Looks like you have wasted space in the middle of the house - and then you have a living room that is roughly 15'x12" (which is small).

Thank you for the feedback! Yes, the living room is small, unfortunately.

Interesting - we hadn't thought about the space in the middle as wasted. We actually liked it initially because we thought it made the whole living area feel more open and spacious. And we thought it would be beneficial for entertaining - an area for people to gather when other spots are full, an area for kids table at holidays, etc. Any suggestions that would make better use of this space?

How big is your property? I ask because you have a huge garage being your whole front. Not very inviting.

I wouldn't want to have to walk so far thru the master bedroom and master bath to get to the walkin closet in the master....

The property is about .37 acres, but it's wider in the back (corner lot). I didn't even think about the garage making it uninviting! Huge garages are pretty common here in ND (3-stall is standard on new construction), but I definitely see how it would be nice to have it more in the side of the house.

engrgirl, I thought the same thing! My husband didn't seem to mind, so I didn't pursue it too much but I'd be happy to revisit it. Can you think of a way to avoid it?

If you're on a corner lot, you have the advantage of making the garage around the side so it doesn't overpower your house.

And remember what your mother used to say? "If everyone else is doing it, doesn't mean you have to." LOL.

I also agree with Naf_Naf about that empty space. I have something like that in my apartment here that I'm renting. It's wasted space and nothing goes there, and no, no one will stand there. They'll crowd into the area with seating even if they have to stand near the seating.

Your island creates a barrier between your sink and your fridge. Ideally when you work in the kitchen you go from fridge/pantry to sink to prep area besides the sink to stove, so you want to try as much as possible to keep the appliances in that order without creating cross zones.

To get to the toilet in the powder room, you'll need to go in, and then scoot around to close the door. Not very efficient.

Your living room isn't very large considering the space you have.

A 7' 11" bedroom is barely large enough for a twin bed. Way too small. That will give you 4'8" of walking space if you just have a bed without a frame. So even if you combine those two bedrooms, it will still be very narrow and strange.

Your 6'10" wide WIC really is only 6' wide when you take away for framing. What that means is you can only hang clothes on one side because hanging needs 2 feet of space and you need a minimum of 3' for walking in and out. So you can do 1' of shelving on the other wall.

Why does the upstairs hallway need 5' of width? 42" is plenty for a hallway.

In the hall bath again realize the standing space between the vanity, (assuming a 21" deep vanity) and the linen closet is only 42" which is ok, but be aware.

How will you vent the W/D since it's in an interior room? A dryer's venting can only go a maximum of I believe 25'.

Don't like that the mudroom area will get no natural light at all.

I would hate a master bath with no windows at all.

Some of the rooms and bedrooms could use some windows on a second wall.

Thanks, all, for the helpful feedback! We are at the very beginning of the process and have plenty of time to make changes. I've jotted everything down for consideration and included my responses to a few comments below. Any ideas re: how to improve the upstairs? I agree with most of your criticisms and am unsure regarding how to change it. The architect will obviously be a great help with this, but I like to have thought through issues as much as I can before the meetings so that I can get the most out of them.

Your island creates a barrier between your sink and your fridge. Ideally when you work in the kitchen you go from fridge/pantry to sink to prep area besides the sink to stove, so you want to try as much as possible to keep the appliances in that order without creating cross zones.

Yes, I was reading through the kitchen forum and noticed this issue right away! It seems like the best way to resolve the issue would be to put in a prep sink on the island towards the fridge/pantry. I like the other sink where it is for cleaning purposes.

A 7' 11" bedroom is barely large enough for a twin bed. Way too small. That will give you 4'8" of walking space if you just have a bed without a frame. So even if you combine those two bedrooms, it will still be very narrow and strange.

Yeah, these rooms are really small - hence our desire to go from 4 to 3 bedrooms! I'm hoping there's a way to rearrange everything to make it more functional, but maybe I'm being naive???

Your 6'10" wide WIC really is only 6' wide when you take away for framing. What that means is you can only hang clothes on one side because hanging needs 2 feet of space and you need a minimum of 3' for walking in and out. So you can do 1' of shelving on the other wall.

