It looks pretty good to me. I like the sizes of each room, especially the laundry and mudroom. I've never had a side porch so I'm not sure how that would work, but it looks ok. The only thing for me is that is seems like alot of hallway which is a little wasted space IMHO.

Here is back entry from the garage, if that gives you any ideas. The mudroom lockers are out in the open instead of being behind a door, and we have a small office off the kitchen instead of being in the mudroom..I think yours looks good overall!

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I love these multipurpose rooms as well. The room sizes are pretty good but I agree there's a lot of wasted space. I would have the porch door open directly into the mudroom. and have the coat closet open into the mudroom also. Move the broom closet to where the porch entry currently is drawn. It's big enough for a little walk in closet/pantry/storage area. Now you have extra space to make the office bigger.

Make the broom closet door open out. You lose too much space in the closet with it opening in.

Thanks for the input! I actually designed the mud room separately on purpose :) I didn't want the lockers in the hallway (I am one who loves to keep all clutter behind doors!). I also didn't want folks walking in through the utility areas.

I will think about opening the coat closet to the mudroom! That may work and would have the added benefit of eliminating a set of doors (I feel like there are a lot of them!) I was thinking about putting hooks on the opposite wall of the lockers in the mud room for extra stuff as needed . . .

I know there is a lot of hallway but couldn't figure out how to do it differently and not walk through the mudroom or laundry room or whatever . . . Any ideas? Our architect had the porch opening into the laundry on the first draft which would have never worked for me!

I expect this entrance will be used a lot - close to the kitchen area - and easy for the kids to run outside and play without opening the garage doors and letting in the leaves, etc. We have a walk out basement plan, so there is no back door - this is it without having to walk down a flight of stairs or without going through the front entrance hall.

Thanks again and keep em coming!

FWIW, I personally like hallways.

I would widen the office and shrink the broom closet a bit, then access the broom closet from the laundry room. The ironing board can be pulled out from the broom closet.

First thing you should do is place all your items in the laundry room. It doesn't look like you'll have much room for counter space.

Your mudroom won't really work as a mudroom -- you have two doors that don't open into it, and that means the hallway will be collecting the dirt instead. Then you have a 5' coat closet for the neighbor's... unless the kids use it, in which case the mudroom will go unused.

So, since the mudroom is really a locker room, perhaps you might be better served by a larger laundry/locker room combo -- they can share standing space and both be hidden away together. You could do this on the front side of the house with a smaller porch and the powder room on the other side, or put the office in the front of the house.

The 5 foot coat closet is for out of season coats, or for extra coats. For example, my husband has a dress coat, a raincoat, a fleece jacket and a down jacket. I have a couple of raincoats (dress and casual), two wool coats, a puffer jacket and a couple of fleeces. The boys (we have 3) have various rain jackets, windbreakers, etc. That is really the purpose for the coat closet. We don't have a coat closet in the entrance hall - I thought it would be better to have it where we entered and exited the house, rather than having to walk to the entrance hall to get a coat and then back through the kitchen and out the garage.

I would like to clear the coats out of the mudroom lockers when we don't need them and put them in the coat closet so we have room in the lockers for baseball bags, swim bags, etc.

As far as combining with the laundry - that is what we have now and it is more chaotic than I would like. Remember I am anti-clutter lady who needs everything in its place :) and it is why I would like a more compartmentalized space in the back hall of this house (no desk in the laundry, etc.) This plan actually saves 50 square feet from what the architect drew so I guess it is more compact.

I actually want the office in the casual part of the house off the kitchen, rather than in the more formal front of the house. We originally had a study in the front but we were close to 5600 square feet on the first draft so the study had to go! We are shooting for 4500 not including the basement.

I don't think of the mudroom as collecting mud - just a place for stuff. We will do 4 lockers in there and will leave room for dog crate(s), dog food canister, etc. It will really be a kids/dad/dog storage room. I will also probably put our shoe basket in there which the kids use for their shoes when they come in the house (it is now in our laundry room)

We will have the same flooring in the back hall area and will transition to hardwood at the kitchen - bluestone/slate/tile - so hopefully all the dirt will fall off before then!

