aupatrick,
I love it! Very well thought out plan and beautiful exterior. This will definitely be a comfortable, livable house in addition to being a pretty one.

The only things I saw that I would consider changing were in the bathrooms really. I couldn't tell how much space you had in front of the sink and commode in the downstairs full bath. It looks like that could be very narrow and maneuverability may be an issue in there. Upstairs in the kids' baths, I would be very tempted to move the commode and tub into what is now the closets and running everything in a row along one wall with no wall separating any of the bathroom components. Then I'd move the closets to where the tub/commode area currently is. That's just a personal preference of mine. Pretty much every house I've been in that has that set up with the tub and commode togather in a closet of their own seems very closed in and tight. If you've never experienced this set-up in your own home before, go to an open house where one of the baths has this set-up and hang out in the tub/commode room for a while (5-10 minutes just in this little room) to make sure this works for you. Also, have you thought of doing a Jack & Jill bath perhaps and giving the kids more closet space?

Because the exterior elevation is 2-D I couldn't tell if the roof on the garage is hipped or not. I would do it hipped and either duplicate the look of the exterior of bedroom #4 or put an arched dormer there that matches the ones over the children's den. It needs a little something there. It appears to be a little out of balance as it is the only roofline without that little extra touch.

Wow! I wish my plans turned out this well on the 1st prelims! Congratulations and keep everyone here on GardenWeb posted on what you decide.

I like the plan overall. Just a few things to mention. I second mydreamhome on the upstairs bath and the closed off area feel. Since the baths aren't shared I see no need for the separation either. Plus the walls and doors take up space.

Make sure you have enough room between toilet and sinks in the powder room and between the wall & toilet in the master bath if using a regular door. I recommend a pocket door for each of these spaces with good quality hardware so you don't have to step behind the toilet to make it in and out.

I have a very similar laundry/mudroom set-up and although it works great there is a drawback that I didn't think of and you might be able to rearrange to avoid. The location of the bench/storage in relation to the door will likely cause dirt between the door and the bench/storage that then have the potential to be dragged around the house when using the laundry or 1/2 bath. If you could find the space to switch the 1/2 bath and the bench/storage be closer to the door you might be able to avoid this. It is the one thing I wish I had different.

Oh I forgot, make sure you have enough space between the island and walls/cabinets for more than one person use of the kitchen.

4ft where no seating is and more if you have planned on seating. I had 5ft where seating was at my old house and it worked for one person to walk behind when people were seated, but was a little tight if a large person had been trying to do it.

Thanks. I like the idea of the suggested change in the upstairs bathrooms. Now that you mention it, it does seem a little tight in the toilet/shower area. I think your suggestion is a great idea.

I also think that the downstairs full bathroom is a little tight, so I think it might seem a little bigger if I remove the door from the media room and only have access from the hallway.

On the island in the kitchen, I will have to get a ruler and measure. I'm not sure how much room there is. I will definitely look at that.

Anymore suggestions?

This looks like it will be a beautiful home.

For such a big house, the dining room and upstairs bedrooms seem a shade narrow to me. The laundry area seems far away from the stairs as well as all the bedrooms. The only other thing would be if maybe the full bath down could be reconfigured such that it is accessible directly from the media room...would make that room's function more flexible.

All in all, though, very nice.

aupatrick,

I took another look this morning, and I agree with hadley on the narrowness of the upstairs bedrooms and dining room. Now, these are good size rooms however, at 11'4" they are narrow. They will look especially so once built as they are so long at 15'8". I would add At LEAST a foot to each.

You could actually use the extra space in the garage especially if you plan on parking in there and having an extra fridge and/or freezer out there. This would automatically expand the bedroom above. The square footage addition cost for that part of the house would be very economical as 1/2 of the addition is unfinished. Also, how tall are your knee walls in that bedroom? You want to watch the fit in there for furnture that will go along the walls as well to make sure the height works. While we're in the bedroom, lets talk about windows--I'm guessing the 2 windows are fdormers similar to the ones on the front of the house? Have you condiered 1 big 'shed dormer' window unit of about 3-5 windows? Thoughts here are the dormers are small areas that visually break up the room and it is difficult to use the space they provide as they are so narrow. A larger shed dormer unit that extends straight up from the garage wall below gives you a nice wide usable space in that area and opens the room up visually. This will be important because the room will have knee walls and sloped ceilings which make rooms appear smaller than they actually are. (I can email you pics of this idea if you like.)

