I think that the lay out of walk in closet and masterbathroom is not ok.

Is your wood burning stove that big? Maybe you want to consider placing the dining room where the living room is and viceversa; the wall between "social areas" and kitchen could be different, maybe a bit more open and you could have an island between living and kitchen.
Just as a sugestion, the closets in the office could be placed in the opposite wall.
The coat closet could be placed adjacent to the powder room. It will be bigger and you will use the space in the center of the house (between powder room and living) that looks wasted in this moment, also that way your entry way will be centered. Closets next to the entry door are not too nice (IMO)
You could always keep the coat closet as is and still have another closet by the powder room or instead a closet, you could have a built-in or a nice niche.

Don't change the space allotment for the wood stove --- the "excess" area is needed to be sure one can move around it safely. (Wood stoves exude far more heat than a fireplace as well as being much easier to stumble onto.)

The "main" bathroom is awkward. It is consuming almost twice the square footage of mine, with no extra amenities.

BR 3 & 4 have very small closets -- not impossible, but certainly not roomy. BR 2 has a small 5' closet which is awkward to access, the room would appear more spacious if the closet was a standard wall closet set into an alcove. Remember that 22" to 24" is deep enough for a wall closet; and storage closets can be even more shallow -- it's having plenty of comparatively shallow (12" or 15"), adjustable shelves which make a storage closet useful, not deep shelves which lose stuff at the back because you can't reach that deep.

Those doorways all look awfully narrow. The door to the MB's bath is more narrow than the door to its shower?! Can you actually get furniture through the door into each room? I can't quite see a double-size box spring going up the steps and around those corners to get into BR 2.

I like the centralized laundry area. I do not care for the space it's in. I'd prefer a deep closet for the washer/dryer/folding area. That would permit a more useful foyer-type landing with better access to the rooms.

I'd want the porch at least a foot deeper. 8' allows a person to sit in a chair and not get walked on by a passerby. It does not allow a chaise, or chairs facing each other. Greater depth would also prevent the area directly in front of the entrance door from feeling so squished.

Make the upstairs hall wider by decreasing the size of the laundry. Bedroom doors are too tightly obstructed by closets. Draw the stairs with a more common convention: arrow starts at the first riser on the level of the drawing and points in the direction of travel with an up or down label. Add diagonal cut line at about 3 ft above floor for rising stairs only. Show full door swings in order to see conflicts. Main bath shower is too small and would be prohibited in many jurisdictions. Hold risers back 1/2 tread at intermediate landing so that handrail can make turn without a drop. Enclosed toilet room should be larger than 48". Show wood burning stove chimney at second floor. Locate majority of recessed light fixtures so they light walls or task surfaces. Review receptacle distance rule adjacent to door openings. Covered incandescent wall lights won't work in 24" deep closets.

I actually use battery-powered mini-flourescents inside all my closets (heard too many complaints about the automatic-on type lights). Each battery lasts for about 4 years -- and then I change it just because I figure it's got to be soon dimming rather than because it actually has dimmed. I figure those lights prorate at about 50¢ a year, including the cost of each fixture.

I too think you may find it difficult to get furniture up to the second floor with that staircase. It would be different if it were open railing on one side so that you could angle large pieces out over the railing as you maneuvered around the corners. But you've got the center space filled with the powder room and a closet so I really don't see how you're going to get furniture in.

Is the house only one floor high at the kitchen end? I'm confused about the two apparent rooms over the kitchen that have no access in or out. If these are not "rooms" will your kitchen have an extra high ceiling or are you thinking of using the attic space over the kitchen as storage? Depending on how the roof lines work, you might be able to tuck some closet space for your master bedroom into this area.

And, having your laundry room in the very center of your house is going to make venting your dryer problematic. For that reason, laundry rooms are usually placed against an exterior wall.

Also, I agree that your main bathroom is poorly designed. The shower is way too small and the overall bathroom takes up too much floorspace for the amenities it provides.