Thanks again for all the input - lots to think about!

I'd make the entrance from the porch thru the mudroom, widen the mudroom, and have a walk-in closet opening off the hall to store coats and "stuff." I'd switch the broom closet and office, make the office wall go out as far as the laundry wall, and have the office be L-shaped with the broom closet in the right front corner with the door opening into the hall.

When you had stairs in this area, were they the primary ones, or was it a second stairway?

Anne

The stairs were the back stairs, with the idea that they would be used to go to the playroom which I thought would be over the garage. It doesn't look like it will be there, at least right now, so they ended up being a staircase to nowhere. The problem with putting all we want on the first floor is that if we finish the whole second floor we will be way too big. Right now, the upstairs is more compact with the playrooms closer to the bedrooms. That is subject to change with the reworking of the downstairs though.

I guess I am in the minority but I don't want the lockers in a hall :) or the entrance from outside in my mudroom. My house is very tidy and I have found for my own sanity these sorts of clutter areas have to be behind closed doors. I am afraid if I put doors on the lockers themselves they would not be used . . . rather have the lockers open but in a room that can be closed off.

In fact, we have intentionally bypassed houses in our search to buy one with mudroom lockers in a hallway so it is actually a real bonus to me that the door from outside does not come through the mudroom!

AthensMom -- overall, I think your space is working like you want it to. It does have hallway, but if you want closed off clutter spaces, I don't see how you can get around that. You will use your coat closet much like ours -- we don't have one by the front door either.

We used to have the powder room in our mudroom like yours. I moved it to the front entrance off the foyer to give more space to the mudroom. Is that possible with your plan?

If you want to stay compartmentalized like this, I only have two suggestions.

One, to fix the broom closet -- use a swing out door as suggested above. Or, turn it into two closets with one facing the utility room.

Second, you may want to consider putting the coat closet on the other side of the neighbor's door. You could then add a small pocket door into the mudroom, which would provide for easier access to the mudroom from the front door -- as well as the coat closet from the mudroom. It would still keep the stuff out of sight the way you want, but I think it might help out for getting the kids to take off dirty shoes, etc. by providing a clearer shot to their lockers.

Of course the extra door may drive you nuts if the kids don't close the door, but that's going to be an issue any time you have a lot of doors and compartments in an area like this.

I definitely think a swing out door is in order for the broom closet. I hesitate to put a door from the laundry room into the broom closet, as I will be taking up very valuable wall space from an already small room. The broom closet is intentionally deep (although maybe a foot too???) because I have a laundry basket of old towels and rags that is now under my laundry room wall sink that I would like to store in there, as well as two vaccum cleaners (cordless and regular) that I will store in there (with a plug to charge the cordless), along with bulk paper towels, etc.

The pocket door to the mudroom is definitely something to think about! My boys are in the habit of walking into the laundry room now to hang up coats, backpacks and take shoes off, but I agree anything that will make it easier will make it more likely to happen!

Well, I have a sketch with the broom doors to the laundry. I do not know your cleaning dynamic but in our case, we use water when we mop so it is easier to get it from the laundry sink.
I also placed a smaller closet to the hall, if you want to see it, email me please.

It seems to me that if you have a 4500 sf house not counting the basement, maybe some sf could be taken from some other rooms on the first floor for this area of the house that will get a LOT of daily use. Also, you mentioned 2 vacuums. In a new house this size, wouldn't you want to have central vac? It's relatively inexpensive to put in a new house, and is one of my favorite things in our new house.

How old are your boys? What climate do you live in?

The compartmentalization of the rooms doesn't bother me so much as their sizes, although I really don't care for dead-end rooms because of circulation bottlenecks. I see massive jam-ups in the mudroom. I'd make it wider, so you can have substantial storage on each side, and room in the middle for everyone to get around each other.

