I like it much more than the other. Tried with MS paint this time (much, much harder than the program I'm using btw).Clumsily moved office to dining and moved bedrooms down (leaving some walls, doors behind lol). BR closet moved next to the coat closet.

For the kitchen I moved the reduced pantry door to the bottom of the wall. Either a bigger pantry or storage for garage can be considered b/w the pantry and the stairs. I have no idea if moving the pantry upsets anything in the garage though. I think you'll want a door or some kind of opening to the pantry from the garage.Fridge and oven/MW moved to the breakfast side, and range b/w them and the pantry. I also reduced the length of that counter, since you might need space on the Breakfast room side.

Moved DW to the other side of the sink., and moved the island closer to the perimeter (4-4.5' would be a good aisle width imo).

Good stuff! Thank you!

I'd bet that design is already cheaper than the other plan. It's not all about gross square footage. It's about how complex that square footage is, and where it's located This is simpler and has MUCH better flow. It doesn't have that schnozz of a garage out front, or thoseawkward diagonal walls, or that too small and awkward kitchen. It's a winner. The kitchen could be tweaked, but straight off, someone can actually work In it. A few tweaks focused at separating cleanup and prep better and moving the pantry door so it doesn't interrupt the counter space so much, and it will be even better.

Waiting to hear back from builder for sure, but I think the new plan is going to be too wide for our lot. :(

House shows 74' wide. According to county assessor's website our lot is 83' wide. Builder says we need 15' on the street side and 5' on the other. If that's all accurate, can't imagine how it would work unless we turned the house to face east instead of south (not sure if that's permitted by the subdivision/city) and reverse the floor plan. Even then the depth is 69' so we would still be 6' over. It might be possible to shorten and widen the utility/master closet areas to get there ... I don't know. This is getting frustrating ...

Harmon- You can go to eplans.com and enter 63' as the width of your home and several plans will fit your space requirements.

One is here...very similar to your original, with some of the same problems. Kitchen doesn't have an island and there is a formal dining room, but it will fit your space. It's 60'x 57' and has a front entrance drive way.

You could move the fireplace to the other wall and add a covered porch, like the other homes. I do like the front facade and the plantings match the style of the home. Just an idea :) {{!gwi}}From Kitchen plans
{{!gwi}}From Kitchen plans

Here is a link that might be useful: Link to plan

A local architect can design something for you that fits both your lot, your wish list, and your budget. There are literally millions of unsuitable plans out there. Why not focus on the right plan from the beginning?

Lavender - Thanks! I have spent a little time on eplans, but not much. I didn't know they had that feature. I'll check it out!

Live Wire - Yeah, your probably right. Kinda bummed though ... I was really liking that plan. How many people have a 95' wide lot to put a 2400 sq ft house on?! (For all I know lots of people do, but we don't!)

I have an idea though ...

1. Taking the garage to the back of the house where the master bedroom is now. Flip it so that the wider portion (where single car door is located) is fartherest from main part of house.

2. Put master bedroom at front of house where garage is now. Flip it as well so that bay window faces front of house.

3. Position master bath behind master bedroom so that they are end-to-end instead of side-by-side.

Thoughts? I'll try to draw something. What (preferably free) software do you guys use for drawing? MS Paint kinda sucks.

Very rough...but maybe this will help :)
{{gwi:1415783}}From Kitchen plans

Thanks Lavender! Very helpful!

What's your reasoning on putting the garage up front instead of in back with the master bedroom up front? (A lot of people were critical of the garage design of my other plan because they felt it stuck out too far in the front.)

63' minus the 25' needed for the turnaround space for a side load minus the 25' for the garage means the actual face of the house can be 13'. Even your first plan wouldn't have worked. You're gonna have to do a front load. Or buy a different lot. They do exist. I've got a 350' wide lot.

For the reason Holly says...you probably won't have enough room for a side-entry garage. The only other choice would be to have the front entry be the driveway...something like this.
{{!gwi}}From Kitchen plans

Here is a link that might be useful: Link to plan, if interested

hollysprings, I think on the building forum Harmon said they have a corner lot -- but I could be misremembering.

"I think on the building forum Harmon said they have a corner lot -- but I could be misremembering."

Yep, it's a corner lot. It's 83' x 117'. The main purpose of getting a corner lot was for a side entry garage.

"I've got a 350' wide lot."

Wow, that's a huge lot! Can I borrow 10' of it for about 30 years? :)

My point was that with the price points of larger lots I would expect most people to build bigger houses than our 2200-2400 sq ft range. Before selecting our lot we did look at some 1+ acre additions that I really liked, but they were either too far out and/or had minimum sq ft requirements that we couldn't meet, and then there was the mowing thing ... ;)

This post was edited by Harmon on Fri, Feb 21, 14 at 1:21

Lavender,

That's a beautiful house, but it's about 1300 sq ft more than we can realistically afford. Before selecting our lot, we talked with our builder about options for a side entry garage including what I call a swing-in garage like the one you linked to. Builder said that would add a few thousand dollars in concrete costs so we elected to instead spend that money on a corner lot rather than concrete. It was close to a wash cost-wise, and we both preferred a corner lot for several reasons. The swing-in garages tend to make the front yard mostly concrete which neither one of us particularly like. Also, I drive a fairly long pickup truck that would likely make ingress/egress out of that style of garage a pain.

Thanks for the idea though, I'm going to spend some more time on eplans. Are there other similar websites?

This is what I was thinking to get the width down to 63'. Pretty rough, but you get the idea ... thoughts?

