Make the den able to be a bedroom with another full bath. A 2bdrm house is very difficult to ever sell in most places.

It is still an expensive design because of the shape.

my previous home was 1700 sq ft, 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths. Formal dining, breakfast nook off kitchen, nice large family room. A very plain L-shape (with attached 2 car garage). Get architect to simplify the plan .

That sounds exactly like the house my dad lives in - a 60's tract home, one level on a crawl space, with 3/2. It's 1,200sf and is perfect. BTW - his house is L-shaped and gets great light in all the rooms. :)

Where's the house that your architect designed? Why are you trying to start over instead of working with your architect to refine what you have?

I would have loved to have only been 50K over on our bid! I'm with cpartist, where's the design from your architect? And why are you starting over with this plan you've created, if you can't afford to start over?

Get rid of all those setbacks and funky zig-zags in the walls. They aren't helping the livability and are adding to the cost.

Square footage is a poor marker for what a house will cost to build. Yes you can probably fit your program into 1800 s.f. however if done poorly it could cost just as much or more than the plan you have now (see above comments about zig zags etc.) In our area costs are rising so quickly by the time you finished the re-design process, the 1800 s.f. house could cost more than the 2100 s.f. design you have now.

I have done some serious thinking about what I really need, what rooms I use and how much money I really want to invest in this house.

Did you not do this the first time round? What was the design process with the architect?

Some observations on this plan.
Upstairs = upped cost. Have both bedrooms downstairs, son's bath can be a hall bath, have plumbing together. Many ill-placed perimeter jigs and jogs = more cost, unappealing roofline, roof issues. Screened porch/dining, porch, and deck? All occasional use areas, allocate space better, lump them into 2 spaces, not 3. Did you include them in the square footage? Also note that porches and such can be designed but built at a later stage

I love all the constituent parts, but the layout is definitely spendy. Less jigs and jogs to the exterior wall will save quite a bit. For a single person or a couple with the occasional visitor it’s a great little cottage. I do agree that you’re limiting your market with only two bedrooms, but that’s only an issue if resale is a concern. If you’re building it to live and love in for a decade or two I wouldn’t add an extra bedroom you don’t want or need.

This would work for a bubble diagram, a beginning sketch of needs, but definitely let an architect refine it. And having lived in a 1600-ish square foot house I can say that to get decent sized common areas and screened in porches it is doable, but tight. 2000 would indeed be better. Those extra few feet to the living room or kitchen can make a huge difference in comfort while still being cozy.

Well...there's always different ways to design. There is no single, "perfect" design of anything.

As Summit said, it's not so much the square feet in a design, as it is the way in which the square feet are configured and finished.

Talk to your architect to see what the alternatives may be. Good luck!