Here is the first attempt from a builder.

What we don't like:
1. you have to walk through one bedroom to get to the other
2. There isn't a place for a bed in the larger bedroom
3. The windows in this plan would be roughly 36-40" off the floor--probably too high to see the lake from a chair or bed.
I was thinking maybe the stairs could be L-shaped, rather than U-shaped. And maybe the bathroom could go in the upper right corner of the plan where the closet is drawn. But I'm not good at this stuff.

Would really appreciate any ideas people have!

Do you have pictures of the house with your views? Can you show the plat of your lot with your setbacks? This would clarify things IMO.

How many sq ft are you proposing to add?

I don't have a plat map, but the lot is 50 feet wide by 275 feet deep. But in all honesty, the play map wouldn't help, as we are confined to that 18x22 foot addition (400 square feet). We just need to figure out how to best maximize that space.
Appreciate any ideas!

I can't be of any help to you on your plan but I wanted to share our lake remodel experience.

We also had a cozy lake cottage, just a little under 800 square feet. After years of coping with the small size it also got to be such a hassle to try to accommodate company.

We came up with what we hoped to be grand remodeling plans but nothing would work with the restrictions. Our existing structure also needed work to make it comfortable year round. After researching the requirements, speaking with various builders, zoning regulators, and town/county officials, we ended up tearing down the original cottage and building a new house. It became the most affordable way to get what we needed. We've ended up with so much more than we could have even achieved with a major remodel. The restrictions on our lake made it the only real way to go.

That was not the outcome that we had originally hoped for but we don't have any regrets now.

Perhaps your lake isn't as restrictive and your remodel will end up to be everything you envision it to be. I'm anxious to follow your progress and hope that whatever you end up doing will leave you just as happy at the end as we are.

That is why I asked those questions. We have a lake cabin. Very old and probably not worth saving, but oh the views! I have a plat with my house on it and the restrictions would make it difficult to remodel. We may build a retirement home here someday.

Sometimes you are better off tearing down and starting over. I am not saying that is true in your case, but if you had more info you could get some really good advice from our pros here.

What you are proposing sounds expensive. May be worth looking at all of the options.

Thanks Red. I am not trying to be evasive when I don't provide a plat map, I just don't have one.
I spoke with the zoning commissioner, so I know a project of this scope will be approved. I spoke with a builder we've built with three times before who said this project would run 50-60k, and would give us a firm (not to exceed regardless of spurprises) bid once we have a floorplan finalized. A tear down and rebuild would be at least twice that, so that really isn't a consideration for us. We'd just leave it as is before we put 100k+ into a rebuild, because we don't have that much money to put into it.

Anyone have any floorplan ideas?

Thanks Red. I am not trying to be evasive when I don't provide a plat map, I just don't have one.
I spoke with the zoning commissioner, so I know a project of this scope will be approved. I spoke with a builder we've built with three times before who said this project would run 50-60k, and would give us a firm (not to exceed regardless of spurprises) bid once we have a floorplan finalized. A tear down and rebuild would be at least twice that, so that really isn't a consideration for us. We'd just leave it as is before we put 100k+ into a rebuild, because we don't have that much money to put into it.

Anyone have any floorplan ideas?

Thanks Red. I am not trying to be evasive when I don't provide a plat map, I just don't have one.
I spoke with the zoning commissioner, so I know a project of this scope will be approved. I spoke with a builder we've built with three times before who said this project would run 50-60k, and would give us a firm (not to exceed regardless of spurprises) bid once we have a floorplan finalized. A tear down and rebuild would be at least twice that, so that really isn't a consideration for us. We'd just leave it as is before we put 100k+ into a rebuild, because we don't have that much money to put into it.

Anyone have any floorplan ideas?

Any reason you can't build your second story out over your new addition space? The most expensive parts of the addition are already there--foundation.

We did a similar expansion to our existing Cape Cod. So, I might have some ideas... But, first
where do people enter the house? (do you have a front door)?
Where are the views? Off the Kitchen/LR/Deck side?

Thanks Kirkhall

There is only one entrance to the property, which is the door on the side of the house going into the kitchen.
The views are out the kitchen/family room side.
The ceilings in the existing space are cathedral, so if we build straight up, we would lose that (and three skylights).
We are also somewhat limited in that this is all the zoning people would approve, so we have to work within those general confines ( roughly 400 sq ft addition).

