When you take out room for actual wall sizes (4"---6" on the exterior of you are going 2x6 construction), it is going to compress your room sizes down so you need to take that in to account. Your master bedroom will be more like 11x13.

It's a fairly basic little ranch house. Not unlike the first house my husband and I owned. Simple and comfortable. I will give you a few suggestions:

I like the corner fireplace. I think it will make furniture placement easy, but I think you've drawn it too small.

Your room sizes are all compact . . . But the laundry would be generous even in a much larger house. This isn't where I'd have allotted the most space. Instead of the small corner pantry, I'd consider a door that'd open up to the laundry and let it serve as a laundry-pantry. More flexibility.

I'd move the corner bedroom closet to between the two bedrooms so it would provide a noise barrier between the two rooms.

In the secondary bath and by the front door you have closet doors that will bang against other doors. I'd switch the bedroom closet and the coat closet; that'll fix the problem by the door. And in the bathroom I'd go with open shelves up top and a place for a hamper down low. No doors, no problems.

The master bedroom will be minimal but okay. What is too small is the closet. You will need 24" on each side for hanging clothes, and that only leaves you 24" of walking space. At best: that's not allowing anything for the wall thickness.

This is clearly a budget house, and one way you can save some money is to switch the master closet and the secondary. If you place the two bathrooms "back to back", you'll save on plumbing costs AND decrease the possibility of future leaks in the walls. You could save more still if you flip the dining room and kitchen, keeping all your plumbing in the center of the house.

I know 30' across is a standard truss, but this needs to be just a touch wider for comfort. If you cut down the extra large laundry and storage space, you can still keep the same square footage.

We're hoping to be under $230k with the build. Including $24k lot and $20k for the basement finish. Doing the painting, electrical and whatever else we're able to do ourselves, until we're worn out! Our GC will fill in what we can't or won't do. Luckily we found a flexible GC. If we can build it larger, we would a bit. Just trying to stay simple and not go overboard.

Our bedroom is 12' x 14', and while it isn't huge, it is adequate. We have a king bed, a chest of drawers, and a bookcase. There's not room for a comfy chair in the bedroom, which I would like to have, but there would be if I had a smaller bad.

I understand the desire for garage storage space, but carefully consider how you will use it. 12' x 14' is a lot of floor space, but I find that I like wall storage in the garage. I have 2' deep shelves along one whole wall of my garage, and they are wonderful - they contain recycling bins, flowerpots, gardening hand tools, garage tools, bats and balls, camping gear - very convenient. But they would be less convenient if we had bikes, lawn mower, etc on the floor in front of them. We hang bikes on the wall, but that's hard to do if the vehicle is too close.

I would narrow the garage storage area - which also narrows the laundry and mudroom. But keep the garage the same width, and space the garage door/s so that you have plenty of room on the opposite side for shelving and/or floor space.

As others said, the laundry is too big. Making it narrower, and giving some of that space to mudroom storage, will reduce your finished space, cutting costs.

If you are planning such a large garage storage area, you may want to consider a door for that area - something so the kids don't have to maneuver bikes etc around your cars to get outside. Our neighbors just did something similar - but they put the storage area on the back side of the house with a half width garage door. They also store their ride on mower there and didn't want to have to take the cars out to access the mower.

I think the 8' island is a bit tight for 4. That's only 2' per person. Might be fine when kids are little, but not for adults. The 4' depth is pretty deep as well. You only need 1' of overhang for seating. I'm assuming cabinets underneath. And you don't want 3' deep cabinets!

If you moved your stairway, maybe adjacent to the closets by the front door, your could add the staircase area to the mbr, and loose the little L hallway.

As others mentioned, the closet doesn't have room for 2 racks of clothes. So maybe skip the wic and go with 2 separate closets. Your closet and master bath are 2/3 the size of your mbr.

Your list of wants/needs has a lot in common with the plan I have. If you'd like a full copy let me know, it's my own design with help from the kind folks here at Gardenweb.

The main floor is right about 1700 sqft, the basement plan has an additional full bathroom, bedroom, office, den and home theater space. (1500 sqft). The garage is a double tandem, and is designed for an easy two car plus storage or a somewhat tighter four car.

Our lifestyle choice is to have a TV-free main level so the living room is sized for comfort and conversation instead of tv watching.

Front/back render can be seen at http://zakko.org

Here is a link that might be useful:

As mentioned in the first response, the problem you have is that walls have a depth dimension (and aren't just a line). By the time you add a couple of them together, you have smaller rooms/areas than you thought you had.
If you add 1 foot left to right across the entire house, that will probably solve most of your dimension problems. The dimensions left to right don't suffer as much from loss of a few inches as the ones top to bottom...

6 feet width on your master closet will be the absolute minimum width you'll want to go. Many people suggest 7'. I personally, couldn't allocate 7 for mine, and went with 6. And, it works, but you would definitely NOT want to be any narrower than that if you plan to hang on both sides.

Well, we switched some things around. Quite a few. Wanted more of a foyer like you suggested. What are your thoughts on this layout? When drawing actual walls, we'll expand...these are just room minimums for an idea on layout. We appreciate the feedback. Thanks!

â¢Laundry/Pantry- has pocket door. Will have industrial shelving for additional pantry storage.
â¢Mud room- no door, open walkway. Enough for six cubbies of some sort.
â¢Office- french doors. I don't need a big office space. I'm a SAHM, not like I work from home.
â¢Kitchen- trash next to island cooktop, dishwasher next to sink. 3.5x9 island.
â¢Front porch is covered, back is open slab.
â¢House faces south.
â¢Four young kids. Two beds in the basement, a bath, storage room, family room and safe room under porch.