Also, your master-bathroom feels choppy to me with that linen closet in the corner. Plus, the toilet room isn't really deep enough. It really needs to be 5' deep to be comfortable.

All this "negativity" probably isn't what you were hoping to hear given that you've apparently already knocked everything down and are ready to start building. Fut you asked "do I have the best possible plan?" and I hate to say it but I really don't think you do.

hi all

thanks so much for your comments - I am not going to respond to each, but thanks - All the negativity is good - you guys have seen the real life situations. Its hard to visualise on paper everything when you are not used to it. I will try to include some of the suggestions mentioned

What do you guys think of the first floor layout in general with the stair on the side ? My builder is hinting at me changing it to a center hall colonial - not sure that i want to change from my open floor layout

thanks!!

You might let your builder have a go at the plan -- he/she may offer a wealth of experience and advice.

I'm sorry to be negative too, but I think the plan has a number of problems. Some of the problems are similar to those discussed in the post below.

Here is a link that might be useful: similar issues

Do you have a garage? If not, where do you park the car(s)?

It looks like you've got about 1200 s.f. on the first floor. That's more than enough to get a great side (or front or back) entry/mudroom with closets, storage, and possibly the powder room together.

I agree with lots of the other posters comments, and agree that you might want to have the builder try a design with a center entry stairs. We have our stairs off to the side, but it works because they give good access to our bonus room. We also have a center entry, which, IMO, would make your living room and dining room much nicer spaces to be in. Now that he's seen your plan and knows what you want, he probably could come up with a better use of the available space. Then you could modify his plan, which is usually much easier than starting from scratch. It also would probably be faster, since you're ready to start. I designed our plan, but it took me a long time to get it right.

I think more windows across the back of the kitchen and dining room would much improve those areas. Also, even small windows on the other wall of the office/family room would allow the natural light coming in to make that room much more pleasant.

I don't know if cost is a factor, but double doors are more expensive for closets. Enough so, that I went back on our plan and figured out where I really needed them, or wanted them for looks, and moved some closet walls and reduced the number of doubles.

Anne

Ok - thanks for all the comments. I have spent the last week redesigning the layout. I have come up with the below for the first and second floors. Please ignore the the electrical for now, and the kitchen appiance placement - those items are not completed.

In ref to the garage - I do not have one. I am not a garage person, I have a nice driveway and have a place that I can put one in a few years down the line when i get tired of shoveling the snow off my car!

Please let me know what you guys think - thanks so much

First Floor

Second Floor

Better plan. The guest bath double lavs should be farther apart if two people are actually going to use them.

I would get the plumbing off of the outside wall unless you live in Florida.

I would agree that this is a better plan EXCEPT for one big concern... I don't think you allot enough space to the staircase. If you have 8' ceilings downstairs, you're going to need about 15 risers. I only count 12. Each riser needs a minimum of 10 inches of tread space so, for 4 more risers, you need at least 40 inches more linear space devoted to your staircase.

Stair case risers are typically between about 7 to 7.5" high so you can estimate by using an average of 7.25. To, to figure out the number of risers you need, take the floor to floor distance (in inches) and divide by 7.25. If you have 8' ceilings and figure another 12 inches for the joists between floors, that is 108 inches. Dividing by 7.25 gives 14.896. So, with 15 risers, each one will be slightly less than 7.25 inches in height. If you drop that to 14 risers, each step would be 7.7 inches high which is starting to get a bit steep.

With only 12 risers, each of your steps would be 9 inches high and that is just too steep.

You might be able to solve this problem by making your masterbedroom closet smaller so that the upstairs end of the staircase ends further to the right. You would also have to move the door into bedroom 4 which would require redoing the masterbath as well.

I don't care for having the fridge door which opens smack into the middle of an entranceway. I can visualize it switched to the other end of the same counter, but with what would it be switching? If a wall oven, that's no better because you wouldn't want a hot oven door in that doorway.

