It'd make more sense for the kitchen to overlook the dining room. I wonder if you could flip the stairs and the kitchen.

I'd extend the pantry under the stairs. That half-height storage would be good for seldom-used items . . . perhaps holiday decorations.

In the secondary-bedroom wing, I'd re-do the closets towards the inside. Putting them to the middle gives you sound insulation, and it allows more windows in your bedrooms.

Too many doors in the secondary wing's bathroom area. You literally have as many doors (in that one area) as we have in our whole downstairs house plan. Note that if a door is left open, someone could open a door and see another opened door blocking his way.

The master shower looks narrow, as does the laundry room.

The office is an odd, deep shape. It might work, if you're doing a narrow, built-in desk. Who do you intend this office to serve? If it's the adults, you might consider opening it into the master bedroom; an opening in that wall would make what's really an alcove-sized room feel more spacious.

If you work from home, you'll need a bigger office. Otherwise, home offices are obsolete. Laptops, tablets, and phones have taken the place of almost everything. All that's needed is a router and a printer tucked some place.

The entry way has no actual sense of entry. It just dumps you into the living space with no shielding of the interior from those who come to the door. A good entry way is a somewhat separate closed room. It can be open to other rooms, but it should be at least well defined.

The kitchen is too narrow for a classic galley. You want at least 5' aisles for a galley, especially one with other rooms entered through it. It's small but adequate for a small family otherwise.

There are a lot of hallways. Hallways are useful for defined traffic flow, but they aren't high use rooms, and they should be attempted to be minimized as much as possible while still maintaining traffic flow.

A garage on the front of the house is the least attractive choice for any home. Garages are secondary structures whose bulk should be tucked behind the main body of the house. Preferably with a side entry.

The pantry does go under the stairs.

I do agree the doors in the kids jack and jill looks intense. The linen closets probably won't have actual doors, I imagine some sort of cabinetry. As far as the other doors, I don't know how to do a jack and jill without a lot of doors?

The office is odd, and I don't think it will be used by anybody.. My wife saw an office nook off the kitchen in a couple of model homes and decided she wanted one. I guess she'll use it to look up recipes and make grocery list?? I don't think it'll get used and I've tried to make my case to the lack of its value, but so far I'm losing that battle.

The master shower looks narrow because I stretched the image. That's not the final bathroom, it's just to give a rough idea about a possible layout.

Is six feet narrow for a laundry room?

I agree about the hallways. It's one of the things I don't like about this plan, but I haven't found a way to get rid of them with out changing something else that holds value to me. I'm certainly open to suggestions on how to reduce hallway. I'm also not a fan of the stair placement. I've tried moving them around but it hasn't really worked.

I agree about the foyer and have been thinking about making walls around the dinning with large entries on either wall. I'm open to ideas on how to define it.

The Garage might be moved to the side. Either way it would be a side loaded garage. The doors wouldn't be on the front. It's placement has to do with a possible future In-law structure.

Thanks for the feedback so far. Keep it coming. I've lost count on how many floor plans I've made. It's good to get other people's perspective on things besides my own. I keep trying to make a better one than this, but always end up failing and coming back to this one. I'm just not that creative despite all the HGTV I've watched :P

This house seems like it will be very dark inside, especially if up is north. The porch is deep and is enclosed by walls on 3 sides, so little light will enter the tiny windows into the living room. Even if up is south, it's hard to imagine such a deep room getting a lot of natural light. The kitchen has no windows, and so will be even darker.

Spaces all look a little tight, especially the kitchen (between the range counter and the island). WC clearances also. The hallways are narrow.

You're wasting a corner in the bottom right with closets. Windows on both sides of the wall would make that front bedroom a lot more pleasant. Also, there is little insulation between that bedroom and the front entry, meaning small children sleeping in that room may be easily woken by late callers/departers.

The bedroom at top right has a window to the porch, which would seem to compromise that bedroom's privacy during any outdoor entertaining on that porch.

In the master bedroom closet, the position of the pocket door to the laundry will be problematic as you need to allow 24" for hanging items, not just 12", unless the north-south unit shown is 12" deep shelves.