We have 3 grandchildren 7 and younger and my daughter living with us, DH, and me with over twice the closet space you are planning--as well as the mudroom with a 5' long bench, drawers underneath, cabinets overhead, and 8 hook sets. The closets are full, all hooks have multiple coats & jackets on them, and sports stuff is all stored in the garage. Our "mudroom" part (your 6'x10' part) is 5'6" w x 8' long and located almost where yours is after you come in from the garage past the stairs to the lower level, and our laundry is the same size as yours and in the same location as yours. One coat closet is where your broom closet is, our kitchen is where yours is, our cleaning closet is where your hall to the back door is. Our powder room opens off of the side of the mudroom. At the back end of the mudroom are the up stairs, and the back door is at the opposite end past a hall to the eating area on one side and the master bedroom on the other. So our mudroom is open at both ends and we LOVE it, because when several of us are getting ready to go out at the same time (usually 6 of us in the morning), there's room for everyone to get their things, go to the bathroom, run up or downstairs (we didn't want a front stairway) if they've forgotten something, and circulate freely. I spent more time designing this area than I did my kitchen! And I've never regretted the extra square footage I took from the rest of the house and added here; I love it every time I walk through it--it's the real hub.

Is it possible that more than one person will be in the office at the same time? Seems like a few more sf here would be more comfortable.

Sounds like you and I are quite different, but I just wanted to go into detail about our place to maybe help you rethink the circulation pattern in your closed off areas.

Anne

"I hesitate to put a door from the laundry room into the broom closet, as I will be taking up very valuable wall space from an already small room."

Sketch out where and what you want to be in the laundry room. At 9" wide -- less once you have drywall, etc, up -- you really don't have enough room for both sides to have full depth items along the wall. So I was thinking something like this:

The problem is that a closet that's 5' deep isn't really useful unless it's for storage items that are rarely accessed. You can't really utilize the full depth.

Hi,
You have four spaces with dedicated uses, two passages, and two storage spaces. This is being rather tightly squeezed into 316 sq ft.
I would analyze these needs and perhaps try to combine some of them and perhaps integrate the passages into the task areas. This would eliminate doors if a more "open plan" could be adopted.
Is the coat closet just a place to hang outerwear, or is it also a long-term storage function? I would prefer to have hooks above a hinged-top storage bench and perhaps a shelf above the hangers. This could eliminate the two hinged doors which take space and occlude the passage when open. The deep, narrow broom closet with the in-swinging door is sure to disappoint.
How do you see the mudroom working for you as a separate space apart from the laundry? I can't recall seeing a mudroom without an outside door. What would it do for you and what do you see doing there? A floor drain and tile floor for hosing off kids and dogs? That's a legitimate function, but it could be integrated into the other plumbing-related areas, powder room and the laundry, so sharing of supply lines, drains and vent stacks. That planning would result in a significant savings. As drawn, the plumbing functions are pretty far apart.
My takeaway would be that a more open plan, a plan with fewer passages and doors, which placed plumbing functions closer together, would make more of the small space, and perhaps give a feeling that it's not a collection of closets and work cells, but a central office hub with a few specialized task nodes adjoining.
Casey

I'd move the entry to the back hall into the mudroom. I'd also move the out of season coat storage to open into the mudroom, and make the current hallway part of the out of season storage area. Youy don't need a 4' wide opening . You could get by with 2 18" double doors, for a 36" wide opening, but I kept the 48" wide opening. Also, I'd break up the deep narrow closet in two, with one opening into the hall, the other into the laundry room. If you really wanted to close off the closet in the laundry room, you could put on a pocket door, or you could leave it open.

Wow! Thanks for all the input - lots to digest. Still not convinced I want a door going from outside into the mudroom, and if so definitely not the door from the porch as that will be used mostly for visitors and for me letting the dog out - don't want to have to circle through the mudroom to do that.

Our family entrance will be primarily through the garage, so if there is a door, that is where it needs to go.

Unfortunately, however, if I put a door in the mudroom, I will feel compelled to put doors on the lockers, which makes them much less likely to be used. That is the reason for the seperate mudroom - don't have to put doors on the lockers but still hide the clutter. I wouldn't want to walk through that every time I enter the house - like to come in and see the pretty stuff not the mess.

