Think pocket doors and sliders rather than french or standard swing doors, to save huge amounts of real estate due to door swing. In addition, you can have screens on sliders on exterior doors, hard to do with french style exterior doors. Sliders also don't flap in the wind when open.

Think about cross ventilation during nice weather and whether you are set up for that with openings across from spaces.

Is there a folding counter for laundry and storage place for laundry baskets?

What is the entrance to the cottage, through the living room in the back, now? Seems you lost the front door. If it's the living room, where is the dump zone/front closet type thing to hang a coat etc.?

If you may ever retire and age out in the cottage, consider a walk-in tub or shower with seat, as someday you may not be able to maneuver a tub wall.

You could get a lot more storage and counter space in the cottage with a U shaped kitchen, although it eats a bit of free floor space on the right. It would be worth the floor space, for me, for the counter and storage. I'd put a little 2 person bar at the end of the U leg on the right hand wall, for eating. In this amount of space, that's all you'd need.

Make sure your doorways and bent pathways actually allow for you to get the piano in to its destination, and that your floor support is OK for it.

Think about furniture placement in places and whether you'd need floor outlets etc. Open concept spaces often forget to think about this and end up with cords everywhere along the floor.

Think console, not grand. It's bigger than your bathroom.

2 24'' closets are all but useless and hold less than half of what a single 4' closet holds. Leave the closets as originally done and change the access doors.

The cottage is a teardown and rebuild with all new construction. It'll be cheaper than trying to bring everything up to modern standard within an old structure.

On the main house, it looks like you've kept the main footprint, and just shifted doors around a bit. It sounds like there are certain things that don't work for you in the current house, and you've addressed them (like I'm guessing you're sick of walking around the bathroom door to get to the toilet). The only thing that jumps out to me is that the grand piano will overwhelm a modest living room in a modest space. I think that's out of place.

On the cottage, I think you've gone too hog-wild. :-) The electrical can be upgraded and circuits added without gutting the floor plan.

The bathroom is tiny, but we've got a 5'x7' one and we made it work for 2 people. We had the same starting layout as you, and just swapped the sink and toilet. And maximized the creative storage.

On the kitchen, I'd look at taking the cozy galley you've got now and just extending that into the living room by ~5', and then putting a 2-person table and chairs to make a dinette area at the end of it. Then the LR is ~11x13, which is more reasonable/proportionate for a tiny cottage.

I would leave the bedroom closet as a reach-in, because all a walk-in does is hog space for the "hallway" portion of it instead of sharing that with the bedroom. You could bump out the wall when expanding the kitchen, so the whole thing is 24" deep. If you need the extra kitchen width for the fridge, you could jog the kitchen wall where it goes into the LR.

Which walls stayed the same in the house? It looks like they have all changed, even the exterior walls have changed with regard to the window placement.

And the guest bedroom appears to have shrunk from being 11' 2 3/4" wide (excluding the bumpout) to 10' 4 1/2" wide with horrible, unusable closets.

I'm not seeing much in the way of storage in the kitchen, very few lower cabinets and not many uppers either.

Having the dryer on the right limits you to a top loading washer or an Electrolux front loader. (All other front loaders have the door hinge on the left.)

Where is the hot water heater and furnace for the main house?

I'm going to leap to the defense of the grand piano! Compact pianos sound like crap and typically have awful actions to boot. Giving over a significant fraction of one's living space to a nice instrument can be a completely reasonable thing to do if one actually likes and plays it. I can't actually imagine a better use for half of my living room. Some things are not worth compromising on, and having a decent instrument to play and listen to is one of them.

Thanks for all the comments, all.

I did think about sliders on the back. I was actually tending that way. I'll think about it more but the feeling was that it wasn't in the period/style. I'm not a complete fanatic about style but that was were I ended for now.

The laundry is structured as cabinets with a countertop. That's high (can't remember 40"-ish?) Someone posted something similar here a while ago. There is no place for a laundry basket in that space. I keep it in the closet.

The cottage is being flipped to have the entrance in the back. It has a nice yard behind it and that will become the entrance. The current entrance is in the front but that is space between the house and the cottage and that's being dedicated to the house. The neighbor has the same house/cottage and that's what they've done. Works well.

Yeah, the cottage doesn't have an obvious place to throw stuff. But, then, it doesn't have that now. I'd think that'd be done with furnishings ... that's what I've done in the house, up to now.

For all the comments on the piano: it's there now (and got in there with the existing small entrance from the hall to the living room ... piano movers can work seeming miracles.) The cutout in the drawing might be a little out of proportion: the piano's a tad under 6'. It's roughly in that spot right now. There's really no option to replace. I know it takes room but it's a lifestyle choice. I love my piano (a 1906 Steinway ... made it through the earthquake and all.)

As to U-ing the kitchen, talking to a bunch of people, some wanted a U, some didn't like it taking up that much of the living area. I'm in the later camp. I figure to make the space flexible, I leave it open and then consider non-permanent furnishings/cabinetry to shift to personal preference.

I'll make note of the outlet issue. Hate cords. Thanks!

It may be more expensive to remodel the cottage but a tear-down is not a possibility for zoning reasons: the cottage is non-conforming but grandfathered in. If I tear it down, I can't rebuild it. That said, not sure what qualifies as remodeling. People always talk about keeping a single wall and that qualifying as a remodel not a rebuild. I'll have to talk to the contractor about that. In any case, the external walls can't move: I've verified that with the planning department. Anything like that first requires becoming conforming to concurrent zoning, i.e., remove the cottage permanently, which is a non-starter.

(For what it's worth, I like that constraint. It's hard to find cute little structures in this neighborhood. Mostly things get scraped and maximum-floor-area structures built. I like keeping my cute little spaces. I'm more of the "not so big house" kind of person anyway. And this area desperately needs places for singles/smaller families.)

The thing about the bath in the cottage is I can't do a thing with it with permits w/o moving walls. We've tried. There's no way to move anything in that space and meet code. That's what triggered considering bigger changes.

I did a bunch of layouts keeping the kitchen where it was and shifting things a bit. There's no way to do anything minor to the kitchen, either, and bring it up to code. It'll require moving walls though that doesn't require moving the kitchen.

But the cottage is desperately short of closet and storage space. The living room is big for the size of the cottage and it shows: there's all sorts of stuff crammed in there. I really like the idea of making some out-of-sight storage area, thus the closet. It takes from living room (in the end) but it seems like a reasonable tradeoff? And the walk-in give space for a stacking W/D. (I can't imagine living w/o a W/D at this point.)

It's not a huge amount of closet space but it's way more storage than the cottage has right now.

Mostly the walls haven't changed in the house, just openings made larger. The exception is taking space in the guest bedroom and putting it into a bench/storage/clothes hooks in the hall. Windows did get moved which does mean reframing, etc. The windows need to be replaced anyway and moving the windows doesn't change the floor area so doesn't trigger the zoning issue. I need to get a read from the contractor on the window movement. Beyond the price of the windows themselves, the siding is painted redwood tongue and groove so not sure what it's going to take when windows move.

There's not a huge amount of storage in the kitchen but far more than there is now. I haven't figured out how to make more ...

Hmmm ... my current LG is washer left/dryer right (though they're stacked.) but I haven't decided if I'm keeping those or replacing them anyway. Whatever gets chosen, the doors need to swing correctly so we'll make the venting match. I'm a little concerned about maintenance on the W/D in that tight space.

The house will be switched to a tankless water heater on the outside, near the W/D. Furnace goes in the attic.

So nobody likes the twin closets. Definitely got that. (And it's cheaper.) Thanks! Holly, when you said "change the access doors", what did you mean? Make the doorways larger? Pocket them?

Thanks all!

Personally, I think the dr is too small. If I am reading it right, it is a room less than 7.5' in length.

I wouldnt mind the laundry room as it is a separate space.

I agree - the two foot wide closets are too small.

I would wait on remodeling the cottage and try to put the money towards adding a second bath to the home.

"The cottage is a teardown and rebuild with all new construction. It'll be cheaper than trying to bring everything up to modern standard within an old structure."

Demolition must be very carefully weighed. This cottage may be grandfathered in, so when it's gone, it's gone. Remodeling may not be as cost effective as a tear down, but it may be the only way.

I did a top once at a place that had a new house connected to a teeny little old cracker box. Inspection had to approve the "addition". Had they torn down the cracker box first, inspection would have had to approve nothing.