Can you tell us more about your constraints? What does your land look like? Orientation? Significant trees/shade? Do you have a topographical survey? You typically would like to orient the rooms you spent most of your time in to take advantage of the features of the landscape, e.g. your back/side yards, sunlight, etc.

Have you made a wish list? That's what we started with. Actually we each made one. We then cut out scale models of all our existing furniture and made rooms to go around where we wanted the furniture placement. We never considered purchasing plans. We used a designer/draftsman and then an engineer rather than an architect. Saved big bucks that way. We were confident in our ability to do the basic design.

You talked about rooflines. We are in a high storm threat area so it works best wind-wise to have a hipped roof. But here's an important point - to us - We personally don't like a lot of different roof lines. We just see it as adding unnecessarily to the cost, more maintenance down the road, more places for potential leaks, more expensive to put on a new roof later, etc. etc. Put your money where it means the most to you.

My first reaction to your plan is you have a lot of square footage in hallways. Agree with your basic concept that you don't want everything opening into the main living area, but think this needs some playing around with. Maybe even consider custom freestanding cabinetry that would break the space, but is flexible and could be moved around?

There are a couple of things you have in this plan that are identical to someone's house we know - and we don't like. 1. Do not like the tv being visible from the front door. Just a turnoff for that to be the long view on entry. 2. Do not like being a guest in a home with jack and jill bathroom. If someone leaves the door locked and you can't get in, you have to access through other bedroom.

You seem to be in the early stages. Keep working on it. We've been through this and enjoyed the process.

My laundry room is 6' wide. Remember that your machines probably don't sit flush against the wall, so they'll stick out up to 3'. Their doors open into the room, too. If you have laundry baskets or hampers, then yes, 6' is narrow. With the laundry by a secondary entrance, it will also probably be a repository for sunscreen, bug spray, batteries, umbrellas, etc. If you're building new, take advantage of the opportunity to have a little more space!

Re the office, perhaps your SO is thinking of this pantry/office. I'm thinking such a space, in your own style, of course, could happily be a home for glue sticks, paper clips, stapler, printer, paper, markers, as well as china. But I think I'd want more windows.

I imagined the washer and dryer next to each other under the window. Our current ones are only 5 feet across sitting next to each other. When the dryer door's open, not flush up against the wall it still isn't 4 feet.That gives me 12 feet left in the room, subtract lets say 4' for the doors on the other end and I still have 6'x8' to put a bench, some hooks and organization what not. Most benches and furniture I've looked at to fit in the space at most would be 30", usually less. That leaves 42" or more to pass through. That seemed reasonable to me, Is it not? I do understand things in real life usually don't work out like they do in my head so your feedback is valuable.

I tried to put the desk in the pantry, it would fit under the stairs. I thought for recipe books, grocery lists, paper clips, pens, tape etc. it would be fine, but she didn't want to be "put in the closet." I'm hoping to eventually win this one, but I usually don't :P

Thanks for all the input! I've got some editing to do.

Just a quick note (working) so haven't read all the responses.

You say you bought some land, so I'm guessing it's more than a standard lot. Do you have views? What direction is south? Do you want any screened areas?

We live on land and the challenge is to find a plan that capitalizes on your specific land. I would want the living spaces to have more light and probably put them on the corner of the house. Maybe the bedrooms reworked so they're on one side and the living spaces on the other?

There are so many plans available. Have you checked eplans? I'm sure you can find something that takes advantage of your land and views :)

If you're putting the machines under the window, well (as Emily Litella said) That's different! So this is a double-duty room, laundry and "mudroom". Are you sure you wouldn't want to split up those assignments? Just sayin', since you have the opportunity, why have clean laundry in the same room with dirty shoes and soccer gear?

No views. It's only a 1.8 acre flat rectangle. 170' on the front almost 500' on the sides. Plenty of room for the kids to play, have a little garden, and I'm not on top of my neighbors,but nothing scenic to look at. The house front would face East. I prefer the the master and kids rooms not to be on the same side.

I have looked at eplans and countless others.