Expanding the dining room is also a good idea. You definitely want plenty of room for table, chairs, china cabinet, and a minimum 2-3' of walking space around the table when everyone is seated at their place. Expanding here will automatically expand the upstairs bedroom.

Have you placed furniture cutouts that are drawn at the same scale as your plan into your rooms to check for fit? If you don't have any, ask your designer or put in a search for 1/4 (or whatever scale your house is drawn) scale furniture cutouts and buy a set on line. Our designer gave us ours when we received the 1st floor to make sure everything fit then we did the same with the 2nd floor. Some rooms expanded and others shrank as a result. A very helpful tool! A quick hint here that we did with ours was to print them out on card stock and then we colored each type of furniture a different color using a crayon or colored pencil (i.e all tables, dressers and benches were brown, all beds were blue, all kitchen and dining chairs were purple, all upholstered furniture was green, etc) This helped the eye to better distinguish space--white cutouts on white plans was not enough of a contrast. Buy some 'Glue Dots' or non-permanent double sided tape to temporarily attach the pieces to the plan so they don't slide around.

One other thing I noticed, you have a great sized pantry! But why stop the pantry at the stairwell landing level? Run the pantry all the way under the landing with shelves along the back pantry wall and then let it 'L' over under the whole landing. Yes, you will have to duck to get under there, but you add a ton of extra storage for say any big pots, your bulk buy items, etc. and your shelves under there in the L part could be a litte wider to accomodate bigger items. You've got plenty of room already for your other dry good pantry items without that back wall before the landing. My mom did this under her switchback stairs and no one thought it was a good idea until it was built and they saw it in action. Ducking for those items stored under there is not an issue as those are the things she doesn't use everyday. We are doing the same thing in our build. (If you'd like a picture, I can send one vial email.) Afterall, that square footage under the stairs still costs $$ so why not use all of it?

Hope these suggestions help! It's going to be beautiful!

There seems to be a lot of redundant use space. Do you really need a children's den, keeping room, media room, breakfast room, study, and all of the various porches? It seems like total overkill.

I'd start by lopping off the breakfast room and the porch on the left and just make the dining room larger and more accessible to the kitchen so you'd actually use it.

Do you work from home that you need a dedicated study/office space? If you do, then I understand, but for most people, having the computer and bill paying space is better suited to a corner of a more public room like the keeping room. It's certainly better for the kids to be monitored that way!

Could you not put a TV in the keeping room for family viewing and then just have the media room or the kid's den be the site for another TV? THe media room as a den for the kids away from the more adult space (but still close to mom and dad for supervisory purposes) would seem to be better usage than a private space upstairs that would be difficult to monitor. The kids den upstairs might be better served to create another bedroom and better laid out baths than exist.

I'm not trying to be negative because I have something against a large house, it's just that it seems that of your 4000 square feet, that about 1000 of it is just being placed in the design because it's "what's expected" in a large house, rather than have a 3000 square foot home that every inch works harder and flows better. That extra 1000 square feet also will need heating and cooling---and cleaning!

I agree with live_wire_oak there seems to be a lot of redundancy to me but I don't know anything about your lifestyle so it may be perfect for you. Personally I would rather put some money into the finishing touches rather than the extra square footage to clean (I hate cleaning) So just something to consider if you haven't already or ignore if you have.
Is resale a big consideration for you?

I think the kitchen layout could be better and recommend the kitchen forum when you get to kitchen details.

I don't agree that the dining room needs to be wider. I think wide, almost square dining rooms have wasted space with a rectangular or oval table, unless you need to fit in a buffet or other furniture. Our dining room is 11 1/2' x 16' and it seems plenty roomy along the sides of our 42" table. I may put in some 12" deep shelving along one side, and I'm not at all worried about crowding the table. JMO

I agree that the laundry is a long way from the bedrooms, but that's probably one of the easier compromises to get along with.

