Get rid of the tray ceiling and increase your flexibility and live happily ever after.

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your recomendation.

I will try to convince him... LOL.

If I eliminate the tray ceiling, could I reduce the length of the kitchen to give more room for the living room?

Tray ceilings control how furniture is placed, so, yes, get rid of it.

You say you are not Julia Childs. Nothing wrong with that, so do you need a dining room at all?

I could see larger great room by front entrance, then the kitchen/dining area (maybe large square island that could seat 8).

Picture lovely evening, guests arriving through the front door, meandering through to kitchen. (Isn’t that where everyone winds up?)

You serve Trader Joe’s appetizers on the back patio with drinks of choice.

Hubby fires up the grill; cooks steak tips, while you cook Near East Rice Pilaf, adding fresh spinach at the end, so it wilts.

You and guests sit at the large island on counter height stools and enjoy a delicious supper.

Move into the great room ( music playing in the background) and for dessert (Trader Joe’s strawberry cheesecake, which you topped with fresh strawberries).

What a lovely evening, good night, and out the front door guests go.

I bet you can tell that all the formal stuff I did is long gone. Guests want to see you and, more importantly, want a fun, easy get together.

• Tray ceilings are formal. I would not put one in a kitchen. If you want to delimit your spaces with ceiling treatments, the great room should be special rather than the kitchen
• you are correct about that kitchen layout. It is not functional and you won't like working there. I'd recommend investing a bit of cash in a consultation with a certified kitchen designer. It will be well worth the expense. Kitchens are the most costly part of the house so you really want to get them right the first time.
• Do you intend to eat in your dining room regularly? If so, the set up you have is not conducive to that.

You might consider adding a peninsula / bar between your kitchen and family room, leaving room on the family room side for seats, and use the base cabinets for storage -- you could eliminate the need for the tiny pantry.

If you move the refrigerator out of the corner and add a 18" countertop/cabinet between the refrigerator and the wall (or at least shorten the short wall beside the refrigerator), it will be easier for you to open the refrigerator door fully to remove the vegetable bins for cleaning.

Alternately, if you use that pantry space for a closet for the "living" room, then the "living room " becomes a more flexible bonus room that could be used as a guest bedroom or a dining room.

If you use a peninsula between kitchen and family room as a breakfast bar, you could alter the traditional island so that walking past the kitchen to the family room -- that likely will end up being the living room any way -- you'd be walking through a hallway rather than through a kitchen to get to the family living space and still have an open floor plan.

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/45106433745064156/

Alternately, something similar to this unit might work well between your kitchen and family room.

Bust through that pantry closet to make an opening to the dining room, or else you’ll never use the dining room.
Appliances can be rearranged in the kitchen to make a functional work space. But I never heard of anyone wanting to reduce the size of a kitchen!

You didn't ask but . . . In the laundry room, put the machines side by side, not split by the sink. Trust me.

Maybe flip the hall bath, moving the door closer to the other bedroom, to make it more private, less visible from the great room.

Why do you want all the wasted space noted in red? That's the size of a room and will be useless except as a pass through to the master and other bedrooms.

Why is your husband designing the house? Is his background in design?

Do you even need a formal dining room? Might you be better off with a kitchen/dining area and a larger living room?

And if it were me, I'd want the arrangement to be kitchen, dining, living. Not splitting up the dining area from the living area.

The best houses orient the public rooms towards the south for the best passive solar heating and cooling

The best houses are L, U, T, H, or I shaped.

The best houses are only one to two rooms deep. And covered lanai, porches, garages, etc count as rooms in this case.

The best houses make sure kitchens have natural light, meaning windows so one doesn't have to have lighting 24/7 to use the kitchen. (And no, dining areas with windows 10' or more from the kitchen will not allow for natural light.)

The best houses make sure all public rooms and bedrooms have windows on at least two walls.

The best houses do not if possible put mechanical rooms, pantries or closets on outside walls

The best houses keep public and private spaces separate.

The best houses have an organizing “spine” so it’s easy to determine how to get from room to room in the house and what makes sense.

So how many of these best practices does your house have?

Placing your furniture's appropriately will provide you with better room separation than will a tray ceiling, which will limit you now, as well as down the road should your plans be modified. And they cost too much for little benefit.

Hello everyone,

Thanks for the good advise. Husband decided to eliminate the tray ceiling (ufff).

We will be using the dining room daily

@emilyam819, the original ( pre overnight changes) had a opening from dining and kitchen with a dry bar on one .side and the pantry on the other side. I prefer a smaller kichen and a larger living room

@bpath, thanks for the tip on the bathroom door, we will make the change.

If you intend to use the dining room daily, I'd reorder things to put the kitchen at the front of the house, the DR in the middle and the LR at the back.

