Move the w/d next to the sink. You need a clear path in front of the coat rack/bench.

Why is there so much empty space between the end of the counter run and the door? That is wasted space. Extend the cabinetry and counter all the way to as close to the door as you can to leave comfortable clearance space when entering.

You may not be open to fully open the door of the fridge if you stick in against the wall -- something to check on before you buy the fridge. If you leave the fridge next to the tall cabinet, make them the same depth (make everything on that wall the same depth).

Does the door need to be in the middle of the room?

Lots of great ideas! thank you so much for the suggestions, we will definitely take it to our builder for modification.

west coast, no, the door does not need to be in the middle. let us know if you have a different ideas :)

Consider a concept like this.

Mark is bang on. We have access like this and it is great to go straight through to kitchen

Thank you so much, everyone! fantastic ideas, and im so thrilled!

Now that we have great ideas on what to do with our utility room, we are curious what y’all think about the rest of the house. two things i am mainly concerned about are

1. study 1’s northern wall is not lined up with the powder room northern wall. the reason being there is going to be an upright piano on the other side of the study 1, and we think it needs 4’ including the bench, even though the piano itself is only 2ft.

should the wall be shifted up a bit so it lines up with the powder room wall? if we do that, the bench would be sticking out a bit, and might be blocking the way.

2. Currently the bathroom 2’s entry door is 20” wide, which i think is a little narrow. ideally, we want 24”, but if we do that, it can hit someone if he/she is standing at the sink. any ideas?

Please don’t take this the wrong way but I greatly dislike this plan. It is wild how far away garage to kitchen is. There are tons of unneeded bump outs. It seems really odd. I am sorry

So, since you bring up he and she using Bathroom 2, tell us a bit about who will live here? And what are your wants and needs for the house?

a family of 4. this bathroom is mainly for our daughters. dad or someone else could be using it, so i just generalized. but mainly two girls will be using it

Does that third garage need a door into the house? If not, Bath 2 could expand into the hall giving the girls more room, and more storage at the vanity.

The laundry room is pretty far from where most of the laundry is. Can it kind of swap places with the Study 1? Who is using the bedroom next to the utility room?

good point, did not think about that. but that might work, act actuall. than you for the idea!

bedroom #4 is a guest bedroom

Where will the mechanicals, furnace, water heater, etc, go?

I think the family room will end up being 10’, not 18’, by the time walkways are subtracted.

It might be better to move the piano to back up to the master closet and eliminate the study #1 closet, so that the central walkway shifts more to the front of the house. If the study needs a closet, make it a reach-in. Oh, is the piano for entertaining at parties, or for practicing lessons, or for personal pleasure playing?

Are you sure the girls want their bathroom windows facing where visitors, friends, boyfriends, will approach? I guess they will close the blackout blinds?

The master suite door and walkway to get onto it rather interrupts the family room. What if the suite were aligned with the left side od the house and its door moved to near the guest bedroom? Doesn't solve the piano issue but I think several other changes are in the offing for the house. It makes the family room more of a destination than a traffic hub, gives it a cozy corner, and the master is more private.

Is there enough storage for seasonal/holiday decor, sports gear, hobbies, and general stuff?

Beware of double doors. Where do the light switches go?

I would eliminate the congestion of the entries into the garages with the main entry, eliminate the view from the kitchen down the bedroom hallway, move the powder room from the main entry. move the kitchen closer to the garage, move the door to the outdoor living from the Family Room to the Dining room, avoid turning corners with hanging clothes, provide laundry instructions on the Hall wall for guests to do laundry, provide a place for guests coats other than the piano, provide reach-in closets back to back in bedrooms 2 & 3, Provide more windows in the bedrooms for cross ventilation and more light, Access the maste closet only from the master bedroom, eliminate the gas chamber in the master bathroom, Provide a reach-in closet in bedroom 4, change the laundry layout, that's all I have time for.

Post the current exterior elevations.

Switch the front spaces. Put the girls rooms on the left, main garage and utility room on the right near the kitchen. and rearrange the working side of the house so that walkways don’t lead into the working aisle of the kitchen. Keep that for working in, not traipsing though. Keeps the extra beer closer to the kitchen, too. Ready for football tonight! Go Bears!

I wouldnt like a 20 inch door on any room, especially a bathroom. 24 inch door is too small too. I wouldnt put less than a 30 inch door. The whole plan looks to be jumbled up to me.

How do you get a vanity through a 20" door?

Your family room and dining area are a bit small compared to the size of the rest of your rooms.

We built a custom home a few years ago and all our interior doors are 36" wide, with the front door being a bit wider.

Are you building in FL? If so, you might want to add a nice sized walk-in storage closet for all those things people would normally store in a basement. In hot climates attic and garage storage can get too hot. We did two walk-in storage closets in our house ... we call them Florida basements!

