Plan from April 15, 2024

Does the house posses any architectural style?

How set are you on the plan?

Coffered beamed or vaulted beamed ceilings should be well thought with respect to adjoining rooms/spaces.

Your dining area is open to both the kitchen and living, and seems too small to contain the table.

The kitchen is large but not very functional. Consider walking from the refrigerator to the sink, for example.

The cooktop is flanked by tall cabinets.

Looks like it was designed for looks rather than to be a working kitchen.

The entry looks to be over 12' wide.

If you raise the living room ceiling to 12', and keep the 9' porch ceiling, think about the windows on that wall. Their height will be constrained by the lower ceiling, so on the inside, you might have 4' of wall above them. Your first inspiration image shows a tall window letting in plenty of light as there is no roofed area outside.

Has your designer provided 3D renderings of the inside and outside of the home?

Please educate your draftsman:

A scullery is a room in a house, traditionally used for washing up dishes and laundering clothes, or as an overflow kitchen. Tasks performed in the scullery include cleaning dishes and cooking utensils, occasional kitchen work, ironing, boiling water for cooking or bathing, and soaking and washing clothes. Sculleries contain hot and cold sinks, sometimes slop sinks, drain pipes, storage shelves, plate racks, a work table, various coppers for boiling water, tubs, and buckets . . .

Now that I look at the floor plan closer, the vault is poorly conceived; get rid of it. The floor plan was laid out by someone with a poor perception of space.

IMO a17' ceiling just creates no end of issues for heating, cooling and sound control for no real benefit at all Coffered ceilings require a huge design to make look good in a open plan space there often are issues with lighting and even just how it gets done room to room. I have no idea what you use a scullery for so maybe expalin that space for your use. The kitchen is agood example of bigger does not equal better > You will need roller skates to prepare even a simple meal. IMO 10' ceilings are great in all those areas and to have all kinds of different ceiling heights is never a good idea. Waht is the trash in the island for ? No sink no DW no need for a trash can . I need a ton more info and you need a good interior designer and an independant kitchen desigern not your actitec but real interior designers. Do you have a family room too or just this LR? If this is it where do you plan to watch TV ? An outdoor kitchen needs to be near a kitchen not the DR and how does that door into the DR going to function with a load of food or stuff for the outdoor kitchen You really need some pro help

Neither. The panic ”need to decorate it or something” add on after the fact looks exactly like what is: an afterthought that should have been a first thought to design the home around.

All your windows in the back of the house seem to be Fixed ... how do you get any fresh air circulating on nice spring/fall days? Just with the dining area door that can't open fully because furniture will be in the way?

The vault will be weird, because two of your dining guests will be sitting partially under a flat 10 ft ceiling and partially under a vaulted ceiling.

I would do all 12 ft ceilings. My open kitchen, breakfast area and family room are around 55 ft long with 12 ft ceilings and plain boxed beams. The space is broken up by a large cased opening before you get to the kitchen itself. I like the ceiling height, specially in my warm FL climate. The 12 ft ceiling height also allowed us to do 10 ft tall sliders and taller windows.

Both ideas are equally bad. So is your draftsman’s plan.

I wouldn’t do either option either. I like parts of your plan to be honest. I don’t care is something is listed as scullery and is a pantry. I do think the kitchen needs some work. The sink is very far from fridge.

We need answers to some of our questions for sure.

PPF, no improvements were made over the past two years?

Did you ever check to see if the designer of your proposed house is licensed by your state to practice architecture?

I like coffee in my Jim Beam. But neither a coffer or a beam is suitable for that. It will only draw attention to the objectionable things that really should not exist, but do.

Find a good architect. One that can give you a brief synopsis of Architectural History 101 as an interview question. You don’t want anyone who failed that class. Or somehow failed to take it.

Sink is so far from refrigerator and how do you open the door by the dining table? I don’t personally like the look of the vault and agree with others that heating can be an issue and the entire room needs to be planned for it.

Among many other things, I would not want to walk 24' from my fridge to the sink, just to wash off some raspberries before putting them on my cereal....