I should probably add more notes:
- the master bedroom is the room on the far right, on the front of the house.
- with the existing plan, from the master bedroom, you walk into the dressing room, then into the master closet
- the laundry room is to the left of the master closet.

But, it just doesn't work. HELP!

Bethany-dimensions of each of those spaces would help. How large do you want the dressing space to be? I am not an expert but for those that are those are helpful.

That would be helpful. Sorry about that. I have worked on it some today using the program I have at home (the first plan is from the lady who is drawing up our plans, which unfortunately didn't have the measurements on this version.)

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This forum is giving me fits today - I keep having to re-submit the photo. My changes with the measurements is attached. (You'll see that I took out the dressing room and just made the bathroom one big room.) The cabinets on the far right wall will be joined by a countertop stretching all the way across to make a makeup vanity.

hi there,

is there a reason everything has to be square and the entire house has to be a perfect rectangle?

also, i'm wondering why you have two back doors right next to each other. do you need to have the door off the laundry?

what are the two narrow strips on the long bath wall opposite the toilet and sink?

6'10" seems like an awful lot of space for a makeup counter, and generally i feel like the bathroom is a lot of square footage that's not laid out efficiently. it's like 116 square feet with one sink and a combo tub/shower.

i would take another look at the position and entry to your master bedroom. it seems to be located off an open front entry/living room with no alcove or privacy wall. and given that, i might try to post a more detailed view of your whole plan with labels and dimensions for others to give feedback just to make sure you're not overlooking something.

or if you're comfortable with everything else, just ignore me. :)

I don't have any answers but here are some concerns I would have with the 2nd plan you posted....

You have to walk through the bathroom to get to the closet. Imagine someone is using the toilet but the other needs to get dressed.

How well does a pocket door work for sound transmission? I have a solid core door on our master bath but I still hear sounds when my DH is using the bathroom and I'm still in bed.

As mentioned I also don't really like the door to the master bedroom placement.

Could the master bath and closet switch spaces?

That's a great point. We originally had the closet where the bathroom is, and I'm going to play with it a little more. That would allow me to have a window in the bathroom, too.

The reason we are keeping the house as a rectangle is to keep costs down.

Thank you all so much for your feedback...now off to do some pondering and re-arranging! It's so nice to have other people to give input - I've been working on this plan off and on for a year so fresh eyes are great! And all my sweet husband says is, "whatever you want." Gotta love him.

As for the master bedroom being off the living room, does anyone have any suggestions of where to move it to? I'm not really worried about it being there as far as noise goes as I'm more concerned with separating the master bedroom from my daughter's room (teenagers and their music.) I'm going to print the plan and add room labels and then upload in a little while.

Oh, and as for the two doors near one another. The one from the laundry room will go out directly to the carport. The other off the kitchen/dining room will go out to a covered/enclosed porch.

Oh, and as for the two doors near one another. The one from the laundry room will go out directly to the carport. The other off the kitchen/dining room will go out to a covered/enclosed porch.

This might help - plan with room labels.

Maggiepie11 - the two rectangles in the bathroom side by side are shelves for linen storage.

Just to clarify so that you all are not as confused as I am (lol) - the entire house plan I just posted does not have my changes that I posted earlier on it - this is the one from the draftswoman, so this is what it looked like before I started playing with it.

and bethanysmom, a couple more questions... first, dimensions are still missing. :)

for your bathroom, do you deliberately want one sink instead of two? and do you prefer the toilet out in the open as it is? or would you be interested in a potty room? and how about the tub/shower combo? did you specifically want a tub/shower combo? don't want to make suggestions on stuff you don't want!

Maggiepie11 - I'll have to add dimensions. Thank you for the reminder - trying to do too many things at once and not successfully doing any of them. HA!
Yes - we do want a tub shower combo. I'm open to a potty room, but it is not something I have to have.
Here is another version I just drew up. Better?

This is an updated one. It's not exact or completely finished, but it does have room measurements. :-)

None of the dimensions seem accurate. You have one obviously larger closet with a depth of 5' 5'' but onthe other closets that are obviously smaller have a depth of 6'. There are also otervery amatuer errors that would lead one to assume that you are not dealing with anyone who has a single clue about home design. Ditch whomever is drawing up anything for you and find an architect.

hollysprings - I should've been more clear - these last few were drawn up by me, so most definitely an amateur. :-)
The draftswoman I'm working with does much better work, but on the plan she sent it's hard to see the dimensions, so I just threw it together in the program I have at home to give an idea of our entire plan. I haven't quite figured out how to do more accurate dimensions in the program I've been using, so they are definitely not accurate.