Be anxious to hear your ideas!

That mechanical room is huge.
2 questions
is there a basement/anything that would require stairs under the stairs, or can under stair space serve as mechanical space?
Is there a hillside on that backside that would make the mechanical room make sense to take up valuable first floor space? (can that "mech room" have windows? ..that is, if I didn't make it be a mechanical room?)

Great questions Kirkhall.

The current house sits on a 4 foot tall crawl space. There is a water heater and water pump down there (no furnace). It he house has been used as a 3 season cottage (it's in Wisconsin, so without a furnace the pipes need to be drained each time you leave in the winter). I think the idea behind the mechanical room was to be a place to put a furnace, and also it's the foundation for the addition. But if you have other ideas for how to utilize that space, I'm all ears.

The house sits on a slope that goes down towards the lake. So the back side of the house (where the bedrooms/bath are) actually is buried up to about 5 feet up the wall. The exferior walls, not sure if I mentioned before, are cinder block.

There is nothing under where the stairs are drawn now, other than earth.

I'm sure the mech room in theory could have windows, but it wouldn't have much of a view: it would be the neighbors house if the windows were on the side, or the hill if the window was on the back.

Would love any ideas people have!

You can ping me after next week... I am crammed busy until after next Friday. If your topic falls and is "forgotten", revive it or send me an email.

Are you able to do a single straight set of stairs? What is your ceiling height? The U is the most inefficient. I love the shape but with your sqftage it's a space eater.

If I'm understanding you correctly about the "back of the house is buried in rock up to about 5 ft up the wall" then everything your builder shows as 1st floor addition is really going to be pretty much underground. That's why that whole space is being given over to "mech room" instead of living space. Is that right?

I think you're right that an L-shaped staircase would work better. But, unless you want to lower the slope of the roof over your kitchen and living room area, there is not a whole lot you can do that would result in upstairs windows being "closer to the floor." The roof height of the lower floor pretty much dictates where windows that face the lake on the upper floor can start.

You don't indicate how you access the deck on the lake side of the house. Is there a sliding door or something leading from the living room?

In addition to the things you mentioned that you didn't like on your architect's first draft, I don't like it that taking half that interior wall down leaves you with a view from your kitchen straight into the bathroom toilet.

And, you don't mention where you keep the washer/dryer. If you don't have one currently, I would think that at a lake house, getting a laundry room to deal with wet towels and swim suits would be a priority.

Here's what I came up with. (It really is pretty much what you suggested re L-shaped staircase and putting bathroom in the back right corner where the closet was; and from the exterior would look pretty much identical to your architect's plan.

First floor:

Second floor:

The dimensions of the upstairs addition is 18' x 22' (since you didn't specify, I used those as the outer dimensions) and I've drawn the current plan as accurately as I could based on your sketch.

The two closets upstairs closets are admittedly very very small but for a vacation house, small closets might be okay. And you don't have to go thru one bedroom to reach the other plus both upstairs bedrooms have a place for the bed.

This is sketched with a 42 inch wide staircase with enough risers to for a 10 ft floor to floor rise. The plant shelf at the bend in the stairs, along with windows allowing light into the staircase, should make the staircase feel nice and spacious.

Downstairs, this gives you a nice sized laundry room with room for some storage space under the stairs. Unfortunately, given the slope at the back of your house, the laundry wouldn't get any natural light unless you could put in a window well or maybe install some solar tubes.

I've shown a normal sized dining room table for six. The space around the dining table is pretty tight but I think it would work. In order to keep the path to the staircase open, you would not be able to center the dining table in the room so an alternative might be to have a bench seating for 1/2 the table built-in against wall next to the bathroom. That way the table wouldn't require as much width in the admittedly small dining room space.

I went back and forth about where to put the door leading into the laundry. You'd have more useable storage space if the door were over next to the door leading from laundry to mech room. But then you would always have to be working your way clear around the table to get to the laundry room so I think this is probably better.

An alternative design might be to switch the laundry and mech rooms which would allow you to have a window in the laundry room (nice) but would force you to access it via the downstairs bathroom which isn't so great. There might be another alternatives swapping the laundry and mech room AND putting in a hallway leading from living room to laundry room if you were willing to tear out and completely redo the downstairs bath...but I'm guessing that a bathroom renovation is not in your anticipated budget.

Finally, I think this would allow you to have small pantry which you desperately need and it blocks the view from the kitchen into the bathroom.

