Arrange the master bedroom suite so the bedroom is on an outside corner and can not be viewed into from the patio. Do not go through the bathroom to get to the closet. Do not access the laundry room from master bedroom suite.

A lot of spaces are larger than they need to be.

Do not access the pantry from the dining room.

Seek an efficient kitchen that meets your needs not a "big kitchen".

Consider splitting the kid's bathroom into one room with a sink(s) and another room with the toilet and tub.

Hi Emily,

Congratulations on your new project. That sounds really exciting.

Have you shopped around to see if you can find an architect to work with? Your basic plan is understandable, but as a non-pro who has hung out here for years, there are some real problems. An architect could save you lots of heart ache and even some money. (The self-employed architect we hires was very reasonable and did amazing work).

Just some examples of problems you need to solve:

Which direction does your house face? Lighting and solar heating are huge factors (don't face most of your windows west across an open field)

Your primary bath has a ton of wasted space.

Your primary suite is accessed through the mudroom- with two kids and 15 acres, this area will always be dirty.

Your mudroom is huge, but doesn't have any storage.....laundry room also has a lot of wasted space.

The fridge is a long, long way from the sink, and there's an island in your way.

Hope I don't sounds like I'm dumping on your party. Your core organizing principle isn't bad, but there is a lot of refinement to be done.

If you're on a slab, youll need a place for mechanicals. Dont let builder put HVAC unit(s) in attic unless it's inside the conditioned space. The dining room is way too small. I'm not understanding the right side of the plan: bedroom access, bathroom and closets. What will the exterior look like?

I see this so often on Houzz--a custom home on many acres and many of the least important spaces are on the corners. Corners of a house are prime real estate--they allow for cross ventilation and lots of light. Placing closets and garages on corners when you have 15 acres is a waste of this prime real estate. I'm a big proponent of semi-attached or detached garages. If you're in the Midwest, you probably don't want to go outside after parking your car in the garage, and I get that. BUT you could attach the garage via a glassed-in breezeway and not have the garage on the corner of the house.

Good to see that the other bedrooms are on the corners of the house, but they might look and function better with two windows on the walls that the beds are on. To achieve this you may have to increase their size a bit.

Also, homes are designed with the interiors and exteriors in mind. What do your exterior elevations look like?

All this is to reiterate what GW said about hiring a competent architect to give you a home that looks and functions well for you and your family.

I presume in rural midwest winters, you'll want to unload groceries from your car while it is parked in the garage. The path from garage to kitchen is a maze. Unless you always intend to unload from the front porch through the front door, I'd edit this area of the house.

Your pantry is not adjacent to your kitchen. I presume this is not a butler's pantry for fine dinnerware but rather a food pantry. If this is correct, find a way to have it closer to your kitchen.

I agree with others that given the large space you have and ability to really make something special, hiring a pro will he best. Parts of your plan I like and others feel confusing with wasted space and areas getting more access than they should. An architect will help solve all

15 acres with a tiny subdivision lot type front load garage? Thats just symptomatic of all the wrong thinking embodied in this plan. You’re still thinking cramped city lot living that has views you want to block and not having windows on sides, etc.

I see windows on two sides of the bedrooms, even the master bath, so I’m not sure what the issue is there.

But I also see a little editing over by the bedrooms, moving a door and adding a fireplace that blocks a bedroom door. Don’t do that.

I see a master suite that is oddly placed. You walk out the bedroom door into the hall filled with jackets and dripping boots and backpacks, then through the pantry, skirting around a door that opens on the wrong side. You deserve better. At least the kids come out of their rooms to the pleasant, windowed living room.

Guests also have to walk through the boots to get to the powder room, which they wouldn’t find on their own anyway and might default to the kids’ bath.

The laundry room is so close to the master bedroom anyway, why not remove the door to the bathroom? And I might move the basement stairs to allow the laundry room door to move up, so that it is a shorter path to the bedrooms and living space making swapping loads easier. And removing the door to the bathroom gives you more space in the bathroom and the laundry, and besides the door from the bedroom is in the way of the laundry door.

How will the dryer vent?

Design the master bath, right now it looks like the fixtures are shown as placeholders for future moving around.

Consider solar tubes in the windowless spaces like the service hall and laundry, and maybe the kids’ hall.

I never understand separating the tub and shower from the vanity as suggested above. (love ya, Mark, but disagree with you and others on that)

In the kids’ hall, the two closets look too small to be useful. Consider expanding their brdroom closets, and add a bathroom closet or cabinetry for their extra toiletries, first aid, and towels.

I don’t think seabornman saw the basement stairs. We do basements in the midwest. Tornados. And great storage and rainy day playspaces for floor hockey.

I’m not a fan of connecting master bathroom and closet. Would you consider putting them side by side, each with a door to the bedroom? That way someone one who needs a sweater isn’t locked out of the closet by someone on the toilet.

But really, change that whole end of the house so that your bedroom doesn’t feel like the servants’ wing.

In general, I see a preference for overhead symmetry.

Would you consider an L shaped layout? Not sure which way the views face, but you could position the house and garage to account for snow and storms, with the garage taking the brunt and protecting the rest of the house, and position the garage doors to the leeward side.

By the way, I hadn’t heard of MagicPlan before. How do you like it? Easy to use?

I take it back, I see several uses of it here. But still, do you like it? (even if it lets you do things like block doors with a fireplace?)

Random thoughts -- and, friend, I've gotta say, this plan is pretty much all red flags:

- Entryway looks good, but I'd want space for a "drop space" table for guests. Maybe allow a space between the two closets for a table (better yet, small chest of drawers) so it will "sit back" between the closets.

- Enlarge the entry-dining room door for better circulation to the table.

- Nice sightline from the front door to a glass door.