If your street side set-back is 15' and your property line set back is 5', you need to find a house that is no larger than 63' x 49' for your 83' x 69' lot. A 3 bay garage will be at least 30' wide. That leaves you only 19' for living space in front of it. A 2 bay garage will be at least 20' wide, leaving you 29' in front of it. Your latest plan is far too deep for your lot and could be too wide as well.

When we were building, my hubby drew lines on our plot plan and we placed to-scale templates of houses we were considering to know how they would fit - or wouldn't fit - on our lot. Our lot is pie-shaped with only a 39' width at the street and although it widened fairly quickly, at our set-back (20'), we still could not accommodate a house wider than 52'. This exercise helped us quickly narrow down choices so that we were only considering plans that fit our lot. This was more than 20 years ago and while there are computer programs that would do this for you today, our old school method would work, too.

I really tried to make a house plan I loved fit but it would have meant a hugely deep front yard and no back yard - a large back yard was one of the reasons why we chose our lot - so I know how hard it is to say good-bye to a well-liked but unsuitable home plan.

Here's a plan that I think is close to what you are looking for. I think you could even switch the powder and laundry rooms fairly easily, so that the laundry can be accessed from the master closet.

Of course, there's things I'd change in the kitchen... ;)

Good luck with your plan search. I also saw a nice plan at Cool House Plans.

Here is a link that might be useful: House plan at Architectural Designs

"If your street side set-back is 15' and your property line set back is 5', you need to find a house that is no larger than 63' x 49' for your 83' x 69' lot."

Lisa,

Our lot is either 83' or 85' wide x 117' long so I believe we need to stay within 63' (or 65') x 97'. (I'm not sure about the width because we were told 85' by the builder and the assessor's online map shows 85', but where the assessor's website lists exact dimensions it has 82.92' x 117.42' so I'm not sure if it's really the smaller number or if they are somehow doing an average width that takes into account the slightly rounded corner at the street intersection. Builder said he would check. We are meeting with him tomorrow.)

I may have found a solution today though. (With all the twists & turns I'm starting to feel like I'm living a soap opera. I hate soap operas.) I found two other corner lot houses in the subdivision that are turned 90 degrees so that they face east instead of south. Builder said he would ask the developer about it. He wasn't sure if that was something that we had to get permission to do or not.

If we do turn it to face east and reverse the plans, the house is 69' deep so we are still either 4' or 6' over, but I think there are a couple of places where we can reconfigure to make it work especially if it is just 4'. Specifically, I'm looking at slightly widening and shortening the utility room/master closet area and maybe relocating the powder room. I think the PR's location may be my least favorite thing about the plan anyway. Perhaps the hot water heater & a/c closet can be relocated as well to shorten the depth of that side of the house ... still thinking. Appreciate all the suggestions so far. Keep 'em coming! :)

Ah, I understand now. I got the wrong impression from, "According to county assessor's website our lot is 83' wide... Builder says we need 15' on the street side and 5' on the other. If that's all accurate, can't imagine how it would work unless we turned the house to face east instead of south (not sure if that's permitted by the subdivision/city) and reverse the floor plan. Even then the depth is 69' so we would still be 6' over." I thought you were talking about the lot's depth but you were talking about the home plan's depth. Lucky you for having such a large lot. I live in an area where lots in new developments average 4000 to 5000 sq ft.

Lisa,

I understand how you misunderstood. I could have been clearer. It's not a tiny lot, but I'm not feeling all that lucky since it's 9' to narrow for the house we want.

Builder text this morning that lot is 85' wide giving us 65' to build on, but he says the developer says the city won't let us turn the house to face east. Something about storm drainage lines.

So ... that puts us back at square one trying to find a new plan, reverting to the original plan, or trying to slim down the plan we like by 9'. I'm going to work on that last option today before we meet with our builder at 3:00 CST.

Control Freak,

Thought I responded earlier, but guess it didn't go through. Thanks for the link! At first I thought it was basically the same as our first plan, but after looking closer I like it better and think it has more potential for fixing the kitchen IF that partial wall between the kitchen & living room can be removed. Also, I don't see mention of room for an upstairs bonus room. That's probably the most important feature to me. (Bonus room to be finished later.)

If those two things can be done, the only big negative would be placement of the utility room. Gf has her heart set on having the utility room adjacent to the master closet which I have to agree is probably a good idea. Suppose we could just attach it the left side of the house. The master bath might could use a little tweaking, and the garage is awfully small for a 3 car but those things should be easy enough to change.

Do you happen to have the link to the house at Cool House Plans? I've looked at eplans.com and floorplans.com and haven't found what I'm looking for. Thanks again!

Thanks everyone for the detailed reviews. We met with our builder yesterday, and unfortunately this plan is 9' too wide for our lot with the 20' of setbacks. :(

So ... we heavily modified our original plan. I've posted the revised floor plan in this thread:

Here is a link that might be useful: Back to the Original Plan ... Sort of ...

Thanks for everyone's input. I truly appreciate it.

As I mentioned before I really like this plan but it was 9' too wide. Well, I was looking at it again last night and based upon my handy-dandy ruler it looks like that garage is 27' or 28' ft deep where the first plan is only 22'. While I would love to have the greater garage depth if I'm correct that gives up to 5' or 6' that could be shaved off the garage.

On the other side of the house is a jutted out portion for closets & bathroom space that appears to add 4' or 5' to the width. By eliminating the formal dining room I think I can do without this space. If I can eliminate 5' on the left side and 4' on the garage (or vice versa), I still have a 22' to 24' deep garage (I think) ... will have to get exact dimensions from design company.

I made these changes and some others below. What do you think?

At a minimum out of all this I have gained a very rudimentary understanding of how to use MS Paint. ;)