Your master bedroom would be a long ways away from a baby's room. That would be one of the biggest concerns I would have.

I like this plan! In the lower level make the unfinished stoorage a bedroom and the odd shaped bedroom storage. Move the door to the storm shelter to the future laundry that can be both laundry and a bathroom. Move the kitchenette to the current bathroom area. Your plan is very similar to one we foolishly scrapped.

Very nice plan!

I do have a concern about the size of the dining area. You are going to end up with an extension of the bedroom hall "through" the dining area into the living room. How much space does that give you for a table and chairs? I think it's going to be tight, especially since it looks like you will access the covered porch through the dining room. I would bump out the dining area a good three feet, especially if you are going to be dining with lots of guests right there. :)

It's a nice layout overall.

I agree about making the dining room a little wider. Our dining room in our rental house is about that size, and it is tight.

I'm not sure about the placement of bedroom #3. I would prefer not to have the bedrooms off the mudroom like that, and I don't like the idea of having a bedroom that is essentially in the garage. I'm not sure how to fix it, but you asked for opinions, and that is mine.

Thanks, everyone!

@neroselover, that was a concern of mine initially as well. I was convinced by others that there are very good baby monitors now that would put my mind at ease...I guess we'll see when we get there. ;) We are thinking that initially the baby will be in our room (We don't have much bedroom furniture) then move to the nursery.

@motherof3sons, thank you! I would like to eventually turn the kitchenette area into a bar that opens into the living area. (We will frame for this, but cover it up for now.) We've actually talked with our builder about moving the laundry hookups into the unfinished space next to the kitchenette where the utilities are because of the dryer venting.

@bird_lover6, thanks for the heads up about the dining space. I am a bit concerned about that as well. I'll talk to our builder about what it could cost to add space on to the back of the dining room. I am thinking it may be better to have the sliding door open from the left pane instead of the middle, to allow better flow around the dining table. Would it be weird to have the chairs come out even with the doorway to the bedroom hallway? There is still space between where the chairs would end and the island would begin...?

@zone4newby, thanks for your input. I totally agree. This is my biggest dislike about the plan, but I don't know how to fix it without starting over (which isn't an option for us now). We changed the kitchen layout earlier in the process, which moved the hallway up, making no room for bedrooms in the back of the house off the hallway. I don't like the layout as much, but was worth the trade off for the kitchen.
In the edited version of the hallway, we enclosed the mudroom/laundry room and pushed the bedroom back into the garage about 4 ft to hopefully make it a little less awkward. We plan to put a sliding barn door on the laundry/mudroom which will probably stay open most of the time unless VIP guests are over. ;)
If anyone has any other ideas I'd love to hear them!

Could you switch bedroom #2 and the mudroom & bathroom? Then there could be a bedroom hall that is not the mudroom?

It would require some fiddling, but it might work.

@zone4newby, we actually tried to figure this out with the architect but didn't find a good solution without cutting out the kitchen space. I'm open to ideas, though!
We've tried to make the laundry area better by enclosing it here. Thoughts?

This post was edited by icanea on Mon, May 13, 13 at 15:04

True, there are baby monitors. The walking that far in the middle of the night several times is more of what I was thinking of. Hopefully, you'll have children that sleep all night. :) Mine didn't until they were 2. :(