I really like the back door arrangement, where the half bath and closets/mud room area are all handy to both the garage and the back yard entrance.

I see the master closets are 6 x 7, and it appears that they're narrower than they are long. If so, that means when you have 24" deep hangers on both sides, there is only 24" down the center in which to walk, and the doorways for those look narrow, too.

There are a lot of rooms, but I could see uses for each, which could be very nice...Most of us just aren't so fortunate to be able to have that. :-) I envy the fireplaces, too...Especially the outside one.

Best wishes!

Also consider for using the 'under-stair' space....have 2 or 3 drawers made to open into the dining room for linens. Stain the fronts to match your furniture.

Thanks for all of the feedback.

Mydreamhome: I've thought about your idea about putting a dormer window above the garage similar to the ones above the children's den and the one on the right side of the house. I think that will make the home seem more balanced. I'm going to draw that in and once I get it scanned I will put up both versions to see what everyone thinks.

Live wire: the way we went about our design was that we knew what the exterior was going to look like and we told our designer to make the design so it fit the exterior we wanted. My wife's only requirement was for a children's den and for a keeping room. My requirement was for a media room that I plan on putting two to three rows of theatre chairs in the room. Because of this, any major changes to the rooms would change the look of the exterior of the home and we do not want that.

It may not be drawn very well, but we plan on using all of the space below the stairwell as part of the pantry. I think that would give us a great deal of space in the pantry.

One thing to think about is that your study/den will be on display all the time, similar to your dinning room. We tend to leave piles of stuff - that's the way we work - I really like our study. I just don't wnat everbody to see it all the time.

Your plan reminds me a lot of the Southern Living Forest Glen Idea home. Beautiful home. Have you seen it? I'll attach a link.

I too would widen the downstairs laundry room, but I would also think about a laundry room upstairs. Just one of my personal wishes.

I don't care for the keeping room location. I would swap it with the breakfast room. It makes more sense to me to be able to serve your food directly from the kitchen rather than having to go through the keeping room. Also, I would prefer my family to walk into the breakfast room 1st from the mudroom, rather than walking into my keeping room 1st. That would get on my nerves as a Mom, but I'm not sure with your door placement from the mudroom if that is possible, (but I know this Mom would try hard to make it that way LOL!). By swapping room placement, you would do away with the double fireplaces but you still could put a fireplace on the outside wall for the keeping room. The breakfast room and the living room could now become a big great room. But, maybe you want a formal living room? Personally our family doesn't need anything formal, but some folks prefer that. I hope all that makes sense.

The other thing I don't care for is the one bedroom that is off of the children's den. I think it is a long walk from the steps and I personally wouldn't want to share the children's den space, as well as it's noise/mess. I understand for plumbing purposes, but I would want to make that bedroom feel more private as the other. I would move the bathroom/closet arrangement making it share a wall with the children's den, plus giving that bathroom a window. I would make the entrance for that bedroom where you currently have the bathroom and closet. You could also use the current location of the toilet room as a closet. Just a thought.

Looks like you have a great design going. Thanks for sharing and keep us posted on your progress. Good luck!

Here is a link that might be useful: Forest Glen

thanks for all of the comments. we are soaking all of this in and need to spend time going through everything.

Our home was based on the exterior look of Forest Glen but has been modified. The interior is different. We love Forest Glen and wanted that same look.

I don't see the 3rd floor, or a BR #2.

In some ways it is very good, in other ways it seems to ramble. I suppose that a large home will have a lot of different rooms that ramble along. The outside look is fantastic.

I liked the way that the windows are all aligned (I presume that they are to be exactly aligned.)

Having to go from the children's den to a BA only via a BR is not good.

The misalignment of the front door and the foyer hallway and the MA BR hallway and the entrance of the keeping (??) room is very bad IMHO. This keeping room would make an excellent informal dining area (is that what you had in mind?) Similarly, there is a misalignment of the media room door and the closet (?) wall. Maybe it's just me, but I can't stand walking through a door or hallway and having a wall end right in the middle of the path.

I'd add a operational window at the top of the MA BA (i.e., between the shower and the vanity.)

Form over function and being designed from the outside in is an unusual approach. I guess I have no further suggestions if you value an outside look over interior functionality.

There are no dimensions given, but it looks like the closets upstairs are only 5' x 5'. If so, they are not really wide enough to configure as the plans show (i.e., with hanging rods along both sides.)

Clothing hanging on a rod sticks out from the wall about 22 inches - and bulky clothing like winter coats sticks out further still. Thus, two rows of hanging garments will take up 44 inches leaving only 16 inches for an aisle in a 5 ft wide closet.

Master bedroom closets have the same problem, although to a lesser degree. At 6 foot wide, you'll have about 28" between the two rows of hanging garments. That's doable, I suppose. But only IF you are pretty skinny and never need to bend over to find something you've dropped on the floor below the hangers.

You could reconfigure all closets to put the hanging rods in an L-shape; but then you're not really getting much usable storage space for the total closet square footage.

Given the overall size of the house, you might want to bump the far right wall downstairs (media and master bath) out by another foot so as to widen the master bedroom closets to 7' wide. What's another 30 sq ft overall?

Then, revise the upstairs bathrooms to get rid of the separate vanity areas. The separate vanities require far too many doors in too small a space and serve no purpose whatsoever unless each of those bedrooms is going to be shared by two or more children.

Also, the elevation doesn't show the chimney for the double-fireplace between the keeping room and the great room nor is there any indication on the second floor plan as to where the two chimneys will fall in relation to the upper rooms.

Finally, where will your HVAC be situated? If in the attic, you will need chases on the second floor for the HVAC ducts to be run down to the first floor level. If the HVAC will be in the basement, then you'll need chases on the first floor for ducts to be run up to the second floor.

Any way to make the dining room larger? Say to twelve and a half feet by seventeen?

Could you make the front porch eight feet wide?

Otherwise, beautiful plan.

aupatrick,
Didn't ask before...do you already own the lot you will build on? Do you know what direction the front of the house will face (N, S, E, W)? That may have an impact on how wide the porch should be. Let us know when you get a sec!

Thanks for all of the suggestions. Ya'll have definitely given us something to think about

Live Wire Oak: please feel free to give me your suggestions. I really appreciate all feedback. We absolutely love the exterior of this home. It's modeled after the Forest Glen home in the Southern Living magazine. We completely changed the interior because of issues we had with the floor plan, the main one being that the garage was on the other side of the house from the kitchen. I'm all in favor of making the house "funcional", but I want to keep the same "overall" look of the house plan.

Again, this was our first draft. I will talk to my designer about some of the questions and concernes raised here and see what she suggests. I really appreciate the feedback, both the good and the bad.

MyDreamHome: We do own the land. We bought 4.5 acreas on a lake (big pond actually). The house will be facing West for the most part.

Bevangel: I will definitely look at the size of the closets upstairs. I have to get a ruler and measure that. I definitely don't want to find out after starting to build that the closets are too small.

Lyfia: I measured the area around the Island and it is just over 4 feet from the Island to the cabinets. I will take your advice and see if I can get an extra feet to walk around.

aupatrick,
Thanks for getting back with us! I asked about positioning of the house because of sun exposure to the front door. With a westward facing front, you may want to make the front porch a minimum of 10' deep if you plan to have anything other than a metal/wrought iron door. Even with a 10'deep porch, the bottom 1/4-1/3 of the front door will take a beating from the afternoon sun resulting in potential fading and warping--definitely no storm door as it traps heat and can severely damage your door in this situation. In any case,proper door maintenance will be a must, especially if you go with any of the fiberglass doors so you don't void their warranty. Probably yearly or biyearly restaining for either wood or fiberglass will be required. Just something to think about while you're still in the planning stages. if you can make that porch deeper, it would more than likely save you plenty of headaches.

Mydreamhome: thanks. Our last house faced due east and we had a similar problem. We had a very little porch and it caused our front door to fade. We had to have it refinished twice in the six years that we lived in the house. Will definitely look at making sure that there is enough porch to block the late afternoon sun.

Very simple but beautiful. It's my type of design.

Here is a link that might be useful: scottsdale custom builder