- The living room looks quite small. Will you have a TV in this room? Don't say over the fireplace.

- The biggest problem with the house -- please take this seriously: You've sandwiched the main living spaces in the middle of the house, which means it won't get as much light as it could. You want to place your most important rooms /the rooms where you'll spend most of your waking hours, in the SouthEast corner -- give those rooms natural light from two directions.

- Why such a huge patio? It's not covered, right? So it's not blocking light into the house, but that patio will require upkeep.

-Why such a huge front porch? Porches will cost about 60% as much as interior space, so this large porch will be expensive and will require upkeep -- will you really use it?

- That's a large kitchen -- the cabinets will cost a fortune -- and you don't need them for storage because also have a huge pantry. People too often start with, "I really care about my kitchen, so I want it to be BIG!" No, you don't want a BIG kitchen; you want an efficient, well-planned kitchen. This one's just big.

- Is that island something like 9-10' wide? 4 chairs won't fit in that space comfortably -- no one'll be able to squeeze in /out of the chairs in the middle (unlike dining room chairs, taller stools don't scoot in and out well). Islands aren't great places for the whole family to sit anyway -- you have a full-fledged dining room right there.

- I'd consider moving the refrigerator over by the sink -- and open a larger door into the dining room.

- Your kitchen is in the middle of the house -- so what's your pathway for carrying garbage out? You know that every so often a bag is going to split open, and you (or, more likely, your children) will dribble garbage-juice all the way to the door. Shorten this pathway, and you'll be happy.

- Where is your fire extinguisher? Your trash? Your spices? Your silverware? Do you have a space to store glassware next to the refrigerator? You want it to be near the dishwasher so you don't have to carry glasses (which are numerous) across the room.

- I love a large pantry, but this one is ridiculously large -- maybe that's good because you need a place for your mechanicals. The two entryways to the pantry don't make sense -- I mean, two entries can make sense, but these two are placed in weird spots.

- I'd consider keeping the pantry over-sized, but move the laundry into that same space. Dryers need to be placed on an exterior wall; this makes them cheaper to buy, easier to clean, and more fire-safe.

- The mudroom is wastefully large. It's a large, dark space that adds extra steps to enter the house. Again, you don't want BIG -- you want efficient and well-planned.

- Look at the pathway you'll have to walk carrying in groceries -- too long, too many turns. Make this more direct /save yourself effort. - Is that an office? Looks okay.

- I'd add a pocket door that'll allow you to "cut off" the secondary bedrooms. At some point the kids'll leave home, and you'll appreciate being able to cut off heat /cooling to that large area of the house.

- The bottleneck created by the fireplace cutting into the hallway is a real problem. Won't meet code /won't be comfortable.

- The two secondary bedrooms look okay. Bathroom too -- 'cept I'd add a closet in the spot by the tub and flip-flop the door so you'll enter "towards" the sink.

- I like that the master is near the family entrance, and the kids' rooms are across the house. Let them do the walking, while you're placed near the laundry. Also, this means that when they're teens, you'll hear them enter the house.

- With a bathroom your guests can use between the kids' bedrooms, do you need that half-bath? If you do, place it in a more sensible location.

- The master bedroom is a sensible size, but I'd like to see an exterior door added -- especially if you're going to be elderly in this house, a direct route to the outside is more fire-safe.

- The master bath is just bad. Having just a shower is fine, but it needs to be a large, luxurious shower. Perhaps stretch it across the back wall. Note that you have to pass through a bad pinchpoint to reach the toilet, and the toilet's spot doesn't seem to be long enough to meet code. Where is the door to the shower? Where will you hang towels? The duplicate sinks look ... weird.

- That's a large closet, and I like that it's close to the laundry, but I'd flatten it out across the side of the bathroom /no point in adding an unnecessary /expensive corner for a closet.

- Why the hallway in the garage? That's expensive to build and just adds extra steps. If you combine the pantry and the laundry, you can cut out the laundry room /garage walkway and consolidate the space.

- Alternately, with 15 acres, consider detaching the garage. It'll allow you more natural light into the house.

- Where do the stairs go? With a living room + office, do you need another living space?

This is your first rendition, right? Honestly, it doesn't even deserve a grade of C yet. Keep at it, and remember that changes on paper are free.

Best friend? Can you tell him "this is screwed up, how are you going to fix it?" And will he?

Will you be ok if the friendship sours because of the build?

We built with a customer of my husband's and that was awkward enough.

I mentioned symmetry above, and I notice that symmetry, and lining up the cooktop with the island and fireplace moves it too far from the sink. No one notices the lineup except in an overhead view so don’t be driven by that. Pay attention to functionality, and think optimize, not maximize. Keep things efficient.

@Mark Bischak, Architect …. ”Proceed with caution”….. as my father ( a very succesful businessman ) always said : ”NEVER do business with friends, relatives or neighbors!” That’s why he encouraged his children to build their own careers rather than joining the family business. He told his siblings the same when they broached the subject of a partnership with him.

My father encouraged me to NOT follow his line of work. Not that he thought it would cause problems down the road, he just thought it was a lousy way to make a living. I asked him once when I was a little kid why he did what he did and he answered, "So you don't have to." He had a hard life, but did great things. Things are different now to the detriment of society.

Our parents' generation was incredibly selfless.

You are really at a disadvantage using MagicPlan here. Hopefully these are just blocking out ideas and not what your friend intends to build from. There are some issues here with roof massing and inefficiencies in space planning and layout where when building will lead to unnecessary higher costs without an improvement in your lives.

Since the overall concept and adjacencies is a commonplace design, there are probably a bunch of internet plans that are close enough to yours that have some of the issues here worked out a little more successfully.

"probably a bunch of internet plans that are close enough"

Can I have a dollar for each hour you spend looking for that plan??