LOVE that the laundry connects to the master closet!

Could you post closer pics of each area? Can't read the notes. Also, what are some of the things you're worried about?

Is this better? I hate that you can't open and zoom in on attachments on here.

I like it. Front door doesn't open into a room. Split bedrooms with jack and jill bath in kids or guest quarters; looks like hall in that area is big enough to have study table. Laundry room is a bit too small for me, but the location is great and you don't have to walk through it from the garage. Mudroom is a mudroom, not laundry hall. Bath close to both main entries and door doesn't open to a room or hall. No formal spaces nice open plan. Kitchen has good size island, all appliance have "landing" space beside them, and big pantry. Your kitchen has one thing I don't like, but you see this often and that is the stove across from the sink; you need to make sure there is enough room to open oven and dishwasher doors and it can limit help in the kitchen, tight for one person at sink and one at stove. Large covered deck, looks like it would be easy to screen in. Where do the stairs go?

But the bottom line is, this is YOUR home do you like it. Are the negative remarks things that would effect how you live in your home?

Thank you Vicki, you've calmed me down a little from my freak out. The stairs go down to the basement. I have more concerns about the kitchen - the ones you mentioned and some others like the entry to the pantry getting in the way and whether I have enough counter space. I wonder if the stairs would be better off somewhere else entirely.

People have made comments about the location of the laundry and size of the closet and pantry, but those are things I love and specifically wanted.

I like it too. The one thing I noticed is the depth of the walk-in closets for bedroom 2 and 3. Three foot depth is not enough since you need to reserve 2 feet just for the clothes which means you would have only 1 foot in front the the clothes to move around. You need a total depth of at least 4.5 ft deep but 5 feet would be more comfortable. If you can't make them 4.5 ft deep then I suggest you put only a regular 2 ft deep closet standard doors or sliding doors and give that 1 ft to the bedroom.

Also, in your WIC, I am not sure how you will configure your closet. Again, you need to reserve 2 ft depth for hanging the clothes on a rod. The red rectangles below show the space used when you hang your clothes. I don't know the height of the windows and if the clothes would be seen from outside. Also it appears that you won't be able to hang clothes on the east wall of your WIC because of the window and the small wall that is on the right of the laundry room's door

The only things that jump out as areas for concer to me are:
1. Don't love that corner tub in the master bath. Looks hard to get into and difficult to clean.
2. With the covered front and back porch, the great room looks like it won't get much natural light and will be dark.
3. You nave almost no wall space in the great room. Everything will have to float. Make sure you have several floor plugs. If it were mine I'd put up a wall between the great room and kitchen.

I think the floor plan works. I do suggest adding a side door for entry into the garage near the mudroom -- great for kids with muddy feet. Personally, I would prefer the laundry in the center of the house near the mud room and kitchen. I think the kitchen layout works. You could add a few inches between the island and the range. Have you considered a range top and wall ovens (no bending)? If you are concerned about the pantry doors, they could either open inward or be recessed so the they are out the way when opened. Another option could be to reverse the pantry and the stairs so that you enter the pantry near the dinette and access the stairs from the hallway, but you would lose the window in the stairwell. Good luck whatever you decide on.

A few scattered thoughts, unable to read some details

1) Generally not a fan of walkin pantries because they waste a lot of floor space. BUT the redeeming factor is LOCATION because essentially straight shot bringing in groceries from garage.

2) is there a storage closet (accessed via a bedroom) under the stairs landing? May be there and not shown but I would think there would be space for one.

3) generally not a fan of walkin closets or reach-in closets where much space is to one side of the door and hard to access.

Walk in closets, like walk in pantries, typically waste a lot of floor space. The best walk in closets have added value if they incorporate dressing area or a vanity for makeup and have access to bathroom.

In some of the rooms, excluding master BR, some of the closets look like 48" wide, with a 24" door and a 12" recess on each side.

Would strongly consider instead a series of tall cabinets recessed into the closet cavity. For example, a 24" wide cabinet with three drawers at the bottom and two BUTT doors at the top, another cabinet with full length hanging space (matching BUTT doors). Exact configuration would depend on available space and storage needs. You could even put a TV behind one set of doors.

