We are combining all those functions in the house we are building. Between the house and the garage is a generous, triangular room that is roughly 400 square feet. Cabinets are going in this week, so I should know shortly if what we planned works as intended.

When you exit the kitchen/living area, you go through the mudroom to the garage. From the kitchen to the garage is a little less than 6' on the short wall (between the doors to those parts of the house). The short wall has a window, and the wall opposite it is much longer and has two double-wide windows and a door to the patio. This door is the shortest path between the house and our barn (horse farm). Along this wall will be desks and filing cabinets. It will be a drop zone for mail and bills and paperwork, and our printer will be located here. We use laptops and the printer will be on an airport station so we can work from any room of the house and keep the mess and noise of the printer in the office area of our mudroom. This wall is about 14' long (not counting the door, which is at an angle).

Along the wall between garage and mudroom are the washer, dryer, sink, cat genie, and cabinets and countertop space. We don't have a linen closet in the master, so we will store linens here in the laundry area. This wall is about 28' long.

The wall between the kitchen/living area and the mudroom has the "mudroom" function with cubbyholes, hooks, and bench. Also in this wall is a large closet for coats and boots, opening into the mudroom. A generous pantry is located behind the bench and cubbyholes and opens into the kitchen. And a small broom closet at then end of the wall opens into the space facing the short wall, where you travel from kitchen to garage.

There is a generous amount of space in the middle of the floor, which may be left open, may eventually have a table or a church pew. I need to spend some time with the space once we move in to be sure.

Our house is about 1800 square feet on the main footprint, not counting this mudroom or the garage.

We hope that this area keeps all the mess of living out of the main house and is a very utilitarian room. We went with the new, large pattern Formica and solid oak (non-custom) cabinets in this area, saving the $$$ over higher-end materials to put into less utilitarian parts of the house. (Formica here let me have built-ins in the study.)

Hope this helps.

Gone South, have you posted your layout before? I'd love to see it. It is hard finding "smaller" layouts on this site. Lots of really big ones.

Gone south I'd love to see it too! It sounds like its laid out perfectly for all of those things. I am torn between keeping the study not so desky so we could use it as a sitting area too or maybe for guests until we have the basement finished. It seems if you go under 1800 sq. ft. you lose a foyer or any kind of entry/mudroom as well as a half bath. :(

I would love to see pics if you wouldn't mind sharing as we are looking for something around 1800 sq ft also.

Haven't posted any pics before and don't have an image of the plans electronically, but I took a pic of the mudroom portion with my iphone and will hope that my attempt to post it here works.

{{gwi:1444156}}

The house is 2200 sq ft when you add in this 400 sq ft mudroom (neither of these figures includes the unheated garage). The 400 mudroom space includes closets and pantries at the top of the picture, where the mudroom bumps up to the house.

We designed our study with a closet and a window, so it counts as a bedroom if we resell and someone wants to use it that way. So technically a 3 BR house. But we are using it as a 2BR: master, guest, plus study with built-ins.

Thank you very much Gone_South. I had to scroll up to re-read but I think I figured it out. :) It definitely is a generous sized space and I like the closet in there too for the bigger bulkier stuff - really heavy coats and big winter boots. We are all season here and lots of snow in the winter (with the exception of this past winter). I like your kitchen pantry also - I think that's a great use of space. I just remembered about our water cooler, I'd like to get that out of our eat in kitchen for the next house. Feel free to post more pics as the walls go up and it takes shape.