So here area my thoughts: If you remove the entire wall and fireplace you could make the are currently labled as living room into an open dining area and the living room would be in the the "sunroom" space, creating an open floor plan. The area off the kitchen could then be your office. If removing all of the wall is not possible, consider leaving it as is and making it into an office space/ sitting room. Your plan shows that you already have a dining room on the other side of the kitchen, you could even talk to your contractor about creating an angled wall to enclose the new office space. As for furniture placement; you would be better off replacing one of the sofas with two chairs that can be placed near the fireplace.

Thanks so much for the quick response! Assuming we go with the option that doesn't get rid of the fireplace, where would you suggest putting the chairs? With their backs towards the fireplace?

I should mention that we already have an office upstairs (there's an identical room above the one labeled "dining room/office" that we plan to use as an office). So we won't need to fit that in downstairs.

Because the "living room" is open to the kitchen it is more of a family room. I would use that room for gatherings, tv, etc. The sunroom could be an office or a room to sit and talk. Enough your new home!

As to your first question, I would angle them on either side of the fireplace. If you don't need an office downstairs then just use it as a sunroom and leave the dining space alone.

Thanks so much for all of these ideas. We're now busy discussing all of them! :)

A little more information in case it helps:

- the builder is still planning to add a thick wood mantle on either side of the fireplace, just as janiehburton suggested. We agree that the fireplace could be nice to have. The current design wouldn't have been our first choice (we prefer the modern, sleek looking ones we've seen on houzz), but we could always reface it to fit our preference at some point.

-We want to remove the bookshelf part of the wall to let more light into the "sunroom", as that area is pretty dark in the afternoon- most of the light comes in from the windows in the "living room". But, if it turns out it's too expensive, painting the back of the shelving area a deeper tone is a great idea.

-For now it's just the two of us, and we like having the living area within sight of the kitchen. So, I don't think we'll end up moving the living area to the "dining room", but maybe that will make more sense in the future.

Thanks for all the comments. I just noticed that in the iPad app, the photos of the existing furniture somehow don't show. We'd appreciate any ideas of how to best use the existing furniture in the new space. Either with or without the fireplace.

Here they are: