Compared to the mountain of clothing children produce, sheets and towels, etc., Kitchen linens are next to nothing. If you're worried about food dirt upstairs, have whoever does your laundry shake off the crumbs before taking it upstairs to launder immediately. My kids have upstairs laundries, and I'm jealous. I only wash my kitchen linens once a week.

Ok so I fired up excel and took some ideas from this plan and others ... I know this is exactly what they tell you not to do on building a home but I LOVE doodling floor plans.

I am actually really warm to the idea of adding a stacking washer and dryer in the mudroom but I don’t think it will be on my husband’s top list of upgrades.

Things I don’t like about the plan that I sketched out: the laundry hallway is really wasteful.

The first and second floor are both about 1200 ft.², that’s totally within the range we are aiming for $$ wise but I was hoping to get them down to more like 1100 or 1015 just because then we could put that money into fancy upgrades like better windows or solar panels.

I do like the look of a second story stepped back from the first but I know it’s more expensive per square foot (more corners, more support, more roofing).

We have a U-shaped kitchen with a peninsula now and I actually really love it! Also gets rid of the “barrier island” effect. Have a look at this Square kitchen and see what you think, although of course things may change after Tuesday.

A stacked washer dryer in the mudroom is ideal. Also for muddy clothes. I know we've come back from muddy walks about wouldn't have wanted to cart all the muddy stuff upstairs, it's nice to just toss muddy outerwear in the washer upon coming in.

It is an upgrade it is very hard to do later, so if you're warm to the idea, I'd seriously think about pushing for it -- or at least installing the venting to add it later. It really does make life easier. And if you have / ever get cleaning help that does laundry for you, it is very helpful to have 2 washers as the cleaning person can have them both going at once to get all the laundry done before leaving.

Have you thought about solar roof tiles? We are casually looking into the Tesla ones for our new build. I am going to call them this week to find out more,

I really like the idea of bumping out your dining room like you did. We are doing that in our new build too, although with corner slider doors that open totally but I don't think that's practical in your climate :)

If you flip the range and sink, you can have the clean-up zone outside of the prep/cooking triangle. That will make it easier for a helper to load and unload the DW, or gather dishes to set the table, without crossing your prep path. It also makes the range more convenient to the fridge and prep sink:

15 x 15 seems generous for the kitchen compared to the other spaces. I think you can get what you want with 13 x13, especially with the pantry for storage.

Great advice!!!! A small change with a huge difference!

Another thought: my neighbors have cabinets hung from the ceiling over the peninsula with doors on both the kitchen side and dining room side. the dw is kitchen side, making loading and unloading easy, and table setting and clearing a breeze. It also provides a.little separation between the rooms and gives them a lot more storage. She loves it, and it's a very nice look.

Re size of kitchen, I‘m sort of cheating by sharing a 5’ walkway between island and dining table. Hoping that basically functionally expands the dining to 14x14. I have got that amount of space now between my peninsula stools and dining table, also the major traffic corridor of our house. it seems to function well but gets tight under five feet (when I have a leaf in the table).

my thought with the dining/sunroom idea is to have two cozy sunroom chairs in the corners that can also sit at head and foot of table with leaf in for bigger dinners. The table as drawn is about 7 ft by 42”.

robo/mamagoose - did you guys add a sink to the island? Great idea.

Re the 5" aisle between the table and kitchen = is that counter to table?

If you have people sitting at the island and at the table that space disappears.

Couple ideas...not sure if there are two closets by the main floor bathroom but I'd consider taking some that closet space (especially if you're creating a mud room) and adding a small shower to the main floor bathroom. This allows for main floor living if someone has mobility issues and ups the resale value as you would now have 3 full bathrooms.

What are the utilities behind the laundry room? Aren't those usually in the basement in Canada?

I would reconfigure the master ensuite so that the toilet isn't against the bedroom wall. Sounds carry lol!

I'd move the sliding door to the backyard from the living area to the dining room. I'd replace that with two windows that would likely flank a couch - instead of one big window that would limit furniture placement.

Great ideas! Thank you! Yes definitely utilities in the basement here.

another lot has popped up: bigger, wider, more south facing. House would be 30k more. Better builder. BUT more graded yard: 8 foot drop from front to back of house. My husband knows a flat yard and easy access to the backyard are important to me, so he thinks the additional 5 feet down (basically going from a non walkout to walkout basement) are a dealbreaker. Plus not crazy about the $$$. your thoughts?

