What an exciting project for you! Does your family normally enter near the formal living room or through the laundry? Do you want to keep that 3/4 bath's entrance off the living room? Would you like a mudroom type of space for all your boys' gear?

I haven't exactly figured out the best approach for posting pictures yet, but I'm going to see if I can rotate it and make it bigger.

Do you use the dining room only as a formal dining room, or can it become the family dining?

Does one staircase lead only upstairs, and the one in the addition goes to a basement?

Can you see what I'm thinking? That if you all come down from the entry hall stairs and through the dining room anyway, opening up the wall on both sides of the fireplace and turning it into the full-time dining area gives you more cooking and storage space in the kitchen. You can still have a snack-type area for pizza-and-movie-night in the family room that doesn't have to be as convenient as a regular dining space would have to be.

Is this the door you're willing to close up?

bpathome -- both sets of stairs go from the second floor to the main floor. We typically use the stairs that go into the family room, but I am not opposed to a design that would encourage people to use the main staircase. Right now, the formal dining room is used mostly for holidays and parties. We have a table in the kitchen right in front of the windows that we typically eat at. But I am open to making the formal dining room our main eating area.

benjesbride -- yes, that is the door I am willing to close.

Thanks!

I did just a jumping off point here. I opened the walls on either side of the fireplace and put the table in the middle. I changed the bath to a 1/2 bath and moved the door away from the family room. I put the w/d in a separate laundry space next to it, and the mudroom is now all mudroom. Instead of taking you right into the kitchen, you have a choice of heading to the kitchen, front/formal areas, or FR and back stairs.

Now, the kitchen is a raw separate space. Does this work at all? Any kitchen ideas?

oops, I forgot to close the front kitchen door. And, how low is that nice big window?

bpathome I hope its okay that I use your drawing. If it's against GW etiquette, I do apologize.

My thought was that if you added an entrance between the side door and the living room, it would prevent traffic from flowing through the kitchen. Then perhaps you could walk through a pantry to enter the kitchen from the side door; 2 ft deep on each side. If this is the most used entrance, hooks and a shallow bench could be placed opposite the laundry closet for the boys' stuff.

Here's my attempt at the kitchen. I'm still trying to learn, so I might be totally missing the mark. It feels like a lot of space is wasted in front of the fireplace, but I've read that islands any deeper than approx 3.5' are undesirable since you can't wipe them down from one side.

Perspective from the fireplace wall

Looking forward to seeing solutions from the specialists here.

Is there any benefit to removing the stairs in the family room? Do they hinder furniture placement in the living room or perhaps could you repurpose the space upstairs where the stairs come up? Perhaps as a closet, bathroom, laundry room, etc? (I know you said you wanted laundry to stay on the first floor, but people are always trying to get laundry rooms upstairs with the bedrooms, so I thought it couldn't hurt to ask?

Have a second redundant staircase clearly wastes space, but there is no point in going to the expense of removing it if you don't gain much.

width and depth of your fridge and freezer? height and width of the big kitchen window?

how do you feel about opening the FR to the kitchen more? removing the FR staircase? Do you need a huge pantry?

what's in the top left corner of the DR?

A suggestion:

The full bath is in an odd location. With your intention for this to be your forever, a first floor master bedroom would both make sense of the odd full bath and be good for aging in place.

There is enough living room left for a TV/den-type set-up.

Thanks for all of the suggestions and ideas! In response to some of the questions:

Jillius -- I never considered removing the back staircase, but I am open to anything. We do use it as our primary staircase now. There is currently a closet under the stairs and I had been thinking that I could replace the closet with built-in cabinets there similar to something I saw in a Brookhaven catalogue. Those stairs lead to two bedrooms, a full bathroom and a linen closet. We actually use the shower in the downstairs bathroom daily. The boys shower there when they get home from sports practice and in the summer its great for when they come in from the beach or pool. But moving the entrance to the other side would be ok.

desertsteph -- The current fridge is a SxS counter depth KE which is 36" wide. I will be replacing it in the redo (probably moving it to the garage or basement for extra capacity). I also currently have two small beverage fridges in the pantry but its still not enough and I am hoping to increase capacity with the remodel. I do love having the huge pantry (probably the best thing about the current kitchen) but could definitely live with something smaller. The kitchen windows are very low -- probably about 24" off the floor. I am willing to change/raise them and/or eliminate some of them in order to put cabinets under there. I do want to open the FR to the kitchen more. The upper left corner of the DR is a small china closet -- I am ok with losing it to open up the wall.

bpathome and benjensbride -- I like your ideas, especially adding a bench and hooks to the mudroom. And I like the walk-through pantry! As noted above the kitchen window is very low but I would be open to changing it so I could use that wall for cabinets.

