If you flip the stairs so the bottom is next to the living room, it might look nice and open and you could decorate it nicely for holidays, but you'd lose a flat wall for furniture, and have ore sound traveling upstairs. Just a thought, though.

If you change the front door so it's hinged on the other side, you can take coats and hang them up as guests come in, with out waiting till everybody crowds in leaving you with an armload of coats till you can close the door and get to the closet.

If we turn the stairs I would lose some of mu laundry room upstairs by moving the landing. Also, I'm not a fan of stairs off the living room. Though, I'm also not a fan of door to basement right at the front door, I'd love to get away from that. I'll discuss that with DH, thanks BP!

What if you turn the stairs 90 degrees, so the open side is on the foyer and the basement stairs are in the corner?

This would mean flipping your landing area and laundry upstairs, but that should work.

Is that a mudroom, between the kitchen and garage? I like the fridge being a bit recessed, but make sure you can still open doors all the way for cleaning. That's always a big deal, on the kitchen forum.

Also, I would consider swapping the range and main sink...with windows on each side of the range. This makes it easy to put a prep sink on the island and have a smaller work triangle (fridge, range and prep sink) and a separate clean up area.

The dining area...since you have a bench, what about flipping that and making it a built-in banquette on one side?

I like the fireplace and French doors in the living room...and the Murphy bed! What are the areas on the right side of the house, off the living room and stairs?

Something like this.... {{gwi:1505712}}From Kitchen plans

Thank you Lavender, I appreciate your time and input! We're pretty set on a long wall of windows in the kitchen, and placing the sink in the middle, but I'll mention it to DH when our window budget is too high. ;-) I would prefer not to have the 2nd sink, we have done well with one large bowl. I think the bubuffet and table, bench, chairs looks much better this new way.

The area to the right of the foyer/stairs is a sport court from the basement -the ceiling will reach the 1st floor ceiling height. The area right of the great room is what DH is wondering -if it will be cheaper/not more expensive to just dig a rectangle and not bother with putting in a bumpout. As well as make double the sport court! The court begins in the basement and the room extends out to the higher ceiling height. We had a Looonnnnggggg cold winter last year, with a LOT of cancelled school days. And we have 3 kids. We might have more if we have another long cold winter with nothing else to do!

We've left rom to cut, we've gone big on everything, but we still have to maintain a 3000sq ft min. for HOA. A few things are still buggy, but we really like the flow and spaces.

Problems-mudroom is large, how can we best utilize that much desired space? We need space for the dog, shower pan for bathing and cleaning boots, drying snow clothes, closet for coats, closet for shoes, back up refrigerator, lockers, charging station, drop zone for keys,mail...and we'd like to push some of the study bath into that space as well... the study is long and narrow.... and will become narrower after cabinets....

I'm wondering too about adding a back staircase to the mudroom that goes up to the long hall upstairs.