Here's the second floor. I didn't label it, but that will be a bedroom on the bottom of the scanned picture.

Consider your sight line from the foyer. At this point you're seeing the foot of the stairs and possibly the fireplace beyond. Things that are aligned perfectly make the house feel "right".

I'm ambivalent about the two fireplace locations -- they look pretty equal to me. I'd consider furniture placement and let that be the deciding factor.

Note that you have a massive amount of untapped storage space lurking under the switchback staircase. You could have a short storage area accessed from the hallway -- it would be great for holiday storage. So many plastic boxes could be wedged into that space.

I think I'd orient the pantry's door towards the hallway so it'd be a more direct line from the back door -- also so it wouldn't block the half bath door. This pantry isn't ideal. You'll have no place to set your grocery bags as you organize your purchases, and it's not IN the kitchen.

I think the whole pantry-mudroom-half bath area could use some rearranging, but I can't see the best option. The problem with the mudroom is that it's possible to by-pass it. You want kids to be forced to walk through it (on a mat) so that the mud stays in that area. It's not JUST clutter control.

I agree with you in that the stovetop is in the worst possible position -- it's almost in the great room! The issue here is the doorway. Obviously you want a doorway close to the garage entrance, but it's forcing you to break up the cabinets into an untenable arrangement. I think the answer might be an L with a peninsula between the kitchen and the breakfast nook . . . and then the current island would move down and touch the wall. It'd form a rectangular kitchen with two doorways. LOTS of cabinets though, which isn't always a plus.

How big is your shower? I note that you've allotted more space to the toilet closet than to the shower, which seems off.

I'd like to see a doorway (or at least a pass-through) between the laundry room and the master closet. So many steps could be saved.

Upstairs only one bedroom is marked, but I'm assuming that's a second bedroom in the forward space? If I'm reading this correctly, this forward space has lots of sloped walls, and I'm not clear on how much floor space it actually has. I wonder if it'd be better to have two bedrooms to the back and keep this forward space as shared, common area.

I'd remove the wall between the vanity and the toilet/tub. The current trend towards overly compartmentalized bathroom results in too-small spaces. Better to have a spacious bathroom. Two girls can share one bathroom without this division -- mine do. They'll like this nice big vanity -- plenty of room for drawers and storage.

I agree with the previous poster about the mud room, pantry, and half bath layout. It seems to have wasted square footage in that cubby area plus I wonder how often it would actually be used when you don't actually walk by it as your walking in the door. Knowing me, I would just drop my stuff inside the doorway and not actually walk to where the cubbies are!

I would get the pantry closer to your kitchen so when you get home and throw all those grocery sacks on your countertops, your pantry is right there to put everything away .If you move it somewhere else, it might be easier to reconfigure the mud room and half bathroom.

Your stove area is definitely in the wrong place like you said. You could put it in the island and do a down draft or put your stove where your sink is and put your sink on the island. You would have to give up that window though.

Wherever your stove is moved to, you could do tons of cabinets on that wall for storage because its hard for me to tell how much storage you have for dishes, glasses, etc.

Something else to randomly throw out there. What if you cut into your nook space a little by extending your island so you have more work space and then build your pantry against that wall right near your fridge? You could move that window a little bit. You already have a formal dining room, and an eat up island.

I think your 2nd floor is such a neat space for your girls. So were your doing a door between the vanity and toilet/tub area? I kind of like that idea because it would allow one girl to wash hands/fix hair/etc while the other one can use the restroom or take a shower privately.

Make the stairs Lshape and you have a coat closet. We did this for a pantry.

FINALLY getting back here to post . . . read all the comments when there were posted, but got thrown a curve ball in this process and never sat down to repost.

Two weeks ago we found out that though our property is a mile from the nearest 100 year floodplain, the floodplain maps are being reworked for the first time since the 1980's. Apparently as of November of this year, most of our proprerty will be in a floodplain. They said the official notice of this info was sent out in 2011 - when the property was in forclosure and owned by the bank.
After some tears, some wine, and lots of discussions with various professionals - we can still build but we aren't going to be able to have the daylight basement we have been dreaming of for years.
I think we will be able to still meet our goals by using the area over the garage and maximizing the second story space.
We are talking about extending the back wall of the garage/mudroom area about 8 to 10 feet. So the good news is we will have the opportunity to improve on the awkward mudroom/panty/powder room - so thank you for all of your suggestions on that as I've listed them to refer to as we work through this!

Another positive is that now we don't neet to incorporate steps to the basement so we will be straightening the stairs back out so they will go straight up between the living room and master.
With that change, I'm going to be asking that the fireplace be put in direct line with the front door, as you suggested Mrs. Pete - thanks!

I knew there were going to be a ton of bumps in the road with the building process - just wasn't expecting this type of speedbump before we even broke ground!
Just when I felt like things were getting close to finished with the plans, there are still so many more new things to work through! I may just end up flipping the kitchen back to where the nook area is and seeing if I can get the panty moved out of the mudroom and in the actual kitchen space.

Begining to feel like we may never break ground!! It seems about as realistic as like a fairytail at this point! LOL.