your Family Room, and now you want to add even more? Windows flanking a bed have been discussed here recently- try a search- but I wouldn't take room away from your bathroom just to fit a bed between windows. In fact, you could just move the left window towards the fireplace to accomodate the bed.
The kitchen layout needs some work too- try the Kitchens Forum- and I wouldn't worry about the Pantry being too small for a fridge.

It's YOUR house, but I'd want more family room and less master suite. Your closet is as large as a bedroom. (No windows in my closets, please.) I'd prefer less-compacted bedrooms to the vaulted FR. Maze-y hallways.

Have you lived with sound coming up to bedrooms from a two-story family room?

I don't see the point of 'back stairs' so close to the main staircase; you'd have a larger FR.

LONG haul from garage to kitchen/pantry. Not enough 'back hall' or storage for me; that's one of the heavy traffic areas of a house.

I see two big eating areas. Do you want a formal DR when there's no LR?

Do post your kitchen on the "Kitchen" forum.

Would you use a screened porch? (Don't know where you are building.)

Thanks for the posts. Betaiota - unfortunately can't move the far window in the bedroom because the kitchen overhang below impedes it. I have a difficult time searching this forum without getting >100 results but I will try.
I agree the master bedroom is large.
We really like the two-story family room feel. When you include the kitchen (where we spend most of our time) it is quite large.
We passed on the formal LR for the extended kitchen/FR. No need to furnish a room we will use rarely with couches. A nice DR will be used more often.
No screened porch - northeast.
Keep the posts coming. Thanks.

3'6" between bed and wall is plenty but, IMHO, that amount of space is rather tight between shower and vanity. I assume you have two sinks so that both of you can get ready in the mornings at the same time. It could get a bit crowded in that corner if one person is shaving or putting on makeup and the other one just left the shower and is toweling off. Have you considered swapping the location of the toilet room and shower? The toilet room appears to be a bit less wide than the shower so it might fit into the corner better. Plus having the shower near the closet might be convenient for getting dressed anyway.

Also, I would flip the door on the toilet room so it opens outward. That is such a tiny room and statistics show that a fairly high number of people who have heart attacks have them while sitting on the "throne". Remember Elvis? You wouldn't want EMS to be unable to get in to help you because you were laying on the floor in a way that blocked them from opening the door!

Who will be using bedrooms 3 & 4 and therefore sharing that J&J bath? If it will be siblings, I would not put any locks on the two doors leading from bedrooms into the vanity area. That will stop the kids from accidentally (or accidentally-on-purpose) locking one another out! A lock on the tub/toilet section ought to provide adequate privacy for siblings. My preference however would be to have a single door opening into the hallway instead of two doors from the two bedrooms. After all, both bedrooms open onto a very private section of hallway anyway. So would it really be so terrible for the kids to have to go out into the hallway and then walk two steps to reach their shared bathroom door?

Next, I'm definitely not a roofing expert but I'm confused by the way the two front eaves overlap (look at the roof line just above the closet for bedroom #4). To me, something seems "off" at this spot... Like there might be a point where water could collect and not flow off the roof. But, like I said, I am definitely not a roofing expert so maybe it is not a problem. Hopefully someone who understand roof framing a whole lot better than I do will chime in.

Re your question about putting a full-sized fridge in your pantry... We have a large freezer in our mudroom/pantry which is a little bit wider but not as long as your pantry. I think the total sq footage of the two rooms is about the same. We have not had any problems at all with the room overheating. In our case tho, Our ceilings are 10' and there is an AC vent in the room and, most of the time, the pantry door into the kitch is left standing open. So, if you have lower ceilings, lack an AC vent in the pantry, and are religeous about keeping the pantry door closed, your experience could be different from mine.

BTW, it is an awfully long hike from the garage to your pantry. I would not want to be the one unloading bags of groceries from the car!

I don't like how you have a door that opens inward from the garage RIGHT at the top of your basement stairs. I think that could be a dangerous. I can understand the desire to have quick easy access to the basement from the garage but, if it were me, I would nix that door entirely. Anyone needing basement access can come into the house and head down from inside the house.