Obviously, I am in the minority :) but clutter drives me nuts. I am of the everything in a drawer, behind a door school, which is why a kitchen desk won't ever work for me. I have to be able to shut the door to the clutter, for my own sanity.

My children already walk through the garage door and turn around to go to the laundry room to hang up their backpacks and coats, which is less convenient than this room that they will walk right by, so I don't think that will deter them.

I chose 6 feet wide because that will let me have lockers on one side, and a narrow bench (not built in but likely a antique or rustic one) with hooks above for extras. . . and 10 feet long because 4 lockers will take up roughly 7 1/2 feet if they are 20 inches wide and you include trim, and that leaves enough room for a dog crate and dog food holder there at the end.

Good point about the plumbing - I will have to see what I can do about that. . .

The one thing this has made me realize is that the laundry is too small! I also don't want another door into it - like the idea of grabbing the cleaning supplies without going into the laundry.

As far as the deep broom closet goes, I grew up with one (under the back stairs) and it was fabulous!!! Plenty of room for the cleaning supplies and brooms, mops etc along one wall, but also room for storing off season patio cushions, a laundry basket full of old towels and rags for cleaning, carpet steam cleaner, etc. 6 feet deep is likely too deep though . . .

As far as central vac, I am not sold. I have one now and never use it, primarily because the outlets were poorly planned and are mostly covered up (behind sofa, behind television armoire in bedroom, etc.) Also, the hose is a drag.

I have weekly maid service for heavy vaccuming but I am a daily (often several times a day) vaccumer with my little cordless stick vac, and generally pull the big vac out at least once for the downstairs during the week.

I need to digest all this and thank you sooo much for bringing up all these things I would have never thought about.

Is the porch the main entry into your home?

No - this is what my architect calls a "neighbor's porch" on the front of the home but not the formal entry. You can see one on another house he designed in the attached link - the white porch on the right.

He has drawn it this way I think because even though we have a couple of acres, it is a daylight basement lot and to take advantage of the wooded view he wants to place the house where we cannot see another house but just woods from the back of our house. This is basically a casual side porch but on the front (a side porch would make the garage too deep and require a retaining wall).

Here is a link that might be useful: Shingle house

Where will your sons' friends put their coats? In the mudroom? I assume adult visitors' coats will go in the closet?

Is three feet enough depth for a porch?

As far as the boys friends, right now generally I collect the coats and put them with the rest of their things (backpack/lunchbox etc) and put them by the front door so they are all together when their mom picks them up. I expect that will be the drill for a while, and in our new house there will be a parking court by the front door so most folks will come in that way I expect. If coming on a weekend I guess they would go in the mudroom, although my boys are generally outside with friends so likely they would be worn most of the time and probably dropped on the floor of whatever room they decided to play in.

I assume you are in Michigan? Coats and outerwear are a whole different thing there, both in volume of things worn and in frequency. My kids very rarely wear hats or gloves, and a fleece jacket generally works for most days. Likewise, adults lots of time will wear just a lightweight jacket that they will keep on if coming for dinner if it is part of the lady's outfit and for me a sweater would be sufficient most nights. Rarely do folks put on their heavy coats around here . . . particularly if just going to dinner at someones house where you are walking from car to house (rather than parking and walking to a restaurant).

At Thankgiving we had 18 folks and no one wore a real coat - a few dressy type jackets that stayed on and a couple of men in sportcoats. Any coats we collected would have gone on our master bedroom bed though rather than being hung in a coat closet :)

I know you said you want to be able to close off clutter, but it seems like with the side porch entry you'll have a lot of traffic that will be going in the hallway to get to the mudroom to remove shoes etc. You'll essentially have the dirt of this traffic to get to the laundry. One thing I hate about my current set-up. I have to walk through the mudroom part to the laundry.

How about you build the lockers into a closet that you can close up with bifold doors or something similar for when you want to close things off. Doesn't seem like you'd see the mudroom area very often anyways. I do understand the need to close things off as I'm a neaty that way too.

athensmomof3,
Who is your architect? Is it one of the associates of the link you posted?