Here's an example layout. It gives you a G-shaped 1 person kitchen convenient to the garage for unloading. The stove vents directly to the outside. You can see from kitchen to DR to LR so you won't feel isolated when you're cooking. And you can see from kitchen to front walk so you'll see guests arriving. Additionally, the garage enters the foyer instead of the laundry so you can have plenty of storage in the laundry.

Just want to put in that I looooove my front-facing kitchen. And a foyer that actually gets used. Like in Jennifer’s idea.

I like Jennifer’s idea too

How much nicer to enter your own home and be welcomed by the foyer, and not by the washing machine.

I like the idea of the garage and front door both going to the foyer - but where would the stuff go? There needs to at least be a bench & coat hooks & shoe tray. Maybe if the closet pushed into the laundry room a bit.

The foyer would be better with a single door rather than a double. Then you could have a bench and hooks on the wall between the front door and the door to the garage.

Hi Everyone,

Thanks for all wonderful suggestions. I really liked Jennifer K's layout. It didn't pass DH .

He wants the double door and solid.. oh well... that is fine, we can always change it after a few years.. The active door will be opening clockwise ( toward the dining room) so I am hoping to be able to have a bench as Jennifer K suggested.

.

@ Jennifer K, I would love to hear how big a window you would suggest considering I am keeping the kitchen in the same spot.

@cpartist, i also agree with you on the "area in red". My husband is not a designer at all and he have a Arch Tech that I am a little bit disappointed that did what husband wanted without asking "what if" I guess this is a female thinking. LOL. It is what it is .... I definitely will need your help when trying to layout the furniture for the great room, specially with the built in DH added to the wall.

@bpath, You will noticed the Arch tech didn't change the bathroom door nor laundry layout as suggested but I will make sure to follow up as a hawk to ensure it gets done.. LOL. ( it seems it was just a detail LOL)

@JudyG Designs, I loved what you wrote than at the end I woke up to the reality .LOL, thank you!

Here it is the new layout and final. Sorry for the blurry picture.

I will post the kitchen ( after talking with a kitchen company) and great room layout when I have one.

Thank you all !

I like the butlers pantry area.

• Butlers pantry is an improvement over the original plan as it gives much better access to the dining room
• since you're not switching the DR and the kitchen, you can't really put a bigger window in the kitchen because you'd lose too much cupboard storage.
• I think you will regret routing the entry through the laundry since it will become a dumping ground for everything and you will have to organize it every time you want to do laundry.
• If you enforce a traffic pattern by creating a hall to your master, you'll gain between 5 and 7' of usable space in your great room

Consider:

It's useful to "walk" through your floorplan with a pen. Tell yourself the story of your day and trace your path. E.g.

1. I get back from grocery shopping and bring the groceries in from the car
2. I put the groceries away in the fridge and pantry.
3. Then I make a pot of soup
4. I take the veggies out of the fridge.
5. I wash and trim them at the sink. The trimming go in the compost which... oops!... is in the pantry.
6. etc.

Another good exercise is to use a room designer app to put furniture in your floorplan so you can see what will fit and what won't. I did a bit of that with your living room (by the way, everything is to scale). I found it very difficult to arrange things to allow both comfortable tv watching, comfortable conversation and good access to the sliding door.

Ask your husband why he's ok with paying for unusable space. Because building a house costs lots of money and there should never be so much wasted and unusable space. Why have it if it is costing you so much? I don't know about you, but I don't have money to burn on wasted areas.

And why is he insistent on having the kitchen between the living room and dining room? His layout makes no sense. Jennifer's is so superior with the exception still of the wasted space.

It just occurred to me that if your stairs were turned 90 degrees and slid back, you would have a natural division between your living room and the way to your bedroom-- no more wasted space! Additionally, you'd be able to reconfigure the office/bath/bed space to give you a more comfortable bathroom.

Hi everyone,

Jennifer K, what do you mean turn the stairs 90 degree and slid back?

Is it the brown line on the furniture layout? Also, could you share a simple designer app I could use? Right now I am using grid paper LOL.

@cpartist, Lol

That brown line along the wall of the LR is supposed to be a wall unit for holding the TV, books, and whatever other stuff you might like. And yes, that's approximately where I'd put the stairs.

I use the free app at Floorplanner.com But a google search will list a bunch of free apps if you don't like that one.

Here's what it might look with the stairs moved:

You get a bigger bathroom and a bigger linen/storage closet. In fact, you could make that a laundry closet and reclaim the laundry room for something else if you wanted.

@cpartist, Lol

Why are you laughing? I was serious. It's obvious he had little to no design skills so why isn't he allowing a professional to do the job?