Advantages are: storage is more easily accessed than closets with recessed storage, storage would still be out of sight behind cabinet doors and drawer fronts, and it would eliminate the need and cost of a dresser in each BR, saving floor space. For example undies, socks, sweaters could be stored in cabinet drawers, shirts and pants could be hung up, etc.

We used same concept -- tall cabinets recessed into former closets -- with our pantry, except what I am talking about would have three drawers at bottom (with a recessed toe kick ) with BUTT doors above.

Did you have an architect that you sat down with face to face and discussed what you need and want in your home, or did you hire a company that alters preconceived floor plans?

Only other thing I'd suggest is eliminating one of the windows in the master walkin to provide more wall / rod space. It doesn't appear to be there for symmetry or balance reasons.

I like addaliza frazzini's suggestions. These are the changes, I would do from her modified plan:

IMO, the powder room is not wide enough, that is why I changed the width but this causes to make the porch smaller, maybe one ft. Because the location of the door in the powder room is changed, you may have the room for a little linen cabinet between the vanity and the toilet.

It seems to me the corridor to enter the shower is a waste of space, I would move the wall to access the master WIC. You may have room to have 1 ft deep shelves in that location.

I would keep the closets in bedroom 2 and 3 in their original location but make them reach-in closets.

So many great ideas. Thank you everybody for your detailed and helpful input.

Mark, we sat down with our architect and designed the house from our bubble drawings. We are very specific in wanting the rooms where we have them.

Adalisa! You are brilliant, thank you so much for taking the time to help us out like this. I have actually been concerned about natural light in the bathroom so we will be adding another window. I'm afraid I can't bear to let go of the double tub with the jets. I just love them too much, although free standing tubs look infinitely better.

I loved your changes to the mudroom and entrance to the kitchen, but my husband is adamant that he wants to walk straight from the garage into the kitchen and be able to see the lake as soon as we walk through the door. I particularly love that it gave me much more counter space and a better fridge location. This change is going to be up for a lot of debate, i'm sure.

We will definitely be changing the 2 bedrooms, eliminating the "walk in" closets to something more practical. I still like the idea of a jack and jill or Hollywood bathroom but will see how we can change things around to be able to get windows in there. It's something everybody involved has completely managed to overlook somehow.

After my little melt down last night, I have to say I am feeling great today. It's very scary to be spending so much money, especially at our young age, and I think that now we have signed the contract i'm going to have a couple freak outs before we are through!

Thanks everybody for the reassurance. We have the house we want, and with these great tips and edits, I believe that we are going to love our new home.

Martine :)

edit: Suzanne, just saw your edits, thank you. I love the change you made to the shower, especially that it's going to give us more storage.

Well, you got some great suggestions on how to utilize your space better. My concern, depending on where you plan to build, would be the lack of natural light in the master bedroom and living room due the covered porches. It wouldn't take much to put a couple of small windows on the far left MB wall.

Also, make sure your dinette area is large enough to accommodate all the people you usually have at a holiday dinner and that your completely pulled out dining table still fits.

Good luck and keep focusing on how happy you will be in your new home while going through construction!

I just noticed that you don't have a closet for guests at the main entrance. These are the changes I would add to the last layout:

You could add a closet by the entrance by reducing but the porch and the hall way would by 1 ft to allow for the depth of a closet.

I am not the best at seeing 3D floor plans but if your ceiling are high enough, you may be able to access the pantry below the stairs going to the second floor.

oops, I missed the comment about the stairs going to the basement. The access to the pantry has I suggested above would not work as I thought you had stairs going up too and I also realized that the access to the pantry would be to far from the mudroom.

I was wondering, is the dinette also the dining room? Where are your guests eating?

One more argument you can to tell your husband about moving the entrance to the kitchen is that by moving the fridge where adalisa placed it, you have more room in front of the fridge to open the doors without being in the way of someone you wants to circulate in that area.

