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mikedelta1

Floor Plan and Elevation Check

mikedelta1
12 years ago

They are adding on to our subdivision and should be ready to sell lots by end of July, so I'm not in a huge hurry to have the final plans done but I am starting to talk to builders in the next few weeks. I'm trying to keep the plan fairly simple to save money and I like simple. If you could look these over and let me know if you see anything you would do different. THis plan is setup for crawlspace but if the lots look like they would accept a rear walk out, the basement steps will be under the main stairs. The few things that I keep thinking about adding: Door between master closet and laundry, worried that the powder room is a long ways from the other side of the house, and figuring out a way to use the dead space under the stairs from the garage side. Excuse my sorry CAD skills it has been about 20 years since I took a few classes.

First Floor

http://www.flickr.com/photos/62288477@N05/6985654159/

Second Floor

http://www.flickr.com/photos/62288477@N05/6985654303/

Front Elevation

http://www.flickr.com/photos/62288477@N05/6839534058/

Left Elevation

http://www.flickr.com/photos/62288477@N05/6839533788/

Rear Elevation

http://www.flickr.com/photos/62288477@N05/6839533588/

Right Elevation

http://www.flickr.com/photos/62288477@N05/6839533318/

Comments (3)

  • andi_k
    12 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    you will get a lot more feedback if you post the pics directly into your message...not sure if you've seen the post on how to do that, but here are instructions I copied down from another post...

    Setup:
    1) Go to photobucket.com and open a free account.
    2) Follow their instructions for uploading your pics to their site.
    3) To enable sharing of the pics and posting on sites like GW, click 'Share' from the menu right below the pic you want. A new window will open.
    4) Click 'Get Link Code'
    5) Select the first box next to 'HTML for websites and blogs'. Make sure it is the only box selected and click 'save'. (You can also choose to apply this setting to all pics in your album with a link in your album).
    Now your pics are enabled for posting on sites like GW!
    Posting pic in GW message:
    1) Begin the written portion of your posting on GW.
    2) When you are ready to add the pics you desire, open a new browser window and log into your photobucket account.
    3) Copy the contents of 'html code' box below the desired pic.
    4) Go back to your GW posting and post the code within the message

  • bevangel_i_h8_h0uzz
    12 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Ditto the suggestion to imbed your images into a post. Cutting and pasting the urls into new windows and then clicking back and forth between them and GW is bit of a PITA and some folks who might otherwise offer helpful comments won't want to bother. But, here are mine...

    One problem I see is that your entry foyer is too cramped. because of the staircase starting so close to the front door. I don't know about you but, when I go to the front door to greet guests and invite them in, I typically open the door and step back and to the side and gesture for my guests to enter and walk ahead of me toward the main living area. Then I close the door behind my guests and follow them. With your design I would either have to step up two or three steps while my guests entered OR basically "hide" behind the door OR just throw the door open and leave it standing open while I LEAD guests toward the living area and hope that the last of my guests shut the door behind himself. I think you need to push the stairs back at least 2 feet to open up the foyer.

    I also think that walking down the stairs and facing a wall 4 feet (or even 6 feet) from the bottom step could feel a bit claustrophobic. It might help if you had a window beside the door so that folks walking down the stairs could look out of instead of at a wall.

    Also, a 3 ft wide stairway is the minimum allowed by modern codes. If you want you home to looks somewhat more luxurious than a common tract house - or if you're thinking of using box newels - you may want to go with a wider staircase. 42" or 44" would look very nice.

    The study and family room size are fine. I'm curious though that you indicate the family room will be two story high but you don't have any special windows or anything to make that vaulted ceiling space special.

    Your kitchen is smaller than many that we see here on GW but it seems reasonably functional. Still, you might want to post that space on the kitchen's forum to get their input. If you're having custom cabinets made, consider having the upper cabinets built 15" inches deep instead of the standard 12" deep. It is amazing how much more will fit into a 15" deep cabinet than a 12" cabinet.

    With the built-in dining room base cabinets, the dining area might be a tiny bit tight...especially if you plan to keep bar stools under the bar at the kitchen island. Barstools will tend to push the walk-way path into the dining area some making the available floor space for your dining table and chairs a bit less than you might be thinking. Do make sure you'll have enough room for a nice WIDE aisle between the bar (and barstools) and the chairs around your table when people are actually seated at the table. You'll also want at least 3ft between the back edge of the table and the built-ins so that there is enough room to squeeze by between chairs when they are pushed out. Assuming those dining room cabinets will house dishes, silverware, table linen's, holiday serving platters and the like, you might want have the base cabinets built 18" deep instead of the standard 24". 18" is plenty for the kinds of things normally stored in dining room cupboard and that would give you an extra 6" of free floor space.

    The master bedroom is a decent size and the master bath is okay however, you might want to think about whether whomever gets the sink close to the door is going to be annoyed by the other person opening the bathroom door into him/her. It might help to move the two sinks next to each other and move the linen tower over next to the door. Or, consider an outward swing door or a pocket door.

    The master bedroom closet is too narrow to hang clothing on three walls as shown. The sleeves of clothing on a hanging rod stick out from the wall about 24". Heavier clothing like winter coats and mens' suits take more width. So, at best, a 6ft wide closet with clothing hung on both sides will only have a 2 ft wide aisle down the middle. That's barely enough room to walk down the middle and simply not enough space to step back to look at the clothing on one side so you can select what you want to wear. The master closet needs to at least 6.5 ft wide to be useful and 7 ft wide or wider to be really comfortable to use.