Your 2-car garage isn't deep enough to park a large vehicle and have storage along the back wall. You want at least 24 ft deep.

Have you mocked up trying to drive in/out from spot (1) with a car parked in spot (2). You will probably have to make a 3 or 4 point turn, unless you drive a smart car.

This garage design is also so tight, up against the house, that you will have no space for any planting beds and your whole front will be pavers/cement/asphalt.

I imagine car 1 would back out to what is probably the loop driveway in front of the house, not 3-pt turn.

By the way, I saw a great design where a contrasting surface was used to create a visual ”front walk” on the driveway to lead to the front door. Very effective and attractive.

If this is FL, the single garage could be golf cart and storage if you add ac, which is often done here.

These plans don't always have a "loop" driveway. You will still need to do a couple of turns even if you back out of the driveway ... assuming they have med/large cars. Some people are just not good/confident drivers and don't have the best depth perception, and this garage set-up will be hell for those people.

From the room measurements it looks like they have roughly 25 ft from left garage to right side of the house. Minimum recommended back-up distance is 30 ft and that is without part of a building in your way. Minimum distance is not a big deal if you back up too far over some grass, but hitting the house will be a big deal for both the house and the car.

I hope they don't have new/teen drivers!

If you leep the current layout with master and guest suites, change the guest closet from walk-in to reach-in. Guests don’t need a walk-in, and you can use the reclaimed space for linen/storage cabinetry or closet in the master bath. (oh, and that toilet room door in the master? Kind of inconvenient to squeeze to one side to close the door, kind of like a restaurant ladies room stall.)

"provide reach-in closets back to back in bedrooms 2 & 3" <= this. Remember that hanging clothes take up about 22-24" from the wall. So your actual space if you just do hanging rods is not that much and the corners are void (try it on graph paper, like below.)

An alternative in a small WIC is to do built-ins that allow you to use the corners. You may already be planning this so apologies if I'm preaching to the choir.

My WIC is small (I bought an existing house and didn't change the closet size.) I added built-ins to let me use the space better.

In Bath 2, I'd do a wider door and switch to a single bowl sink. I doubt there will be two people trying to use those sinks at the same time, so I'd lose the second sink in favor of having more drawer storage and counter space. Also consider where you'll hang towels, both near the sink and near the shower.

The nearby linen closet is small and looks like it's meant to serve 2 bedrooms and 1 bathroom. I'd consider giving Study 2 a single door so you can make that linen closet bigger.

Also, I don't see a linen closet on the left side of the house for those two bedrooms and bathrooms. Can you give up the closet space from Study 1? Put the door in the hallway and make it a linen closet to serve that side of the house. Or, find some space in the laundry room for that. Still not that handy for the main bedroom, so consider where you'll store sheets, towels, TP, and cleaning supplies for that bedroom/bathroom.

Wow wow wow, lots of great ideas, we are overwhelmed, lol

so we actually already pulled a permit from the city, so the exterior wall lines can no longer change unfortunately. But I feel like there are still quite a bit we can modify.

Mark, thank you for the awesome suggestions! Moving the door to the dining area is definitely something that can easily be done.

bpath, all windows in the bathrooms are going to be frosted, so no need to worry about privacy. thank you for catching the toilet room door in the master. we will bring this up to the designer :)

chispa, thanks for pointing out about the garage/drive way space. that's I guess something we did not think about very well. and you are right, it's probably tight. But fortunately for now, we only have two cars, there's only one car in each garage. we wanted extra space in the garage for outdoor junks (bikes, gardening tools, etc..)

and we are in TX, no basement can be built here.

chicagoans, thanks for showing me the difference between the reach-in and walk-in. it helped me visualize how we can actually use the closets. we were actually originally going to do reach-in, but thought walk-in would provide more room for large items, such as suitcases, etc.. the girls are only 2 and 5. we have no idea what activities they will be engaging in when they get older. golf? art? who knows? just thought having a wide space for bulky items might help. the built-in storage in the closet is a great idea!

There is no universal layout that suits everyone's needs. But this layout does meet our life style, and we are very happy with it. and we are even more excited about incorporating may of your new great ideas :)

if anyone has any opinions about the stidy1's northern wall and the powder room's northern wall not being lined up, we would love to know about it as well

Actually, a member here, cpartist, her house was in permitting when they pulled it back. She ended up with a much better house.

I would still change all the secondary bedroom closets to reach-ins, and thence add storage to the master bath, and if you have to have a door from the one-car garage, give the girls’ bathroom a single sink. Storage on the countertop and in drawers below are important, and the bathroom is already small enough that they will not be in there at the same time. They would bump elbows.