Appreciate all the help everyone!!

I really like Jillius's suggestion. If you plan to age-in-place in this home, you could always save that idea and change that area to a bedroom at a later date once the kids are out of the home and you start to find stairs to be an issue. It's good to know something like that would work so well in your home, isn't it? But I can see you now wanting to make that change now as, with a growing family, it's nice to have more living space on the main floor.

I can't improve on any of the good suggestions you've already received but really just wanted to post something so I can get email updates and monitor your progress. Your house sounds amazing and I hope you'll share photos sometime.

That ground floor bedroom would come in handy if one of the boys breaks a leg, or grandma needs to stay for an extended period. Just thinking ahead for a busy family.

I am continually amazed at the creative people who populate this forum.

One more. Bath/Laundry/pantry area similar to others suggested. Added a window on the fridge wall on two sides of the range. Cleanup under the big window(s). If you get rid of the china cabinet and decide to have another opening to DR, I think some art/shallow china display case would look good where you now have the front entry door.

My picture doesn't show the bath. I think, even with the door moved to the laundry side, with 7 feet sink can be across the toilet and it can still be a full bath.

sena - that's very close to what I was thinking. I had (in my mind) the fridge to the R of the dw (depending on space - which is hard to tell w/out better measurements). The fridge there is easy access w/o being in either prep area, cook area or an active doorway. The stove a bit higher on the L run and the fzr where you have the fridge. It gets less use, so easier to have close to a doorway.

EZ reach corner cabinet...

The island could run either direction I think. Mw drawer in the island?

Prep area between sink and stove plus prep sink on island too. 2 options - and the boys could help. It'd also be a water source away from main prep/ cooking area / clean up. Do the boys help with clean up? They grow up and need to eat when living on their own... and many boys/men do cook a lot. How best to learn young and by mom! (who also needs the help).

Also, the prep process would run R to L with 'ice', water, stone, fire.

The bench /cubby area - the bench doesn't need to be very deep. room underneath for dirty shoes... would need more cubby / hook space - but that could be few ft of space on the other side.

I would keep the sink in the mudroom for things like dirty(muddy) shoes, plants, soaking things, stains etc. w/some counter space on either side of it. The cabs there (for pantry use) don't need to be 2' deep - that's deep for pantry use. Shallower cabs would also widen the 'walk thru' area from door to kitchen. And less things would be lost in back of the shelves. anything that needs a deeper space could be stored under the sink area (that would be deeper).

the cabs across from w/d could also have some counter space - to stack folded clothes before distribution. there could be bins (pull outs?) in lower cab for dirty clothes. And some upper cab space for towels etc for the bathroom. Lower cabs could be less than 24" deep if more room is needed for walk thru / working space. That entry to the bathroom will probably be better too - no walking thru kitchen and FR before the boys can clean up.

While the FR to bedroom is a good idea far in the future, I think living space is much needed w/4 boys and friends. If more immediate need to not climb stairs, I think the LR could be used as a temp 'bedroom' w/ bath across from it.

I like sena's idea, too. I think your space has lots of potential and you could go with several variations of these plans and they would all be good. I just want to say that I have a pantry wall of built-in cabinets in my laundry room. The shelves inside measure 11.75" deep. Just deep enough for 3 cans of soup and, for things like cereal boxes and cracker boxes to slide in sideways. Also deep enough for some small appliances without having wasted space in front of them. I wouldn't want them any deeper or things would start getting lost behind.

I measured my pantry shelves a bit ago for another pantry thread and my shelves are 15.5" deep - plus 2 @ 7.5" I had added. 1 of those is the top one- way up high. It's a good place for things seldom used or excess supply of pt etc. I could use my grabber to get the pt and not be hurt even if it fell forward on me. The other 1 is at eye level for small can goods (chilis, olives, water chestnuts, small v8 juice etc.) even canned soup would probably fit on it - maybe 2 deep. I also keep extra mugs on it and some small dessert dishes. I took that shelf height from the regular shelf. It's maybe 7" high.

That 'reg' shelf holds regular 15 oz size grn beans and other cans that size about 5 in a row (front to back). I live alone so smaller sizes are what I use.