I like your plan and think a garage entry through the laundry room would work well. If you didn't want to lose any windows, you could always connect the two with a short breezeway. Are you building in town or in the country?

We're in the country and our house had a connected garage which we converted into a den. We had constant mice problems until we closed in the garage and built a separate garage.

Lovely house plan. We have detached garage here and it is fine. Attached is nice too. We have had both. I always think it is a good idea to be able to enter through the mudroom from garage. Breezeway sounds wonderful. Especially here with the snow. Our garage is too far from the house for that.

Where I work the garage is attached and it is not pleasant to smell the exhaust from the truck and mower in the office when the door is opened to the garage. Also the smells of sprays and just the stuff out there. Was like that on the attached garage we had at one of our houses. So it is sort of a toss up for the convenience verses the smells. AND I believe you have to have special fire proof walls between attached garages.

Chris

We're building in GA, so we have all the heat and once in a while a little snow. The area where we will be building is fairly rural, though we will be in a development (fairly wooded). I hadn't thought of mice. I certainly don't want those! :) I'd like to keep as many windows as I can. So, if we do a laundry with a breezeway "look" to it instead of a real screened breezway, I'd like to do windows along the front of it.

I think a breezeway is a great idea! There are so many advantages to having a detached garage (many already mentioned) and a breezeway comes in so handy when you're hauling in groceries during a rain storm. It will also give you some shade and could maybe even be used as a walk through greenhouse, if you like to garden. Not a true greenhouse, but with the front windows, you could start plants in the spring. Although that might not be such a necessity in Georgia :)

I grew up in a Craftsman style cottage, all wood indoors with built-ins. We had a detatched garage that matched the house (red brick) and was connected by a sidewalk from the garage (which had a door on the side as well as a regular garage door facing the street) leading to the side (kitchen) door of the house. Just my 2 cents. I think lavender lass has a perfect solution.

Jannie- What a great house to grow up in! I love built-ins and Craftsman cottage style. If I ever get my old farmhouse remodeled, I would love to have a breezeway to connect a garage to the house. There's a ton of snow here in the winter and we have a really short growing season, so starting plants in the windows would be great :)

Young-gardener- I like your house plan! Very nice, but just a few possibilities (for what they're worth). You might want to replace the door with a window in the sunroom, especially if you plan to put a small table in there. It will give you a lot more usable space, if you don't have to leave access to the door.

Another possibility is changing the area that's next to the fireplace and open that to the living room as a window seat, leaving a wall on the sunroom side. You may already be planning this, but the back wall of the dining room would make a great place for a built-in buffet unit with great storage and glass door display. Built-ins and window seats always make new houses look "old" to me :)

What a great suggestion. The breezeway does double duty!
I just realized something- I have never seen a house on GardenWeb that has a carport. Is that a southern thing? lol I'm from the south and I know loads of people with carports.
Loretta

I remember seeing a house with a carport posted on the decorating forum, and I don't know if anyone considered it unusual. My dd lives in St. Louis and has a carport - but she's in an apartment, and glad to have the carport.

Lavender, my DH would love the greenhouse idea (as do I!). We'd be contemplating building one, and that would be a nice double duty solution. We have a long growing season, but he loves to start seeds indoors.

Now that you mention the dining room built in, I'll highjack my own post. I'd been considering that. The narrow room (11ft) was my one concern. Do you think it could be flush with the wall to save space? I wanted to do a bench on one side of the table.

I'm SUCH a built in fanatic. We're adding some throughout the house: floor to ceiling shelving to make a small separation between LR and DR, bookshelves in the den, a tv cabinet built in to the right of the FP, a window seat in one of the upstairs bedrooms, bookshelves in the sitting space we're adding to the master, a built in serving/cabinet piece between the LR and DR (see Souther Living's current dream house for pics) and bookshelves in the optional bedroom that we'll be leaving open as a library loft. I can't decide if I want to keep the foyer closet or not. Coat closets like that are very uncommon here. We'd probably always come in through the garage and hang coats in the mud room we're adding.

I've been debating what to do with the area noted as a built in space in the sunroom.

We've also been debating using a split, single width french door on each end of the LR where there are currently windows so DH can have his much-loved access to the porch. I'm a little worried about how usable it would actually be, but he really wants a door....so a split one seemed like a good compromise. Here's a sample.

Yeah, I do see carports more down here than where I grew up. It must be the warmer weather.

Here is a link that might be useful: split french door (single width)

All of your ideas for built-ins sound great! I think that a dining room storage built-in would be great, but if you are already adding other storage, maybe you could combine a built in bench/storage/seating with china storage on each side. You have lots of possiblities with such a long wall with no doorways or windows to consider.

I've never liked coat closets for company. It always seems an invasion of someone's personal space to open their closets, even if it's meant for company. I think a small bench with hooks over it is much friendlier and people seem more ready to use them.

As for the door onto the porch, is the porch going to be screened? If so, I think it would be very nice. If not, it depends on the bugs in your area and how secure you feel with glass doors on the front of the house. If neither is a problem (and your husband really wants them) I think the split doors would look great.

The sunroom built-in looks like a great place for a display of fun china. Not the "best" pieces, but maybe a collection of floral tea cups. I love violets on china, so I would put all my floral tea cups there, with maybe a tea table and a few chairs to furnish the sunroom. Very cozy! If you're doing the other built-ins with a wood finish, this might be a nice place to use a painted finish.

In my own home, when I finally get a chance to remodel the old farmhouse, I plan to have white trim, but I would love a blue china cabinet as contrast, which would look great with the violet china :)