It would be double duty.. I see laundry/mud rooms around here often or simply the absence of a mud room. Perhaps because we don't get snow or a ton of rain? I dunno I don't feel like it's out of the ordinary for this area. Something else to think about, thanks!

No snow? Don't rub it in LOL! Your plan reminds me of homes I remember from Dallas; there is a "regionalism" in home design, isn't there. For the "office", maybe add a French door to the patio; if SO is working in there, she can enjoy the view and open them up to enjoy the air... even in December :)

A jack-and-jill works well between two bedrooms -- and in that case it only requires two doors. It doesn't work so well in this situation, with an attempt to share it between three. You can eliminate a bit of the door problem by having all the closets open directly into the bedrooms. And whether you're talking cabinets or actual doors, they're still going to bang against one another and be a problem.

You might "win" the office deal by pointing out to your wife that the kitchen would be nicer if the office weren't blocking out the natural light.

I like the idea of combining the pantry and office. This would allow you to scoot the kitchen all the way to the back (though that's farther from the dining room), and you can prevent it from feeling like "a closet" by using nice, bright white shelving and a pretty accent color . . . and use a single French door instead of a standard door. It could be quite pleasant.

I detest a laundry room so far away from the bedrooms. That's a LOOOOONNNNG way to carry dirty and clean clothes! Is that OK with the person who does the laundry at your house?

I also detest viewing dirty clothes as I enter the house from the garage. And question the reasoning for mixing clean clothes with dirty boots which are just coming in from outside.

The way the laundry works in our house is the dirty clothes are in the bathroom until they are washed. They do not hang out in the laundry room before being washed so I'd never see it walking into the house. Once the laundry is clean it is typically brought to the living room and folded by the wife and I while we watch TV. That location is pretty central to all the rooms. Unfortunately I can't have the laundry room near all the bedrooms because I prefer to have our room and the kids on opposite ends of the house. I get what you'r saying though. I'm not sure I understand the aversion to having clean laundry near a mud room. I realize mud is in the name, but I have no intentions of letting my kids track mud into the house. They aren't aloud to do it now and I do not anticipate allowing it in the future. Do clean clothes often get left in the laundry room outside of the dryer? I know some people fold their laundry in there, but we do not. You all do bring up good points though and I will talk them over with my wife and see what her thoughts are since she does more of the laundry than I do.

If I want to be able to close off the toilet and tub from the sink areas (which I do because of different genders) then there would be at least four doors. I'd rather have another door in the bathroom for a closet than a third door in the bedroom. I know it is door crazy in there.. I'll look into alternatives, but I'm not really sure how to do two separate sinks from the tub area on less than four doors without having the sinks in the bedrooms (which I also don't like). Maybe I could have the closet door open into the closet, or make it a pocket door. That would eliminate all but one potential door banging. Thanks again for the input.

About the laundry: You've hit upon the best idea already -- talk to your wife about how the chore is completed in your household. Then discuss how you can arrange your house to support your methods.

Example:

We're planning a retirement house -- so we care most about our own laundry, not kids' or guest laundry. We will have a pool, and I am the primary laundry doer -- no, I am the exclusive laundry doer.

Our solution: Our laundry room will be convenient to the back door so that when we have pool-guests, I can leave the washing machine empty and can say, "Just throw your wet towels here." The other side of the laundry will open directly into the master closet because I'd like to be able to hang the clothes and take them directly to the clothes rods. And I will have a space allotted for baskets of dirty clothes under a small folding shelf. All this will be "off" the back entry, but it will be "closeable" with a pocket door. Guests will be able to access the laundry, but it won't be particularly convenient for them to carry things down the stairs, through the kitchen, and into the back hall -- but you can't have everything, and guest laundry will be a small portion of what's washed in our house. This is a well-thought-through plan that suits our lives. It might not suit yours at all.

Think through how you want your space to function.

Same question for the jack-and-jill bath: How do you need it to function? Do you have three kids who'll be sharing the space? Or are we talking about a guest room and two kids' rooms? How much storage do you need? What matters to you in the bath room space?