I like a walk-out basement. Makes a huge difference. And a little hill is fun sledding for Emmett plus I tend to think you can do more interesting things w/ landscaping on a slope. And $30K is not very much in the grand scheme of house building. But what do I know, I built my house on a mountainside, LOL.

Why would you not be able to have easy access to the back yard though? That would be a problem for me.

In my idealllll world I’d just build on a slab and roll right in the front door and out the back. I like being able to get to my yard without going down a bunch of stairs.

I love my house but the biggest drawback is having to go down stairs to get to the backyard. We are spending a fortune (to us) on redoing our backyard and having a raised deck built so that it comes off the landing where our stairs turn. That way we only have to go down half a flight of stairs for the deck and then down a couple of more stairs to get to a low level patio.

In thirty years of living here I have probably been down in my backyard 20 times and have never actually sat in it.

I would love a walk-out basement. It turns what can be a cold, dark, dingy space into a whole other living level. Very practical if you plan on having a family room or future teenage hangout area. However, I'd make sure that there was a large enough deck off the main floor to accommodate a BBQ and eating area. As a fellow dog owner, I'd also add outdoor stairs to the backyard as I wouldn't want to run to the basement each time the dog needs to go out.

I took this photo over the weekend of the basement of a house I think would be similarly off/not off the ground as our first lot.

How did it go today with the builder? Did you guys decide anything?

I think we are sticking with the first, flatter, lot! The builder seemed very accommodating although they did tell us our wish list wasn’t “cheap” sooooooooo might have to claw back on that a bit hahaha. The big thing is they asked for inspiration pictures and the home designer specifically mentioned Houzz........so now I have to put a Houzz ideabook together! Woe is me haha.

The biggest disappointment is that the garage is on the south side of the house which is so unfortunate. And the curb cut to get into the driveway is not great. But on the plus side my deck will only be like, four feet off the ground at most, which I love. And the lot is sloped sideways so I can still get some good windows in the basement on the other side of the house.

How exciting! I love your ideas and look forward to updates on the design process.

I didn't comment on your first floor plan because I couldn't quite follow what the constraints were. Excited for you Robo; I know you will create a lovely home!I am looking forward to seeing it progress along with you.

It’s exciting that you have one decision behind you. Let us know how the plan design is going. It’s hard, but we all look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Windows in the basement + a deck w backyard access sounds perfect :) I'm excited to follow your build progress. Building a house is the most fun thing ever!

My apologies if this comment comes up THREE times....third time's the charm?

Here's what I just sent to the house designer. Trying to take advantage of the South sun and East views while getting my one vaulted (MCMish?) room. He'll have his own ideas. Any thoughts?

I do like how neat and tidy the upstairs is. The foyer is admittedly a hottt mess.

I made the family room vaulted instead of dining because I really want the protrusion (extension) to be on the North side of the deck to shelter the deck, but it makes most sense in my mind for kitchen to be right behind garage.

The houses next door will be only 12 feet away to about 50 feet back on the house. Most of them will end at 50 feet Which is about where that black fireplace is in family room. However they will all also have decks off the back.

Although the garage is only 1.5, we'll put in a double driveway that can probably hold four cars (we only have one car).

i like it; a few q; why does the den need to jog?

Should the mudroom be right as you enter; or will that usually be from the garage?

Is the playroom in the basement? What will the Den be used for?

The only reason the mudroom isn’t right as I enter is because the width of the front of the house is extremely constrained , only 35 feet. So by the time I get the den on the front and a garage, it only leaves me about 5 1/2 feet for a foyer.

But actually I do anticipate that Ryan and Emmett will be coming in and out of the house for the most part through the garage.

Emmett won’t be old enough to use the basement as a playroom for quite a few years yet according to my colleagues who have small children, so I picture the den serving as overflow toy storage and home office. Slash craft room. But I also quite believe in the power of having a room that can serve as a bedroom on the main floor for any kind of life circumstances which is why I’ve chosen to make the bathroom on the main floor full bath even though really 99% of the time it will function as a powder room, or at the best of times as a dog wash station.

The only reason for the den to jog is to give a little bit of space to shove a little coat closet in somewhere near the front door. It’s Canada so you know the drill with coats being from the Northeast!

Can you steal space from the garage side instead of the den side to make a coat closet? Essentially makes the car entrance part of the garage a bit skinnier than the mud room end.

The kitchen space past the island with the beautiful bank of windows seems a bit unmoored, you could make the MR and pantry a little bigger and have the island seating closer to the windows? Or flip the island and make more of a galley kitchen effect, making island seating with your back to the DR, but facing the kitchen and able to see the views out of the large bank of windows.