Finally, I have to say that your "mudroom" is far to small to serve any purpose. It is just a narrow hallway that creates a maze like entry from garage into the house. If it were me, I would redo that entire area like this:

1) Where you have the little closet at the end of the foyer, put a pass thru to the kitchen. You could make it a barrel archway or something like that to give it character. Just be sure you keep it at least 42" wide.

2) Then, incorporate the entire area that is currently the "hall", powderroom, mudroom and mudroom closet, into a single large rectangular room. If I'm reading all your dimensions correctly, the room will be about 11 ft deep x 12 ft wide (interior dimensions)

3)From this large room, at the top right side, cut out a 7 x 3 ft horizontal space and turn this into a small powderoom with the toilet and sink facing each other. (Door to powderroom will be in the 7' wall and should open outward.)

4)To the left of the powderoom, there will be a leftover space about 3 ft wide. Turn this into a closet.

5) After cutting out the powderroom and closet, you should still have a room that is about 7 feet deep and about 12 ft wide. This is going to be your much enlarged and much more useful mudroom!

6) Along the wall the mudroom shares with the den, put a string of mudroom "cubbies." They should be about 16" to 18" deep. The number of cubbies you decide to have will depend on the number of people in your family. One cubby per person gives everybody a place to dump off shoes, bookbags, etc and hang up jackets as they come in the door. I promise you, EVERYONE is much more likely to hang their jackets and coats up in their own personal cubbies (with hooks placed at the appropriate height for the size of the child) than they are to put them away on a hanger in a closet. I'd start the cubbies next to the door that goes into the garage. (BTW, you'll probably want to hinge the garage door on the other side so that it swing up toward the closet rather than toward the cubbies. The closet will mostly be used to store out of season coats and jackets anyway. So it won't get all that much use.

7) With whatever leftover space you have once you have all the cubbies you need, put in 24" deep base cabinets and some 15" deep wall cabinets. (Just like the kind you'd use in the kitchen). This will give you a spot to temporarilly set down bags of groceries until you can get everything into the house, sort the mail, recharge your cell phones, leave those items that you need to remember to take with you in the morning, etc. PLUS it'll give you room to store all kinds of stuff that really doesn't need to be carried all the way to the pantry.

8) Now, put in a pocket door so you have access from the mudroom into the foyer and your mudroom is done. The pocket will need to be in the wall next to the cabinets b/c it won't be able to go into the wall where the powderrom sink is. Most of the time the pocket door will probably be open but if you want to close it off, you'll have the option.

9) NEXT - no, we're not quite done yet! - because you LOST some cabinet space in you kitchen, you need to regain it. Fortunately, at 19 ft deep, your breakfast area is MORE than big enough so...

10) First, move the door that leads down to the basement stairs around the corner so that it opens up into the family room instead of into the breakfast nook.

10) Now, you have about a totally free 13 ft long section of wall at the bottom of your breakfast nook area where you can put kitchen cabinets. This would be a great spot for a second sink, a microwave oven, an undercounter wine or beverage fridge and lots of pretty glass front cabinets for storing and showing off your prettiest china and glassware.

Here is a rough sketch.

Obviously, you may have very good reasons for the decisions you've already made so these are just suggestions. But you asked for advice and this is one possibility. Now that I look at it tho, I can see other possibilities for using that rectangular space if this doesn't quite do it for you...

Split your master bath vanities and put the door in between them so that you see the beautiful bathtub first and not the WC. I think a set of french doors swinging into the bedroom would be beautiful rather than a single in-swing door. You should have plenty of room since each french door would be no more than 18".

I would also caution against the double height family room. Sounds great in theory and you may like the way it "feels" but as someone who is living that right now I can assure you it is not ideal. It would be fine if you had no kids I think. However, with kids, all sounds travels from up to down and vice versa. You can't watch tv in the den in my house without the noise traveling upstairs, and heavens forbid you have insomnia and turn on the tv at 2 am. You are guaranteed to have someone wake up upstairs. Also, we have boys and boys are loud and rough. Every bit of wrestling, pillow fighting, karate chopping, etc. is almost unbearable with the dual height den.