This is very helpful - thank you!!

Why does the upstairs hallway need 5' of width? 42" is plenty for a hallway.

I have no idea! Lol. I'll ask.

In the hall bath again realize the standing space between the vanity, (assuming a 21" deep vanity) and the linen closet is only 42" which is ok, but be aware.

Good to know. I'll keep this in mind when we move things around to see if there's something better.

How will you vent the W/D since it's in an interior room? A dryer's venting can only go a maximum of I believe 25'.

Again, I have no idea. I'll look into it - thank you!

I would hate a master bath with no windows at all.

Yikes, yeah, we'll have to change that.

The bedrooms and den lack windows on exposed second walls. Nothing but nothing screams tacky/cheap louder to me than this. You are lacking cross ventilation for one.

Others have mentioned this and I'll reiterate it--it looks like there's a 16'x8' "circulation area between the dining room, foyer, stairs, and fridge. What an incredible amount of space that you can't put furniture in, entertain in, or use.

It looks like the 7'11" bedroom measurement is being misread--it looks like 11'7" to me (the 7'11" isn't for the entire room dimension)

The kitchen cries out for a prep sink in the island. This one isn't just 'personal preference" (as many of my below comments are). You will regret not having a prep sink with an island of that size and the location of your refrigerator and sink.

I know there are conflicting opinions about this, but I do not like having a powder room off of the kitchen/mud room. The powder room is used by guests and I do not want guests having to go into my mud room. I want the powder accessed from the more public rooms of the house.

In fairness, other people say they want someone coming in to the mudroom messy to have access to the facilities without going through the house. That's not compelling enough for me :-). It might be for you, though.

For the master closet size, our walk-in is 6' side to side. We do have two rows of hanging, but it is tight. To be honest, it doesn't bother me at all, but I'm 10" shorter than DH--and it does bother him.

In the master bath, decide if you want the tall cabinet in the middle between the two sinks or if you'd rather have it off to one side. I prefer it to one side but it's a personal preference.

I wouldn't want to have to send guests into the mud room area to use the guest bathroom. I agree the living room is tiny. Maybe see how some furniture fits in that space. As for going from 4 to 3 bedrooms upstairs, have you considered resale? Usually bedrooms in basements can't really be called bedrooms in listings. Around here 4 bedroom houses sell fast and 3 bedroom houses in the same neighborhoods sit. You may want to check with realtors in the area if resale is a concern.

Mea culpa. I did misread the kids bedroom size. They are 11' 5" wide which is actually not a bad width.

Again, thank you all! This is so helpful.

bethohio3, thanks for catching the bedroom measurement error. I didn't even bother to check it because it feels so small to me already. lol. I hope this means that combining those rooms would create a more functional space than what we were thinking earlier. Also, I really thank you for your prep sink comment. I've brought this up to my husband a few times, and he (who handles clean-up/washing dishes but does not cook/prep) thought I was exaggerating about the challenges of the sink/fridge location. I read your response to him verbatim, and he agreed that it would be a good idea to look into it. :-)

We're going to have to think a bit more about the master closet and the mudroom situations. I wonder if we could put in pocket doors to block off the mudroom when we have company?

lakeerieamber, we can count basement bedrooms in the listing as long as they have egress windows, which ours will. Thankfully. I agree that the move from 4 to 3 total would be harmful. I will check with a realtor about 6 to 5, though. Thank you! And the living room (with a couch set up a foot behind the edge of the stairs, if that makes sense) is only about 1 foot shorter than what we have now (same width). Our current furniture fits without any issues. It's certainly not ideal, especially given the wasted space that has been mentioned a few times. I'm just not seeing how it could be changed...worth a discussion at least.

Is there a reason you need to stick to this floor plans outer walls? Is making the house say 3ft deeper and/or 3ft+ wider (just examples) to help with the issues? If so that's what I would do in order to keep the 4 bedrooms and have a larger living room.

Pjrae - What I'm seeing, is you have 3 hallways running left to right, all stacked up next to each other.