    If you want a front loading washer, you'll probably have a door conflict with the washing machine door and the laundry room door. All the front loading washers/dryers I've seen have the washing machine door swing outward to the left and the dryer door swing to the right. This way, when the washer is to the left of the dryer, the machine doors aren't in the way when you transfer clothing from washer to dryer. With your setup, the washer will be next to the laundry room entry door. Problem is that the doors on front-load washers typically need to be allowed to stand open for a couple of hours after a wash is finished so the barrel can dry out completely. Otherwise mold tends to grow in the washer. I find that I tend to forget to go back and shut the washing machine door later so as a practical matter, my washing machine door stands open pretty much all the time when I'm not running a load. In your design, my washing machine door would be standing open right in the way of closing the laundry room door.

    I also would not want the open laundry room door partially blocking my access to the laundry room sink. And, as small as the laundry room is and, since it has no windows, I wouldn't particularly want to be working in there with the laundry room door closed.

    You garage is VERY generously sized for a two car garage. Do you have extra large vehicles or lots of tools and stuff that you plan to store in the garage? Unless you have lots and lots of stuff to store in your garage, I'd use any dead space under the stairs for an additional closet space inside the house where, overall, you have far too little closet space.

    What is your plan for using the upstairs loft area? Do you envision that as a space for a second TV or a small game room area, a play area for little ones, or a quiet spot for older kids to study or what? You might want to do a search on this board for discussions about heating/cooling issues and noise issues associated with two-story living areas that are wide open to upstairs living areas.

    The upstairs bedroom closets don't work well. They are too deep to be reach-in closets and not really large enough to be true walk-in closets. The swinging door takes up much of the floor space and, when you hang garments in an L-shape, the 2x2ft space in the corner of the L is not very accessible so can't be used for everyday stuff. Thus your closets will only have about 4 linear feet of truly useable hanging space. In these days, that is just too little closet space even for kids. What is your roof slope and how tall are the bedroom walls that are up against the attic? You might do better to make the closets shallower (2.5 ft deep) and extend them into the attic space so the closets end up even with the back walls of each bedroom. With two outward swinging doors on each closet, you would nearly double the useable area of each bedroom closet.

    As for the upper bedrooms, have you given any thought to possibly adding a dormer window to the bedroom at the back and maybe a second side window to the front bedroom? Both rooms seem small, dark, and rather "blah" for a 3 bedroom house that is pushing 2500 sq ft.

    In fact, overall, I would want more windows. Since you apparently haven't chosen your lot yet, you probably don't have any idea yet where your best "views" will be. But, since you've sketched a plan with a side-load garage, I'm assuming that all of the lots in the neighborhood you're looking at are fairly wide so that you'll have room for side-yards as well as a front and back yard. As much as possible, I'd want to take advantage of not having neighboring houses 5 to 12 feet away to put windows on two walls in ALL of the corner rooms. Light entering a room from two directions makes an unbelievably HUGE difference in the way a room feels and lives.

  • mikedelta1
    Original Author
    12 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I really appreciate the input. When I posted I thought I had the right code for pictures, I will try to fix it, I did everything in your post about pics except for that I use Flickr, I will try photobucket.

    A little background might help, I live in a bit shy of 2700 square feet two story with the garage in the basement (huge). There are 4 bedrooms up, kitchen, breakfast formal dining and living, family room and small laundry room down. We are a family of 4, the oldest daughter leaves for college in the fall, the youngest leaves in two years. We are looking not so much as downsizing but removing the stuff we don't like or use. The formal rooms never get used except for the living and just because the computer is in there. The house we live in now is sized about right except for a few pains in the backside. The new house will be set up to close off the upstairs most of the time. The study is going to be made to convert back to a formal dining room incase that is where the market is in 15 or 20 years when I retire and move someplace warm.

    BevAngel you post was great. The stairs in Chief architect show up weird sometimes they were 42 wide but that didn't account for the rail, so I bumped them out to 48 to account for the rail. I also moved them up bit to account for landing at the wall. The house I live in has a wall at the entrance that is only 3', I've never really noticed it, but in the redo I opened it up to 5'.

    Reference the kitchen, the 15" depth is a good idea; I will also be putting in small uppers where the soffit would be. The cabinets in the dining room are actually a window seat built from refrigerator cabinets and base cabinets, it is almost Identical to my friend who just built except mine is about a foot wider and 6 inches deeper. I like the feel of his. The bar in the island gives me pause though, not sure what I can do there.

    I fixed the master closet/bath, closets upstairs, and the laundry room (still no window but may add one of those small nonoperable ones).

    The windows for the bedrooms up is a problem, the roof over the master doesn't leave much wall for the one bedroom. I will play around with adding an extra window for the front bedroom and a dormer to the back bedroom.

    The loft will be used just as a small seating area more of a large landing for the stairs. The upstairs will have its own HVAC and ducted right won't be too bad. The open over the family is actually kind of on purpose, we have a vent less fireplace in the family room of the current house now, within about 5 minutes of turning it on low, the bedroom above is like a pizza oven. We stay in a place in Gatlinburg in the summer and winter with a set up like this and it works there, I'm going to really look how the HVAC is set up.

    I've right sized the garage back to 24 x 26. I will also have a detached two car if the lot doesn't work for a basement with a garage down also.

    I've looked at the plat for the subdivision, the smallest lot is 120' wide so the home width isn't that much of a problem. The depth might be on some of the bluff lots.

    Again thank you very much for the feedback and I will post up the revised plans when I get them done.