Also, I don't get the two staircases either. We have two also but it was designed to have the staircase to the basement and upstairs in the back hall by the friends entrance. The idea was that we would use this for teenage visitors - and we might even put a note on the front door directing kids that way so they are not traipsing in and out of the house, through the front hall, etc., to get to the playroom or basement (think teenage parties). Having two staircases not accessible from a side porch or friends entrance really doesn't make much sense to me . . .

PLUS if you eliminated the vaulted family room and the extra stairs you could have a fantastic playroom which your plan is sorely missing. This would keep the clutter out of the common areas when kids are little and provide a great teen gathering space when they are bigger . . . kids start to hang out with folks of the opposite sex at some point and in my way of thinking you need to provide an alternative to hanging out in the den with the parents (which they won't do) or hanging out in the bedrooms (which you do not want them to do!)

You could also do a playroom with a couple of stairs over the den. This wouldn't give you a vault but you could get 12' feet or so for a coffered ceiling and still have a great playroom. Betz does this a lot and I have walked through several houses with this set up and it is great.

I personally don't like couches against walls and prefer to float them when possible. I think if you look through interior design magazines (Veranda, Traditional Home) and websites (Mrs. Howard is a good one), you will find that very rarely are couches put against walls and never with windows above.

I would keep the windows as they are (there will be a big difference in light and exterior elevation if you change them). I would push the sofa out a foot or so from the windows if you have to have it there. That looks nice and you would still get the light in the room. . . If you eliminate the stairs (which I would encourage) I would center the fireplace on the wall. . .

Here is a link that might be useful: Floating sofas

your fireplace is off center from the opening from the kitchen to the den. That would really bug me! Even more reason to eliminate the stairs and center the fireplace on the room . . . Then you have much more room for a functional entertaining space and the other stairs are just a few steps away.

As chisue mentioned, definitely post the kitchen plan on the kitchen forum. The island set up is problematic as it stands now: a pinch point between the island and refrigerator, sink and DW back to back with stove, and the wall above the island unused. The size and shape of your kitchen lends itself better to a U shape rather than an island, and with the width of the space you could put in nice extra deep counters. I'd probably want sink on top wall by window; stove perhaps on top wall for easier venting; fridge on side wall at the end of the run, with the pantry opening reoriented to be just to the right of the fridge, opening toward the kitchen rather than the DR.

The lower wall could have a butler pantry set up for staging items into the DR; a baking center (wall ovens and all your baking equipment); a beverage station with a small fridge, coffee maker, etc. Lots of possibilities and the kitchen forum folks will help.

What strikes me as odd is that there seems to be no wall separating the formal dining room from the kitchen. Maybe I'm misreading the plans, but it looks like just a support beam and no wall. When you are having Thanksgiving dinner, everyone will see the stove area and sink, along with anything left on the counter (e.g. dirty pots & pans, turkey carcass, etc). If they turn their head a little, they will see a door to the pantry. I would add a wall between the two rooms with either an open doorway or (preferably) a french door or solid wood swinging door. Depending on where the wall is placed, you may be able to enlarge the pantry even more or reconfigure the kitchen (as others have suggested).

We lived in a home with a very similar floor plan for 12 years while our 3 kids were growing up. It was a great house, but THE WORST, was that small mudroom? off the garage, ... Bevangle has drawn an awesome option!Wish we had these forums when we were building in 1988! AFter living with that, I think her option is a must have no matter if you have kids at home or not!

We did not have the 2nd stair case in the FR, but an overlook from upstairs. I never really got the point of 2 stair cases.. unless you have a really large home. I'd use the 2nd stair case money and do the mud room change with cubbies.

I currently have a fridge in my pantry, which is about 5.5 x 12, but it is flush with the wall, sunk into a large closet off our mudroom. I love having a 2nd fridge there! Like others have mentioned your pantry is a long way from the garage. I have mine located a few steps from my garage entrance. This is were most everything goes, so it is very convienient.

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