BTW, if you keep your sink and your stove in the current location, make sure your dishwasher is at the left of the sink so the door of the stove and the door of the dishwasher are not in conflict.

I would not describe your floor plan as a disaster; certainly aspects are very well thought out. However, I would make some adjustments, particularly in closet, storage and bath areas. If this is a plan for discussion, then it is serving its purpose well.

A functional mudroom provides direct garden access to avoid tracking mud through a house or garage--and if actual gardening or even flower arranging is carried out, then it is a lost opportunity to forget a sink and cutting/potting area. Observations on light in the great room require a better understanding of your location and need for protection of heat, etc. Some suggestions I might make are matters of owners' references. For exampe, some people do not like glass showers. Others do not like a shower "cave". Some like the idea of sitting back in a large tub to enjoy a view. Others prefer attention to the practical matters such as ease of cleaning both tub and surrounding windows. One client wanted the "cool" effect of four jets shooting into a freestanding, large egg tub...but failure to plan this early on meant that there was no plumbing for a waterfall to fill the tub from above--the result is a tub that takes an hour to fill and the bath is perpetually lukewarm.

Use your plan to imagine daily life, and special events such as holidays, and picture how each area actually functions for the life that will give you the most satisfaction and pleasure. A custom build is a complete waste if you end up with something you could buy out of a builders catalogue (no matter how high-end the finishes). Take the time to think things through, do not get rushed into decisions that will have life long affects until you work that through, and most of all...have fun!

I find there is a lot of wasted space in your WIC. If you access the laundry room from the bathroom, you would gain more hanging space in your closet and you could also have a sink in your laundry room.

By changing the bedroom 2 to a reach-in closet, you could have some more space in the common area. According to my calculations, the layout below should work. I draw it with a 2 ft 6 in. wide door but I would recommend a pocket door or a regular 2 ft door:

By covered porches, do you mean covered with a solid roof or with a slatted pergola? Some towns have rules about how much "roof" you can have in relation to lot size. Since this home seems to be one floor living roof coverage will be maximized. Consider pergolas if you want more light in the rooms that are adjacent, but solid roofs will keep those outside areas areas dry. Check with zoning before making final decisions.

Personally I would eliminate the windows in the master WIC. For outside elevation they could be faux windows w/ shutters closed so they look like windows from the outside but don't take up valuable wall space in the closet. I see no need for a window in a closet. I do not want my clothing to fade.

I always prefer side entry garages due to aesthetics, however this will depend completely on the site measurements. As far as light going into the great room or master bedroom, skylights can be added to the porch roofs if wanted. Don't know which direction the house goes as far as sun rising & setting.

Also think about installing quality pocket doors where ever you can to save on wasted door swing space. I would definitely want a sink both in the mudroom & in the laundry as well as more floor space for hanging drip dry & folding of clothes. I like the fact that you are not wasting counter or wall space for ovens. A standard wide oven with double ovens & a hood over it eliminates the problem of added cost for separate appliances. I like the additions other posters made for added storage where they could. Storage is always at a premium.

I would also treat the areas where the windows are located in the garages as suggested for the master closet.

Again, thanks everyone. Lots more brilliant ideas that I would never have thought of myself. We are taking so many of these suggestions and making the changes. A few things are personal preference and we want to keep the same, but as far as the problem areas and storage you guys have been a fantastic help so far!

Hope you'll share photos when the house is finished.

Absolutely LOVE Adalisa's changes. They give the kitchen better flow, function *and* presence, and make your mudroom an actual room rather than a wide hallway. I'm pretty sure no one has ever said "I wish we'd made that room smaller..." It's going to be a super home, Martina.

What a wonderful way to spend the morning coffee hour! Thanks for sharing, Martine. I've enjoyed reading all the comments and find it reassuring to see all the folks that want to help. Beyond the floor plan, tho, I did have a couple of questions that have more to do with the "architecture" of the house and less with the flow. What part of the country (or world) are you building? What is the climate? I'm guessing someplace temperate where cooling is more important than heating? Do you have a site plan that you would share? I'm trying to figure out how guests would arrive, and what the actual "front" of the house might look like. It seems that the front door elevation only has garage and closet windows, so night time "appearance" will be minimal. Is it in a community with neighbors and a streetscape, or isolated so that its curb appeal doesn't matter as much? Being more east coast, I think this might be more of a regional design choice that I'm trying to understand.