I'm very against that island stuck in the middle of the area. It's too far away to be of use for additional prep space, and to me it doesn't meld as belonging to either kitchen or sitting area. There also appears to be less than 3' between its corner and the cabinet corners, which is asking for bumps each time you go around it. If you want additional counterspace, consider a peninsula attached to the counter to the left of the sink.

The doorway into the master bath as well as the entrance to the MB shower both appear to be undersized. Maybe an optical illusion, but the shower door looks to be less than 24", which would be very uncomfortable to use. When selecting the commode, be careful of measurements and choose one that doesn't protrude to far into the room -- otherwise the sitter may get bruised knees.

The dining room appears to be a good size for the table as shown (did you draw to scale?), but it might be too cozy if you put in a buffet or credenza.

The closets for BR 3 & 4 are greatly improved. You might consider a sliding door for BR 3's closet to reduce the chance of door collisions.

I'd eliminate the cubby-closets at the hall bath, or at least the one on the sink wall. The sink cabinet can be extended through that space, which would then allow elbow-room for each sink. A tall organizer cabinet could be put at the door end, which would eliminate the closet's awkward studwork while providing accessible storage. Actually, I'd use the same tall cabinetry beside the commode which would then allow enough space for cleaning the commode's exterior. Consider that door, walls, and studwork for each of the present cubby-closets will run about $300 -or more. You can buy some really attractive cabinetry for less.

As MA noted, there's a lot of plumbing on the exterior walls which isn't a real good idea if the climate is cooler than planting zone 8. OTOH, extra wall insulation in combination with pipe-warmers can alleviate the risk of frozen pipes. BTW, pipe-warmers are usually thermostatically-controlled electric heating cable wound around the pipes. Effective but expensive -- but lots cheaper than repairing the damage from frozen pipes. Keep in mind that if the house is in an area which might lose electricity from ice-storms or blizzards, the pipe-warmers won't be able to function without power.

The stairs appear to have open railing at the top. That does improve visual spaciousness, but remember that sounds from the first floor will rise (just like through a megaphone). You may or may not be bothered by that effect.

Posting again because I played around with the upstairs portion of your plan and, it occured to me that if you add 3 steps at the top of the stairs, things might actually fit better if you basically mirror imaged the rooms. So I used paint to do that and think I may have come up with a workable solution.

The three steps added at the top of the stairs should be high enough over the first floor that you could walk under them to pass between your foyer and kitchen... so hopefully you wouldn't have to redesign the entire downstairs as well. I'm not sure how this would affect your basement stairs because, living in an area where nobody has basements, I have a hard time visualizing how two staircases stack and just how the headroom over them works.

Anyway, here it is and let me apologize for all the backwards lettering on this sketch. I used the "flip horizontal" feature on Paint to mirror image your drawing then cut and pasted the pieces. I fixed the main lettering but there were just too many measurements to turn around so I didn't bother with those. Except as noted below, all the rooms are the same size as you originally had.

I'll admit, this makes bedroom 3 kind of oddly shaped but I think it is still a very workable room.

Your Laundry room would have to be narrower by maybe 6 inches so as to give you enough room to fit in a closet and a door into bedroom 3. I think a washer and dryer and sink would still fit in. You would also have to replace that "mini-walk-in" closet that you had for bedroom 2 with a regular 2 ft depth closet. Given the tightness of your space, for the closets in the secondary bedrooms I would recommend either bifold doors or sliding doors as those would give maximum access without having to swing out into the bedrooms quite so far.

You'll see I also revamped those closets outside the secondary bath so there weren't so many doors opening into quite so narrow a space. Replaced the one with a built in cupboard inside the bathroom b/c it is both more easily accessible from the bathroom AND doesn't waste 4" or otherwise useable storage space with an unneccessary wall. Also turned the opening to the other one onto the landing landing for ease of accessibility. These changes allowed moving the bathroom door so that it didn't open directly against the toilet...which then allowed the two sinks to be separated by enough room to be easily used by two people at one time.