Storing lots of stuff in walkins makes them harder to navigate, to reqch the clothes. Stuff ends up on the floor where you need to stand to access the clothes. Reach-ins allow the stuff to be on long shelves, or on one end of the closet, and the clothes on the other end.

For the study wall, I might make the study even shorter, so the wall difference isn’t as pronounced and to allow more room for the piano. 17’ is more than generous already.

This would fix the stidy1's northern wall and the powder room's northern wall . . .

. . . and more.

100% agree with Mark

Much better concept. as rough as the sketch is, it just feels better.

Good to know that the permit can be pulled back, bpath. we may think about that.

i also do like Mark’s layout. but here is a little more about our location. so its actually a corner lot, and we also will have to have a septic tank in the back. given these conditions, we are already at the limit on both height and width of the house, cant expand any further.

to the east side of our house, there is a huge beautiful park, and thats one reason we want the dining/kitchen on the east side of the house to enjoy the view.

Show the site plan.

Flip it to mirror image!

Mark is not suggesting adding square footage. But how you have it laid out now is extremely unique and a bit odd. Most people prefer to keep the social type areas in one section and the bedrooms in another. They like a space for storage and access to kitchen relatively close to garage too.

I realize you want to split the bedrooms, but by having the master bath and maybe guest room or studynbetween you and the girls, you still are close enough to know when they are sick or staying up past midnight finishing a junior year history paper, but far enough away for privacy.

Bpath, we are completely ok being close to the girls rooms. in fact we actually want to be close, but we just got this plan from a designer, and modified a little to meet our needs

It’s not too late to get the plan you deserve here.

I was suggesting a rearrangement of the current spaces that would maintain the current area of the house and view. Also the current mini-auto court at the front door is an accident waiting to happen.

Which way is north on the site survey and floor plan?

Here's a first attempt to replicate some of the suggestions above. Is this something along the lines of a better style?

This is significantly better. More tweaks needed but overall feels better as a home.

Do you have a site improvement plan? One that shows the footprint, septic leach field, future pool, etc. Here is one fairly close interpolating measurements:

The floorplan concept of a split garage flanking a Living through to pool is getting more common in waterfront Florida. The elevation materials and high hip roof however look to be quintessential Texas. It seems that you found a floorplan you like independent of the site, and had a designer "edit" it to your ideas, without regards to the site.

It's tough when OPs post things when they are far in the process. I have no answer for that.

Will anyone go through driver's training while living in the house?

The living room is essentially the size of the sofas, with no place for additional seating.

Can the powder be part of the guest bath? I stayed in a home where that was done: the guest bedroom/den had a door to a shower room, which had a pocket door to the sink and toilet area, which had a door to the hall. When company could use the half-bath, with the shower room and any guest’s products, towel, robe, etc, were behind the closed pocket door.

It still bothers me that the master bedroom opens to the living soace, which to me means less privacy for both and eats up living room space so you can walk to the kitchen table. But if you cannot extend the bedroom to the left, and I don’t suppose you want to shrink the bathroom or convert the walk-in to reach-ins, and I don’t think you want to swap the bathroom and bedroom (although the times I gaze out my bedroom window at the view are few, since I’m in there with eyes open less than any other room in the house), I don’t know what another solution is.

Do you need two studies plus a guest bedroom? I suppose the study by the girls’ rooms is meant to be their playroom?

Just one more note: the main seating area is directly in front of the front door which has sidelights. In my living room, my chair is, too, and it bothers me. We really need to refurnish it completely to avoid that but $$. Our house is set back from the street so it’s not like passersby can see in, but the Amazon guy can. Freaks me out to hear a light “thunk” and see his flashlight and camera flash. I guess there’s nothing to be done, maybe it doesn’t bother you, but me, I might try to swap it with one of the studies and have it be off-center. But of course, any change has a domino effect!

Just saw your last plan with north to the right, which means the back of the house would face west ... in TX. Is that correct?

We had a house in CA that had a west facing family room, breakfast area and patio and it was not great for entertaining in the summer, just way too hot. You also can't appreciate any views or pretty landscaping because you have to close the blinds in all those west facing windows and sliders ... or you will also heat up the inside and fade your floors and furniture.

When we built in FL, luckily the lot we found allowed the back of the house to face east. We can even entertain late afternoon in summer and we aren't being baked by the direct west sun.

That contradicted the park is to the east, thus the desired kitchen placement. True north could be skewed, but I went with park to the east.

Something turned around. Upthread, Yogi referred to the study 1 and powder room north walls not lining up, leading me to think North is up, and the house faces south.

May have meant the other east.

You know if you travel far enough west you get to east.

Just thought I would point those things out.

Is anyone else wondering if there is a user on Houzz that goes by the name "Boo-Boo" ?

I had one of these as a kid. The one on the right.