In the kitchen, I wonder . . . If the island rotated 90 degrees, then when you are sitting at the island you’d have a bit of a view to the side, instead of looking right at the wall.

I get it Robo, that makes sense.

If I rotate the island it can only be about five feet long. But I could do five foot square! Or 4.5 by 5, say.

I could also do an eight foot peninsula which would then face the windows. I’m not totally opposed to peninsulas, we do have one now, but it would cut off the circulation from the family room to the kitchen. But it would also, bonus, hide the main sink a bit better. Or I could call the window end of the island a walkway and cheat it down to three feet which would give me a six foot island.

I really like how the upstairs bedrooms don't share common walls which increases privacy. That's rare in a compact space.

excellent point, star!

That garage is generous for a one car garage. Maybe recess the coat storage into the garage wall as you enter the foyer as a way to preserve den space.

I would totally leave the reconciliation of the foyer/den/garage optimization to your architect. I think there must be an elegant solution, because your garage sq footage needs are not for 2 spaces, but rather 1 space + storage, which means it can be configured any number of ways, it would seem.

Personally, i love your K/great room layout. The symmetry is so appealing, tho I admit i'm responding to a birdseye view which is not the way anyone actually experiences the room. As for shifting the island specifically to maximize the view, that would be a secondary consideration in my book. Glass is not just for views but for light and airiness. And its not like there are not other opportunities in the space to catch the view.

A few questions and comments.

I wouldn’t cheat your garage out of any more space. The little jog in the foyer isn’t all that bad. If you are truly going to use the space as a den for a while, put in some narrow glass French doors there instead of a solid door to make it look more open. Later you can replace with a solid door if needed as a bedroom.

Anything in the garage is doing to get dusty and dirty, even with a closet. Leave your clothes inside. With the mud room, you can configure it with cubbies with hooks, cabinets, whatever to accommodate your needs coming in from the garage or outside walks. You can even leave a small mat or shoe rack outside the door in the garage for muddy boots and outside shoes before coming inside.

In the downstairs bath why not just extend the shower all the way across the wall?

In the upstairs bath, can you situate the tub under the window instead of lining up everything along one wall? Do you need a window there or can it be a smaller horizontal window up high above the tub? That would give you room to move the tub and toilet and room for a larger vanity.

Don’t forget to allow for placement of particular furniture items you already have.

I like the kitchen space you have shown with the space around the island. I wouldn’t make anything look too crowded, as you point out. I know all your drawings are notional, but I would put the prep sink closer to the work area and not on the end shown.

I'm hoping the family room might feel somewhere between the two pictures here (the first is narrower than ours and the second is wider).

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Although I typically like contemporary things, I must say this kitchen is gorgeous. Much larger (and pricier) than I would have but ... wow. I love all the retro details. This is my something's gotta give kitchen.

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Perhaps you addressed this already and I missed it, but since you have edited the original floor plan you posted, have you considered bringing the kitchen cabinetry around the bottom of the room and put your kitchen sink in front of the window? Sort of like what is in your bottom picture, except your island would be parallel to the sink not the stove. I know it doesn’t look like there is room for a U shaped kitchen plus an island, but if the island isn’t wider than 4’ it should work. You would have to move the fridge tho unless you kept a prep sink on the island and a clean up sink beneath the windows. Or, just do a long run of cabinetry/countertop under the windows if you only want one sink. Otherwise it seems like a lot of open/wasted space. My kitchen/dining/family room is almost exactly the same as yours (L shaped) though my kitchen is not as wide (exterior wall to open side of kitchen is only 11’).

I would do that with a peninsula but...I love having doors right from kitchen on to deck. Especially bc I can funnel muddy/snowy kids and paws through the tile kitchen floor.

What if you switched the kitchen so it kind of went the other direction, flip-flopped the stairs (no need to have them in the front right, unless you're planning a big grand staircase) and made a long and narrow mudroom behind the garage between garage and stairs (you could even extend it to get storage under the stairs so that space isn't wasted?).

You could put your dining room by the doors then and create the 'dining/sunroom' you had in an earlier iteration? I know you'd lose coming in directly through the kitchen but I'd assume your dining space will be tiled or hardwood too? And I'd rather have really nice windows on both sides and a door out to the patio from my dining space than my kitchen space.

Here's a very rough drawing. If I remember correctly, you can make the house a little longer if you need to create more space for the stairs/mudroom area, you just can't make it wider.

Very cool idea! I’ll give that a try in the old excel!