Possibly related to these same issues, I just realized that there is one HUGE design element of this plan that I (hate to use the word, but "hate") - all the rooms are single exposure... meaning that they only have windows on one wall. To me, this always creates a boxy, closed-in feeling, and I avoid it as often as possible when I design homes. Can I assume that the general lack of windows is also climate or site related?

Thanks, and happy building.

It's a nice layout, but do you need 12' of covered porch and and a small foyer closet tucked away near the bathroom? I would definitely change that, push the entry door forward, align with the half bath wall and flip the closet doors facing the foyer near the front door.

Would also do something with the master bath, get rid of the vanity near the door, move shower to the other side and eliminate the door into the walking closet. Move the laundry into the mud room, 9' is plenty of room for laundry and the closet, maybe add a bidet to master bath there will be plenty of room and have a nice walk in closet entry without worrying about moisture coming into the closet from the laundry room and master bathroom.

As everything else goes, its a very nice open layout, changing anything wouldn't make much sense.

Good luck

Thank you for your input Ritch and Greg!

We are in Omaha, Nebraska. So really horrendously hot for half of the year and then really cold the other half (well, that's how it feels for me being from England)

The front of the house looks pretty but you're right, there won't be much of a nighttime appearance. The home is being built on a lake community and we wanted all of our living areas to be lake facing. So the north facing front ends up not having much going on.

Window- wise we have added more since this version of the plan. The bathroom is 100% redesigned because I hated the initial design here. It has some nice sized windows on 2 walls. We also added 2 windows either side of where our bed will be in our bedroom, and windows in the bathroom for the other bedrooms. Some more in the basement too.

Closet has been made bigger, garage is also now bigger (husband has a lift and all kind of things and playing with cars is a hobby) Lots of people mention mud room size but I want to keep it more as a place to drop stuff as you walk through rather than a "room" as such.

We eliminated the deck off the dining room and extended the main deck. Changed the other closets and lots of other little things that were suggested here and there. But I will never put laundry and mud room together! Never!

Oh and we also messed around with the kitchen a little to make it more functional as suggested.

I think the idea above about flipping the entry closet and the powder bath makes so much sense, but in all honesty, the architect takes a month to make even the smallest change and we are breaking ground any day now. I will see if this is something that they can just change on site?

I do finally feel completely in love with the house and am so excited for building to start! I'm already driving myself crazy trying to decide on countertops and colours and marble and tile and all that malarkey.

It's lovely. The dining area is a bit small for my taste, but if it works for you, I think you're looking good. It's YOUR home. It should work for YOU.

Talk to your builder and he can make the adjustments in the field when he does the footing layout and have him note the plan.

Everything is basically stays the same he just has to move exterior entry wall forward and as framing goes, that can be adjusted at the layout stage when they snap wall lines on the deck. You Architect can indicate the change at any time if he has to, but in most cases if structural components not being changed, and you remain within your building envelope, you don't have to do anything.

it's not a disaster you have a few things to tweak but I wouldn't loose sleep over the plans it has a good layout just a few things like the tub and a few other changes and I like it you will be fine

Ah Greg, I've just remembered. The porch might be that size because we have a storm shelter/bunker thing underneath. I'll ask my husband and the builder and see what's possible to change.

Contrats on building your own home - be patient.

A staircase by the entre would might be more practical ( does the stairs go up or Down) you might need a study room/small living room :-) you could use the toilet and form Space and move it into the garage.....

I Think it it great you have easy asset to your walk in closet from the entre instead of bathroom. You could Use the pantry room and staircase as kitchen breakfast area - place the staircase by the garrage. Please upload some pictures of witch style you like.

hi there ! I love this feed (even though it's 2 years old).. did you build the home? can I see the finished home please