2nd floor image

When you adjust the kitchen, consider ways to get the fridge nearer the living spaces/dining area. An oft-written kitchen "flow" in the kitchen forum is "Fridge, to sink, to cooktop" (for prep). Your fridge is not convenient to your sink... and it is especially not convenient to the main eating area/living area.

Outswing or pocket or some other style door than inswing on both the master WC and the powder room downstairs. You can see just from the image how the door swing takes up the entire floor area of the toilet room. You will find it difficult to get to the powder room toilet (by sitting on the sink to close the door infront of you enough to get past it to the toilet).

Will there be a door from garage to the stair/powder hallway? If not, I'd consider it.

J&J baths are not popular on this forum, and you can read why. Know that they can be not popular and why, and make an informed decision for or against one (for upstairs).

It's hard to tell flow and sight lines without windows and doors on the plan. For instance, the garage is square, so it's impossible toguess which side the garage doors are on and where the driveway is located.

I've never been a fan of having side entrance front doors. With a stairway on the opposite wall of the front entrance, people walking up to you front door will be staring at a blank wall. With the door on the side, it's kind of hard to find the entrance. Not very inviting.

When I think of the 2 logical driveway approaches - north or west - I don't see the opportunity for many windows on either wall. The north facade has garage, bathtub and closets. The west facade has garage, staircase and entry foyer with a tiny offset entry area.

Overall I like it. Simple, moderate in size, and it looks like it'd live comfortably.

I'd go with some type of glass in the garage door. Otherwise, you run the risk -- no, the certainty -- of someone opening the garage door and running into the open dryer door.

The dining room is not large, but since it's positioned next to the living room, you have the ability to move furniture a bit when you need to expand the table.

I'm assuming the break in the cabinet row is where a door will be placed? I'm not sure if I like that or not. On the one hand, it eliminates a kitchen corner, which is always expensive and inefficient . . . but on the other hand, it's a break in your work space.

Your bedroom closets are unique -- no doors? If you're a neat person, it'll work out nicely. I'm not sure I'd do it, but that's personal taste, not lack of function.

Is your shower wide enough for comfort? The toilet door isn't going to work: imagine yourself walking into the tiny closet, scooting over next to the toilet so you can close the door -- unpleasant, isn't it? If you eliminate the door and go with a half-wall between it and the sink, you'll have light and a more comfortable spot . . . it'll be easier to clean.

Upstairs: I like J&J bathrooms, but I would do away with the pocket door entrance. Pocket doors are good for spots where the door stays open almost all the time . . . but you want the ability to close it occasionally. They don't have the longevity for a bathroom door, which is opened and closed multiple times a day.

Thanks so much. All of these are helpful suggestions that I had not considered.

We don't worry too much about the upstairs J & J bathroom because we rarely expect to have guests (perhaps once or twice a year), and usually just one couple at a time.

We asked for the upgraded hardware in the pocket doors for better longevity.

I have the exact same powder room in my house right now and I really dislike it. It would be better if the door was not Inswing.

I would put the fireplace on the West wall of the living room and save the south wall for as many attractive windows as possible. You don't want all of that West sun anyway. Lots of folks dislike a TV above a FP, but we have one now and rather like it.

Why not have your master bedroom closets between your kitchen and your bedroom as a sound barrier between the living area and the bedroom rather than on an outside wall? Plus that little jog for the recessed frig would be in a closet rather than on your wall.

Nice little starter home.

I'm not a huge fan of two-story rooms and, like J&J bathrooms, you'll find multiple discussions here on GW regarding what's right/wrong with two story rooms. You might want to review some of those so that you can make an informed decision about opting for two-story spaces.

Of course, it may be that you're planning a roof line that will reduce most of that two story space to a much lower height.

However, even if you decide that you really want the WOW-factor of having a two story living room, I really think you should rethink having it extend over to the dining area and HALF-WAY across the kitchen. It's going to look really odd and accidental for the ceiling to suddenly drop down from two-story height to single story height right over the middle of your kitchen island and right over the middle of your sink. Have you given any thought to how you would light that island and put lights over the sink?????

If it were me and I wanted a two-story living room, I'd drop the ceiling back down to normal height along a line extending from the right edge of the pantry to the south wall. That would provide a visual divide between living room and dining room, give the dining room a lower ceiling and avoid the weird ceiling height jump right over the center of the kitchen island. A lower ceiling in the dining room would allow that room to feel much cozier. And, you would gain up to 200 sq ft of extra space upstairs for almost NO additional cost.

Even if you plan for a sloping roof on that side of the house so that only a portion of the extra space upstairs would be fully useable, 100 sq ft of extra space would allow for larger bedrooms, larger upstairs closets and/or a second bathroom so as to get rid of the J&J. At the very least, each bedroom could have it's own vanity area so that only the toilet and bathtub are shared.

The only thing I really dislike about the downstairs is having the "laundry area" in the pass thru space coming from the garage. Consider...a couple of friends drop by for drinks before they and you and your significant other all head out to dinner together. You decide to drive so everybody heads out to the garage to leave. Or, you pick up your teenager and one of his/her classmates from school and bring them both to your house because they're working on a school project together. Of course you pull into the garage as usual to unload.

Do you REALLY want to have these guests walking past the family laundry that is stacked on top of the dryer waiting to be put away, or having to step over/around the piles of dirty laundry waiting for its turn to go into the washer??? Let's face it, getting laundry done takes time and most of us have at least a bit of laundry piled up in the laundry room on occasion. Do you want to have to constantly make sure your laundry room space is immaculate? Or, do you want to face your teen's utter mortification if that classmate who has to wade over the family's dirty laundry just happens to be someone he/she has a huge crush on?

Me, I'd move the laundry room upstairs (into some of the extra 200 sq ft gained by getting rid of the two-story ceiling over the dining room. Or, I'd move the laundry to the basement.

Just my 2 cents.

Even with the best hardware, a pocket door will eventually give you trouble, whereas a regular door is pretty trouble-free. Also, the pocket door requires an extra-thick wall, which takes up space.

I don't share the concerns about people walking through a laundry room. You have storage space on the side opposite the laundry machines -- I'd have a spot sized for laundry baskets. No problem with people seeing laundry neatly piled in baskets waiting for laundry.