Hallway 2 is a wasted space. The width of hall 1 is too narrow so you don't really have room to place a sofa table or something along the wall there (on the bottom half of hallway #1). My first thoughts are to move hallway #1 down to the other side of the hvac chase (can the chase move at all?) - Actually I just went ahead and sketched it out. It was easier than typing. Hopefully you can read it since I didn't bother to erase old stuff - the red lines are the walls/doors.

stephja007, thanks so much for taking the time to put together the revised layout. This reinforced my desire to improve the bathroom layout - I like yours much better.

As for the wasted space, my husband and I revisited other floor plans after reading everybody's feedback and have decided that we like how the space makes the entire living area feel overall. Other houses we visited felt more cramped despite making more efficient use of the same square footage. Given the very large family room we'll have in the basement, we feel confident that this is the right plan for our family. Thank you all for helping us get to this point, even though I'm sure most of you don't share our preference. :)

If anybody has additional thoughts on the master bath or 3 vs. 4 bedrooms on second floor, let me know.

Thank you all!

In the end if it works for you, that's all that counts. :)

I hope you make the changes stephja suggested. I think it will help tremendously.

Also please, please move that garage from sticking out in front of the house. Let the house be the star, not the garage as you have it now.

First: how can the upstairs wall (front of the house, bedroom 3) not line up with the downstairs wall?

What direction does the house face? I'm in ND too, and I know how dramatically sunlight changes from summer to winter, and the importance of protecting from the NW wind.

My thoughts on the upstairs: I don't like the master closet in the outside corner - outside walls are for windows, interiors for closets and storage. To fix it, I think I would move the stairwell down a couple of feet (which impacts the den and BR2). I would put BR 4 in the upper right corner, with the laundry next to the stairs - now you can vent to the outside. Master bedroom goes in the upper left corner, with windows on two walls, and the bathroom on the top wall. The master closet goes where the laundry room is now. That also has the advantage that you can access both the closet and bathroom from the bedroom, rather than walk through one to get to the other.

I worked on a house last summer that had a narrow window on either side of a mirror above the sink in the bathroom. It was all framed together and looked really nice (similar to the picture below). That could work in your bathroom.

pjrae, I know you like the original, one of the things i i liked was the back hall. So I built on steph's idea to build upon the circulation that was in your original. And, if you convert the nook of the garage to extend the front porch, you get a view out the door from the kitchen.

Nice bp!

Just want to throw out 2cents on accessibility. My husband used to work for a company that would retrofit private homes for handicap accessibility. It's a dark thought, but most of the retrofits he performed were for young people who were in accidents that were no longer able to access necessary living spaces in their home.

A couple of years ago, I had an accident resulting in a severely broken leg - I was thankful we planned our house to be wheelchair accessible (no steps from garage to home, no steps on main level with access to bed/bath/laundry/kitchen) so we didn't have to worry about a retro or moving, in the middle of what already seemed like a life changing event.

Some of the accessibility options you would have with your plan:
1) If needed, you could install chair lifts on all staircases - this eats up a fair amount of stair space and you have a lot of steps which might mean a lot of long slow rides on the lift! Also, If the powder room on the main floor isn't wheelchair accessible, the lift may not move quickly enough to get a wheelchair user to the second floor in time to use the bathroom.

2) If needed, rip out staircases and put in elevator. My bro just built in West Fargo and got a quote of $30K (ouch) for the elevator itself. He had the builder incorporate an elevator shaft and pit into his build, just in case.

3) You have a den on the main floor that could be used as a bedroom for temporary accessibility issues, but there's no closet in it. If someone in your family were to be permanently wheelchair bound, they'd probably want closet space. Also, I'm not sure if the powder room would have enough space to be retrofitted to become handicap accessible with a shower and laundry, even if you steal space from your foyer closet.

I'd suggest finding a way to at least have the option to incorporate accessible necessities (bathroom, bedroom, laundry room) on the main level, just in case you need them later.

Just wanted to toss this out there in case it was something you hadn't considered. In the terrible event that someone in your family becomes disabled and you'd need to retrofit or move to a more accessible home, North Dakota's weather makes it even more of a challenge (for like 9 months out of the year anyway)!

Best of luck with your build!!!