BTW - if you were willing to give up that linen closet (the one now opening to the landing), I think you could actually create a little toilet room in the secondary bathroom which would certainly make it more possible for two people to actually use it at the same time. I didn't show that on this sketch but thought I'd mention the possibility to you.

Also did not revise the windows at all so if you like this rearrangement of the floor plan, you'll need to fix the windows to match the rooms.

Hope this is helpful.

Hi Bevangel - thanks for taking the time to critique and revise. I actually thought long and hard also about swapping as you showed. the onl think is currently i am showing it on the south side. the north side is very shaded and dark with a hill of trees to the north and east. So we want to stay on the south side. In ref. to the stair. I just used the area provided by the architect that will be doing my "as builts" He calculated it out for 9 foot ceilings. I may not be showin all of the threads and risers as i drew with MS Visio and it has some quirks. My point being - I will have 4 feet at the top of stair which should be fine

For the closets - I am open to doing them as effective as possible, sliding doors etc. For the bathroom on the second floor - I like the built-in idea and having the door for the second closet in the hallway.

Meldy_nva - thanks for you feedback. For the kitchen - I see what you are saying re: oven and refridgerator. These are not final locations - I just threw them in. we are in the process or meeting with kitchen designers. I will post their layouts as soon as i have them. I will keep you comments in mind to - good points

The island is also giving us a headache - My wife really wants one - but a penninsula makes more sense - lets see what the designers come up with.... space is tight in that area

The doorways into the Master bath and Shower are 2'8 and 2'6 resp. again - I am not using a pro app to draw so that may be my error

This is great - thanks for all feedback. I will use alot of it to fine tune

Doogan,

I'm worried your architect may have given you calculations for a straight run of staircase rather than for an L-shaped one.

Specifically, the measurements on your plan show the lower section of stairs plus landing as 8'0" and the upper section as 8'9". Since the central landing is 3'6" by 3'6", this means you have 4'6" (54 inches) of tread space for the lower section and 5'3" (63 inches) of tread space for the upper section. Treads need to be between 10" and 11" deep. Any thinner and it is hard to fit your foot on them when you are coming downstairs. So, by my calculations (not count), you have room for 5 treads in the lower section and 6 treads in the upper section. With the central landing added in, that is 12 treads which means you have 13 risers. (There is always one more riser than the number of treads.)

If your ceilings are 9' and you have 12" joists, your floor to floor measurement is 10' or 120 inches. With 13 risers, each one will have to be 9.2" high. That is a mighty high step. Even if code will allow it, it will be extremely uncomfortable to climb those steps. Even if your ceilings are only 8' high and your joists are only 6" (which probably means code would require them to be spaced 12" on center or closer), you would still have riser heights of 7.8 inches which is still a bit high for comfort.

Planning for stairways is complicated and many people simply don't understand why an L-shaped staircase needs more square footage than a straight run going to the same height.

Here is an explanation that might help.
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If you begin building without leaving adequate space for your staircase, I honestly don't know how you would correct the problem. One thing I do know is that fixing it then probably would NOT be cheap.

I know this sounds like a lecture but I'm really just trying to help you not make a very expensive mistake.

I second what bevangel says about checking on the stair length, risers, and tread. Our designer goofed on ours. Fortunately, we had space to bump into the master bedroom 14" to make up for his error. Also, back before we started building, I remember a spate of posts here about others who had had major problems with similar stair issues who DIDN'T have space to stretch them out as needed!

Anne

Hi Bevangel, Anne - thanks for the illustration and comments. I have gone back to my Builder and architect and let them know what i need to see what he comes back with. my only requirement is that its a comfortable rise - My previous stairs was too steep

thanks for the "Lecture".. :)

Appreciate the feedback and interest.