Let me know what you think.

@Bevangel: let me start by saying how wonderfully kind and generous you were for see the time to draw this up. I very much appreciate your insight and abilities.

I really, really like your floorplan. You did a great job of not only hitting everything we were hoping for, but also things we hadn't even thought of. A couple thoughts:
1. I really like the idea of turning part of the mech room into a laundry. We don't currently have one, and thought wed have to shove a stackable unit into a closet somewhere, but I think this is a much better plan. Perhaps we could put in a small basement style window to help with the light. However, the door would usually be open when were in there, so you'd be getting some light from the main living area.
2. The floorplan I posted in the proposed addition drawings is slightly off, and makes it look like your spooking into the toilet from the kitchen. The wall is actually over to the left another foot or two, so it's staggered enough that you can't see in there. I like you're pantry idea, my only hesitation is how much it's going to cost to cut down and relocate that door and build the pantry, and whether we need that food storage enough to justify the cost. Have to think about that.
3. I really like how to upstairs bedrooms maximize the space up there, and don't have an odd, unusual shape. We were hoping the "master" br would have a small space for a table and chairs to look out at the lake and have coffee or read a book. However, I'm not sure that's going to be possible, and the window height might kill that idea anyways.
4. I like that both bedrooms have a small closet. That way we can keep some clothes up there year round for cool nights, etc. I'm wondering where wed squeeze extra bedding--that stuff takes up a lot of room, and the closets (while probably big enough) might struggle to hold that. I spose we could put some shelves in the laundry area for stuff like that as well .
5. You asked about deck access. There isn't a slider or anything. The deck is accessed by going out the main door and walking around the outside. The windows in front are all large picture windows.

Thanks again so much, I really love your ideas!

I don't think it would cost very much to enclose the "pantry" area because you would be building non-supporting walls. The bigger issue would be moving the door to the hallway down closer to the bedroom because that would entail cutting a door through a supporting wall. This would not really be difficult to do... just whoever does it would need to know what they were doing. And it might be better to do this before the second floor was added rather than after. But, since you're taking down a big part of that supporting wall already, you're already going to need someone who knows how to do that safely. So, I doubt the additional cost of cutting a new doorway and framing up a closet would even be noticeable in the overall cost of doing the renovation.

If you really don't need a pantry, the space could easily be turned into a nice sized linen closet by simply moving the door around to the hallway wall instead of having it face the kitchen. I just figured you probably needed a pantry more than a linen closet since there appears to be room in the downstairs bath for some shelves for linens across from the sink. And bulky items like extra blankets could be stored in the laundry room under the stairs.

It does seem rather odd to me that there is no slider or patio door leading directly to the deck from the living room. That sort of seems like it would have been a no brainer when they built the house. But perhaps the deck itself was an addition. Maybe in a future reno, you could replace one of the living room windows with a patio door.

In the meantime, I would want some sort of secondary exit door somewhere. If the back of your property slopes up as much as it sounds like (and your jurisdiction allows exterior doors that swing outward) maybe you could replace the window at the top of the steps with a "back door" that swings outward. It would need to swing outward so there wouldn't be a risk of someone coming in and knocking someone else down the stairs. Or, maybe you could have an exit door coming out the mech room on the right side of the house. The sloped lot might mean that it would have to be built "exterior cellar door" style but that would allow you to more easily store things like a push-mower and garden tools in the extra space around the mechanicals in the mech room.

Anyway, I'm glad you liked the sketches! Really, they're based as much on your suggestion of using an L shaped staircase and moving the upstairs bathroom to the back right corner as on any particular creativity of mine. So you're as much the "creator" here as I am. I just did the sketch because I happen to have the software to do it. I think you and your architect would have gotten to this point eventually without me. But I'm glad if I was able to help move the process along a little bit.

Good luck with your project and keep us posted on progress.

Isn't it code to have 2 exterior doors in case there is a fire on one side of the house?

You can get out large windows (egress windows)

I like the idea of having a second exterior door upstairs on the new addition. I think it would be easy enough to add and would increase safety as well as make it easier to bring things in from the car.

I don't think adding a sliding door to the deck would be very easy to do given the cinder block walls. It would be more expensive that doing it on a stuck built house and would make an amazing mess. But certainly it would be nice to have.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

Yes,vI can certainly understand not wanting to cut thru cinderblock any more than absolutely necessary!