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ckrelly

Floor plan review

Ckrelly
10 years ago

Hi everyone. We are ready to start building soon and I just wanted feedback on our layout. Thank you. Lets see if I can load the pics correctly :)

Comments (8)

  • Ckrelly
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Outside elevation

  • Ckrelly
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    2nd floor

  • Ckrelly
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Walk-out basement---the unmarked room next to bedroom is going to be exercise room

  • newbuildil
    10 years ago

    I'll weigh in on this one for a second.

    First, I'm struggling to figure out how you will position your kitchen table without blocking the door to the deck. If you float it in the middle, between the FR and kitchen, then the space by the back door is pointless. If you fill that space in the back, you can't get to the door. Our space is laid out similarly, with the same bump out in the back, but we put the door to the deck on the short wall to the left, and did an L-shaped built in bench on the right and 3/4 of the back wall, with a wall of windows as a focal point (we have nothing above the bump out so we raised the ceiling in that area also.

    My other main point is the master bath/closet. You have committed a lot of sqft there, but none or it feels spacious. It feels to broken up, and there's a maze to get to the closet (I don't like walking through the bath to get to the closet in general, but this is even worse). I don't think I'd be happy showering in that corner with nothing to look at but a wall.

    A nit picky thing, but our mudroom and hall closet are set up just like that, and we put in a pocket door between. In reality, we very rarely close that door, and a swing door would just get in the way of a fairly tight space.

    Anyway, my $.02, which is probably worth less than that...

  • bird_lover6
    10 years ago

    I agree with the above.

    I would also swap the "keeping room" space with the breakfast room space. It makes more sense visually to put the breakfast room between the family room and kitchen as is in some homes. Then the bump out could become your little sitting area. As it is, any furniture you float in the current "keeping room" space is going to look funny and out of place.

    And I'd cut a bit off of the island to have the end of the island parallel to the right exterior bump out wall, and I would lop off some of the wall cabinets in the kitchen just behind the stairs. This would create a clear demarcation of the kitchen space, instead of the kitchen creep you have going on. :)

    If you have a good carpenter, I'm sure the built-in corner cabinets in the dining room will be lovely, but you get little storage space in them. If you like to store a lot of pretty things in the dining room, you might want a solid wall where you can put a china cabinet.

    Good luck! I really like the dead end location of the great room. That could be fabulous. :)

  • Ckrelly
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Thanks for input. My thoughts were to put kitchen table in the middle of that space --so not necessarily a keeping room or breakfast nook. But I'm not against a bench out in that bump out area with door moved. newbuildil- what do you have filling the rest of that "keeping room space" if your table/bench area is so far back? Also about the pocket door between mud room and closet -we had asked for that to be pocket door and were told there isn't enough room for one?? Perhaps it's just more work in that situation so they said they couldn't? As far as the master it is a little bit of a maze to get to closet. I don't know that it bothers me though-but this will be my first master suite so anything is great to me :) I was planning on adding possibly shoe shelving on that narrow walkway into closet. The shower we wanted that way so it can be private and walk-in with no doors to clean.
    bird_lover6- I agree with the "kitchen creep" comment. I think you have a good point. What I am struggling with is that I think we may have to move fridge over to that wall because we want French door style fridge and it will not be able to open fully due to the pantry bump out... Perhaps I will take my kitchen plans and post on kitchen forum because that is the room that I seem to be struggling with now. Thanks again for your comments.

  • GreenDesigns
    10 years ago

    It has the typical builder grade GARAGEhouse syndrome. The living space should be pushed forward and the garage space pushed back. The automobile isn't the primary reason for the dwelling, even though it appears to be so in so many modern buildings.

  • mrspete
    10 years ago

    I lived in that house! Well, make the kitchen in to a U-shape, remove the bump-out for the breakfast area, remove the mudroom, make it a two-car garage . . . and it was a house I rented with a bunch of girlfriends when I was just out of college. Okay, I guess I really lived in its first cousin.

    It was a comfortable house. Good flow. No, excellent flow. Again, very comfortable. Not overdone, not fancy, but a nice comfortable house. A person in the kitchen can see into the family room easily. I cannot remember the exact sizes of rooms we had, but I think yours are similar, and they were "just right".

    We did not have the keeping room next to the breakfast room, and I think I'd eliminate it from your plan. I think it'd be a barrier between the main living areas.

    Since you might occasionally want to have quiet in the family room, I'd suggest adding French doors or double pocket doors between the breakfast room and the family room. Our house did not have this feature, but I think it'd be useful.

    The negatives I remember about that house:

    - Our family room was dark, but I see that you have windows to the side of the fireplace. We did not. If I were building this myself, I'd add a single French door next to the bank of windows in the family room. This would allow you to remove the awkward backyard door by the kitchen table.

    - I specifically remember that we struggled getting furniture up the stairs. At that point in my life I owned a very tall, narrow bookcase and a double bed. I remember the struggle to get up the stairs without scratching the walls.

    I do agree with the poster above who warns against small storage in the dining room's corner cabinets, but I think these vary widely. Some time back I was in the home of a new friend, and I paid special notice to her built-in corner china cabinet (at first because I noted that she and I have the same wedding china). I noted that she could store so little in her china cabinet, and it looked kind of awkward. I thought to myself, "I don't like that corner cabinet at all." But only a couple weeks ago I was in another home, and they had a much larger, more practical corner cabinet -- this one had no upper doors, and they had plates "against the wall" and other items filling the middle space. They were storing quite a bit of china in those corner cabinets, and I liked them! A good year fell in between seeing these two examples, and I didn't measure either one, but IF I were interested in building such a feature, I would go out with my tape measure and look at as many as I could find. I think it CAN be done well, but you need to be careful about your dimensions. One more note: In the one I liked, it was a very casual look -- does that go with what you want?