Athensmom, so glad I found this thread! We are in a similar phase as you - we are building a house in Atlanta, still in the planning stages. We are pretty happy with our plan, but the back hall area has way too much space devoted to the back stairs, which leads to an office over the garage. This thread has given me a lot to think about, not to mention the fact that my designer does not like our current back hall and wants to incorporate a laundry/dog room. I also did not think about the fact that we do not have a broom closet/utility sink in our back area, which would certainly be needed for cleaning the main level. Our primary laundry room is going to be upstairs near the bedrooms, and we have a small laundry closet planned in the back hall for the pool towels primarily. Please keep us posted!

thingsthatinspire - I love your blog:) Had to check your profile to see if that was you! I have it on my yahoo front page. We have very similar taste so your pictures have been so fun to look through! I gather you are using Stan Dixon? He was recommended to us as well but we didn't know anyone personally who had used him for a new build (although he did a renovation for some folks we know and they are thrilled). We went with Bill Baker because we have friends who used him a couple of years ago and had a great experience.

It is amazing the things you can learn on here :) I already have notes for several things I would have never thought of that I definitely want to include. The trick is going to be fitting everything I want in without blowing out the square footage! I am trying to be very efficient :)

Wishing you luck!

Yes, I'm in Michigan, but we visit several friends in the Atlanta area a couple of times a year. I hadn't really thought about no gloves and hats, so that, as well as fewer heavy coats does require less space.

However, when we drive down to visit in the spring or fall, it's cool enough for us to wear jackets, and sometimes it's raining. We always end up leaving them on the back of a chair in the kitchen eating area, on the back of the sofa in the family room, on top of our suitcases, or take them to the guest bedroom with us. I've been in several large, beautiful houses in gorgeous neighborhoods in GA and AL, where parts of the houses are poorly designed from a functional standpoint, besides not having closets on the first floor. Some design issues are regional, but in some cases some architects can design space that has problems for any part of the country!

An architect a few doors from us designed his house, and the traffic flow between the kitchen, DR, & LR is terrible. He also tried to be so efficient, that each of the rooms and hallways is just a few inches too small. It was uncomfortable, and disappointing to walk thru it. Looks nice from the outside, tho.

Comments are just meant to help, so obviously you can ignore whatever you wish.

Anne

Yes, we are using Stan Dixon - he is a personal friend (our kids go to school together) and I have seen most of the houses he has renovated or built new. I don't want to hijack this thread, but would love to keep in touch via email - thingsthatinspire@gmail.com - would love some good tips on managing square footage! We just got our preliminary budget, and like everyone else, are looking for ways to make things more efficient both cost wise and size wise.

Did you see the Bill Baker interview I did on the blog a few months ago? I put a link to it here. He is so talented. As soon as I read that your architect was in China on business, I knew who it was - I met Bill in September, and he told me that he was about to start something in China. I have mainly seen his large scale houses (8000 sf +), so I think it is great that he is doing a 4500 sf house.

Here is a link that might be useful: Interview with Bill Baker

I did read it :) There is actually a 4500 square foot house in his book - it is on West Wesley I think ??? out towards Westminster.

He did tell me they are much harder than the 8000 square foot ones, which I am finding out as well!! I'll send you an email!

Oh and thanks Anne for the tips - all are helpful. We had this discussion with our architect too and he said he does 4 foot wide hallways minimum, even upstairs, and his interview linked above stresses the need to not skimp on room sizes, so we are trying to be very cognizant of that too. I have measured all our rooms here and also at my parents (much larger) house where I grew up so I have a comparison too - I am very visual so it is hard figuring out exactly what 14 x 16 means, at least for me :)

and maybe I am wrong about the 4 feet - that seems awfully wide. Maybe he said 40 inches . . . although our sketch has 4 feet.

I just looked at my Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles magazine from November 2009, which features the Bill Baker designed showhouse. I could swear that I saw a version of the floorplan that had a back stairs in what is now the mudroom area (off the porte cochere). The updated floorplan (and what was actually built) took out the back stairs, which opened up the mudroom area for lockers, a desk area, and a small laundry room. Instead, the stairs are now in the garage from the looks of it.