Ps it wouldn’t be under stairs as we do basements here but could be alongside

That would completely change the upstairs.

I do love how compact the upstairs is now, no long hallways, just a nice big landing.

I don't think it would change much about the upstairs. The laundry could flip flop with the stairs and maybe a few other minor adjustments.

Ok so ... I’m getting ready to have a conference call with the builder once I can get my husband to review plans.

This is what they sent ... but it’s too big for us. So I am trying to cut it down and rationalize it a bit.

Main floor

Top floor

here’s what I am thinking - I’ve cut off about 400-600 sf. One thing I’m really set on is having separate closets, I realize both the master closets are a little small but they are both bigger than the single size that we share now.

Main floor (just realized I wrote induction range but will be induction cooktop)

top floor

I don’t know if you have already addressed the question but I would want at least one of the secondary bedrooms upstairs to open directly into the bathroom. Also question about tubs...did you remove it from downstairs bath? And do you need two upstairs?

I like the kitchen / dining / family space better in your iteration. However, your overall plan changes have added many new right angles inside the house and have made it more expensive. You may find there is a trade off between the extra jigs and jobs of the smaller plan vs the larger size of the builders version. There may be a negligible price difference between the two.

Downstairs bath will have a shower with a lower rinsing faucet I think.

Now I'm going to count corners! I take your point and I myself prefer a simpler layout!

Is your reason for too large related to the cost of building it? The porch you show instead is very narrow so besides decorative it doesn't appear like it would function well and porches cost a fair amount to build too. I think our porches cost us 85% of a regular interior room. Less wall space, and it saved on sheet rock, but otherwise not much savings.

I think the reason for having a good size office with a 2 story would be so it could also serve as a bedroom if need be such as being on crutches etc. I'm not sure I'd want to cut it too much.

For the master closet could you steal a few more inches from the bedroom to make the aisle wider than 30" in the closet. With clothes hanging it feels pretty tight. Maybe consider putting the bath all along the other wall and including the closet and then create two closets on the way to the bath to minimize the hallway. There is a lot of hallway space that eats up what could otherwise be usable square footage.

Will you have storage elsewhere such as in a basement? I would consider at least where to store cleaning supplies downstairs and upstairs so you don't have to drag it between the levels and think about toy storage and such if you'll have room for that somewhere downstairs as well. What about towels for the downstairs bath etc.

Walk through the plans doing the things you do now as to your normal living and think through how you will do those in the new house. For example get ready in the morning, what happens as you make breakfast with everyone else in the household. What about dinner, cleaning times, etc. where do you have to go and get things. Bedtime, etc. Just make sure you have a good place near where you need things to make your life the most efficient it can be. Will you always be going out through the garage and use the mudroom or is it a room you'll have to walk into on purpose to get what you need and walk through the whole entry with boots on to get to when coming in from a snowy or wet outside. Just think through those things and I think you'll be able to determine if it will work well for you.

I actually liked the first master bed/bath layout better than the second. There seems to be more wasted space in the laundry room and overall with the bedroom hallway, and then the bathroom seems awkward or something seems off to me with the layout. Sorry, I can’t put my finger on it exactly but I think it’s the odd L-shape with the tub and vanities.

The first floor is ok and maybe the reduced square footage will be less expensive, but the angle changes do make a cost difference as pointed out. The more ‘squared off‘ you can make your house and fewer transitions, the better off, cost wise, you usually are. It has to do with framing and sheetrock costs, plus roofing.

I would welcome the larger dining space. And I do like the larger island with eat-in space in the second version.

Is the office space going to be a casual office space or a working from home office space. It just seems a little small if that is the plan. I know computers can be everything to a home based business but by the time you add a desk, a bookcase, file cabinet (?) printer, a chair, there won't be much space left.

I hear your points about the master closet/bath space being too weird! I’m going to have another go at it.

the builder cost is relatively high for tract builders in our area (200cad/sf) so they’re expecting to build something midway complex, not simple but not luxury either of course.

I’m going to tackle that area again tonight and see if I can come up with something more rational/simpler,

the main floor office is going to be more like a den with potential to house someone if something happened (injured family member). If one of us is permanently disabled I imagine we’d either put in an elevator or move to a bungalow (Local parlance for a one story).

my true, true dream is a one story however staying close to the city with land costs as they are, the one would be either tiny or super expensive.

there will be a large basement with a recroom, full bath, guest room and a large soundproof music room for my husband. the music room will occupy what would normally be the storage room so I have also incorporated a “Christmas closet” into the rec room for all that crap.