Oh, and the 6' is actually the length of the smaller closets.

ok i have a few more thoughts.

1) i think the bathroom/dressing area/closet area are a lot better now. you are still eating up excess space with the walkway through the dressing area, and i'm not sure you'll utilize all 6' width. But with your master bathroom setup, i can definitely see the value and appeal of that separate area.

2) i think you have some door swing issues at your double backdoor and the doorway between the dining and laundry. i think those exterior doors need to swing in, right? and then you've got door swing conflicts with the interior door between the laundry and dining. lots of doors.

3) i think your daughter's walk-in closet is just slightly too narrow for a walk-in. it's set at 5'5" wide right now and in order to make it a real walk-in with the ability to hang on both sides, you'd want at least 6' interior after the drywall etc. if you're doing a walk-in for the sake of a walk-in because she's a teenager and it's one of her requests i get that, but if you could just steal another 10" or so from the pantry and bath, which you definitely have, then you could do the walk-in right. :) otherwise if a walk-in isn't super important to her, she could still have an amazing 10' long reach in, though you'd have to get creative with closet doors, and then you'd free up a couple more feet width for your kitchen, dining, or laundry.

4) generally, you're using the square footage in the whole house differently than how i would allocate space, but that's the beauty of building your own house. you can build to suit your family! some places i might not give such ample space: guest bedroom, the second bathroom, partial walk-in closet in daughter's room, dressing room, HUGE pantry... but that's just an opinion. here's a picture of a basement bathroom in our last house. it was 9x10 and felt like such a vast misuse of space for the most part. when we built our house, we paid to pre-plumb for a future bathroom and didn't specify where to pre-plumb, so when the time came to finish our basement, we were at the mercy of where they put the toilet, shower, etc. as a result, we ended up with a large square-ish space. most guests won't complain about too much roominess in a bathroom, but I felt like there were better places to allocate it. the tub/shower was across from the sink and toilet. there was about 4' of empty space to the left of the toilet that we partially filled with a freestanding shelf unit. pardon the blandness - the photo was taken as soon as the contractor was out. :)

5) I also wonder if you've thought about opening up the wall a bit more between the dining room and living room. I know some people prefer more closed off spaces, and others like a more open concept. i grew up in a house with the kitchen/dining as one area and it had an opening into the living room, and my parents would have LOVED to knock down that wall and have a more open space. however, they couldn't because with the window placement and fireplace, they would have been really limited on furniture placement. anyway, i just wonder if you've walked through a home with a plan like this and like the separation of the kitchen area from the living area.

so hopefully there's a helpful nugget of info in here somewhere for you! :) good luck!

maggiepie11 - thank you so very much for your thoughtful responses. I'll address your questions and suggestions.
1. for the dressing area, I was trying to decide how wide it should be...this is something I've gone back and forth on. I want it big enough so that I can comfortably sit and do my makeup and hair and not block the walkway. I'm just not sure what that measurement should be. Definitely needs some work.
2. You are right on the door issue - will have to see what I can do to solve that problem.
3. You hit the nail on the head with my daughter's closet - she just wants a walk-in, but doesn't want to be able to hang clothes on both sides. Instead, the plan is to use the long solid wall for all hanging and then have her lingerie chest on one of the opposite shorter walls and on the other a short rod that is placed diagonally for planning outfits (I hope that makes sense - it's hard to explain.) She wants fabric curtains instead of doors, but I don't see us living in this house for the rest of our lives, so I would like to have the opening done to where doors could be installed later on when we go to sell it.
4. The pantry is large, but I'd like to be able to put a small chest freezer in there and I'm an avid couponer, so I'd like to have lots of storage for when I get things free/super cheap - so it won't just be for food storage but also for all paper products (which I normally buy a lot of when they're cheap) and extra household, health and beauty products, etc. I do think it could be smaller, though and still work, so I'll work on that.
The guest bedroom is going to be multi-purpose in that it will also serve as a craft room.
Thank you so much for the photo - that really helps me visualize the space for the guest bathroom so much better!
5. I would like to have the opening between the living room and kitchen/dining room larger, but my husband doesn't really like open concept rooms - he wants us to be able to close off the kitchen/dining room. My thinking is that we'll install a sliding barn door there in that opening, so it's easy to close off, but will more than likely stay open most of the time, so we'll both be happy. I think I could increase the opening to at least 8 feet.

I hope this helps understand our thinking. There is definitely a lot of room for improvement on the plan, and I'm so appreciative you took the time to share your thoughts. I'm going to go work on it some more now.

Thank you again!