hi eagle! congrats on kicking off the journey. i love the planning phase, but we're about to break ground and i'm SO itching for the next phase to start. :)

so your request for feedback was pretty general, so i'm not sure if there are rooms or functions niggling in the back of your mind that you feel are unaddressed or if you're happy with the plan and just looking for little tweaks, but here are some things i notice with fresh eyes.

if you have 3 kids, are 2 of them going to share bedrooms? if not, one of your kids is really getting the shaft with that small bedroom/office. :) i was paranoid about a square inch difference between room sizes for our two kids. haha i'm not a big bedroom person, but it's more about parity amongst the kids since that room is quite small - the mudroom is almost the same size.

another thing that jumps out at me is you have 3 relatively large eating spaces with your island, banquette and dining room. is a separate space for formal dining important to you? if not, you could probably repurpose some space. if it is important to you, i'm curious about the choice for french doors on the long wall and then just a hallway type opening on the other walls. what are you trying to achieve with french doors on a room that doesn't fully close off on all sides?

being in the northeast... are you going to have a finished basement? or even if it's not fully finished, some place for the kids to tear apart and play? your open living/kitchen area doesn't really work well for toys and such.

and then i know there are a lot of schools of thought on this, but my personal preference is to have the laundry room as close to where the laundry is created as possible... as in, admidst all the bedrooms so the chore is less of a chore when you're not trekking baskets full through the house.

then consider how you might lay out furniture in your living room before you decide on where to place the fireplace. it might be a nice sightline to have it on the same wall as the sink so you view it as you enter from the foyer. then if there's a hearth it's not an obstacle to walking through that room. on that note though, consider what direction the house faces, and thus, how light will come into that room if you've got a lot of windows and it's your "tv viewing room" if you're a tv family. nothing worse than a glary tv!

so there are some random first impressions, and maybe none of them are relevant to you, but hopefully there's at least a little nugget that's helpful.

best of luck!

Very much agree on the laundry room comments above. It's far, far away from everything. I'd do away with what looks like a breakfast booth and put the laundry there. You've got plenty of other places to eat. And then have a huge mudroom. You're going to need it with 3 kids.

There's a whole lotta stuff going on at the entry to the master bath - 3 doors (going into the bathroom, going into the potty room, and going into the shower) all together. I'd move the door-going-into-the-bathroom clear to the bottom of the bathroom, sliding the vanity up in its place by the potty room. If you did that, you'd have the advantage of making a shorter route into the master closet from the bedroom.

I like the general layout, with a master wing, a living wing, and a kids' wing, and I like the way they are staggered a little to allow for more windows.

My criticisms:

Your dining area seems awkward to me. There are lots of doors, which suggests that you expect people to walk through it (especially kids cutting through from their bedrooms to the kitchen/garage), and I don't know what the french doors are for, given that there are 2 other doors close by, so the french doors aren't going to keep people or noise out of the room. It's also a little far from the kitchen.

Also, I have 3 kids too, and we have discovered that one bath for the three of them works a lot better if the toilet and shower are separate from the sinks-- then one can shower while another brushes her teeth or futzes with her hair.

A concern about the front door: A visitor walks up the steps, but what's right in front of him? The dining room window. I'd move the steps to the right side of the porch so that the visitor would walk up the steps and see the front door straight ahead.

The kids' bath is odd. They must walk through a sink-only room to get to the real bathroom? I'd make that end-of-the-hall room into a linen closet . . . and leave the bathroom as just a plain bathroom.

The master bath looks cramped: You have multiple doors banging against each other at the entrance /toilet compartment /shower. The shower's small. It just doesn't look like quite enough space for all the items in this bathroom. I'd consider giving it some breathing space by eliminating the toilet's special room -- do we really need to hide behind two doors to use the toilet? And by downsizing the sink and /or tub.

In fact, I'm not loving the layout of the master suite. Could you switch the bath and the bedroom? This'd give you a corner-spot for your bedroom, and you could have windows on two walls, which is always nicer than having light from only one direction.

I share the concern about the laundry's remote location. I'd consider putting the laundry in what is now the foyer . . . removing the casual dining nook (and using the island as your casual eating area -- you only need so many eating spots) . . . and bumping the dining room down towards the left. This'll make the front door /foyer a bit more central.

I don't know how large your lot is, but I hate garages stuck out in front like this. They overshadow the whole house. Could you flip-flop that portion of the house, bringing the master suite to the front and the garage /mudroom to the back, behind the house?

What is your reasoning for all the doors/doorways in the dining room?
Do you need the eating nook? You already have a counter and that dining room.

I am not a fan of the public powder room right at the master bedroom.

The master area needs worked. I would prefer the bedroom in the corner, and I would prefer to not go through the bathroom to access clothing.

I am not a fan of the front door being where it is either.

Thanks for all the advice comments so far.

For the kids bath.... We were trying to go along the lines of zone4newby's comments. Seperate bath and sink area, so one child can be using toilet or shower, and the other children still have access to the sink. Should we make it so both sinks will be in this outer room? Maybe swap the sink that is along the bedroom wall over to where the linen closet is, and move the toilet/shower room door back to the end of the tub?

On that note, I think we are ok with the one smaller bedroom. We needed to steal space from that room before to give the bath a little more breathing room.

I think we will remove the french doors from the dining room, and leave it as a cased entrance on that wall. Maybe get rid of the 3' entrance from the entry way, but leave the entrance from the banqette? We have large family on both sides, with the mojority being local. We frequently have family gatherings and wanted a large formal dining space for this purpose. The rest of the house will be pretty casual.

Maggie, we will be having a finished basement for the kids to let loose. That will be my project after we move in. I finished the basement in the house we live in now, and the space makes for a great cozy play room.

The fireplace location seems to have moved every time we revise the drawings. Not by our architect, but by us. We can't seem to decide on that.

MrsPete and LuAnn, I agree on the front door location. I did look a bit odd in the elevation that you seemed to be drawn to a window in the dining room. I wounder how it would look if we simply moved the steps to the right side of the porch as you mentioned.

MrsPete, our lot is 5 acres, but our view is back and to the right. This is the reason the house is designed stagering each sectoin forward, and also a reason to keep the garage in front. I too was concerned about the garage jutting out the front instead of off the side. But i think it seemed to look ok in our previous elevations.

Thanks again everyone for the input.

Dividing the bathroom into two parts so that one child can use the sink while another is in the tub IS a good option . . . but NOT if there's only one door so that the person using the sink essentially "holds hostage" the tub room.

I like the general idea, but there are some areas I'd want to change.

First, I would want an exterior door into the mud room, without going through the garage. It will be muddy/snowy and you'll want kids to enter directly from their play areas. Safer than walking in the garage, IMHO.

Second, can you bring the kids' wing forward, so it's even with the front porch? That would give you more room for the front bedroom, the closet and the bathroom.

Also, I agree with new arrangement for kids' bath and the dining area concerns. I love a banquette, but that one seems a long way from the work area of the kitchen. And, it seems like your main living area is a little small. I would want a little more 'definition' for the living room. Maybe look at some online kitchen/living room spaces and that might help you decide on fireplace location.

If you decide to open the dining spaces to the rest of the main living area, that might give you more options, too. Lots of possibilities :)