2nd floor

So you'll have two kids in each bedroom? Or is there a finished basement with bedrooms? It looks like there are a lot of steps up to the house. The plans are too small for me to read the notes.

Is there a garage, or is the front porch the primary entrance? There is no mud room, or even a coat closet.

The master has virtually no closet space.

Where is the laundry?

The upstairs bedroom closets are wonky and inefficient. Put reach-in closets back to back between the two rooms.

Put a closet in the office, so it can be used as a bedroom. Unless someone works from home, that's a huge office space - bigger than the 2-kid bedrooms.

"Open to below" is very expensive space - expensive to heat, difficult to paint, and you could put an entire bedroom up there.

I really can't read dimensions, but will you have room to fit a dining room table in that dining space? You need 6 chairs just to be able to feed your family. You will need 8-10 chairs if you ever have guests.

There isn't a lof of common space. Just you kitchen/dining/living downstairs. Is there a basement - there seems to be a lot of steps up to the porch/front door and up to the deck. With 2 kids per room, where will you be able to get any privacy? One on one chats with the kids? Quiet place for homework? Quiet place for the parents to chill out?

The plan looks seriously lacking in windows. Or maybe I just don't see them. It seems like the house could be very dark and dreary.

The layout looks fine to me, but you will severely regret the lack of storage throughout the house. Trust me!

Thanks for comments & Sorry for the hard to see plans.
First off we are on a TIGHT budget. So I literally had to make to most use of the least sq. as possible.We are actually doing some the work ourselves. And have been acquiring fixtures & other items through the last few years when we found a good deal.
The "office" will be used as a bedroom. It is the larger room so our 2 youngest 5 & 6 will share.
The Laundry is in the back corner of the first floor. It is quite small (still much larger than the closet laundry I have lived w/ for the last 11 years), but all I could fit in for the time being. Our plan is for in the future to finish the downstairs storage area for an enclosed entrance and large laundry/mudroom.
Initially, we will be putting in an outdoor shower and a washer in the storage area for sandy towels & bathing suits.
The "open to below" is actually not a full 2-story section but a large dormer w/ a round window. There are a few additional windows not marked. And the ones marked are hard to see in these pics. We current live(rent) in a very small a-frame (so no windows) all the walls are brown & the ceiling are just over 7ft. So my goal was def. NOT dark & dreary. The living/kitchen/master all have 6-1/2' windows.
As to the closets. This was something I went back & forth on. I really dislike reach in closet, so I did away with those where I could. As to the master bed closet. My husband & I are jeans/ t-shirt & bathing suit kind of folks. No real big winter clothes here. The small closet we have now is full of linens and luggage etc. because we have NO linen closets here .We sacrificed closet space to gain a second sink the bathroom
As mentioned, the house will be on pilings (hence the stairs up to the porches) with drive under parking on one side and storage/workshop on the other.
The dining area is just big enough to accommodate our dining table and the island has a bar w/ seating for 4. We rarely entertain & when we do it is outside. We live in a beach community so most of our entertaining happens in the sand:) And to privacy& quiet haha...I have 4 kids=no such thing.
Here is a link to the plan online that we started with.
Truly, Thanks again.

Here is a link that might be useful: eplans coastal plan

So you will have 2 kids sharing a bedroom with no closet?

Legally it has to have a closet to be considered a legal bedroom unless I am mistaken?

First, why are you building? I'm asking that as a serious question. What I'm seeing is that you're building a small, starter house in a layout that's fairly common /fairly easy to find already built -- and with the emphasis on tight budget, your housing dollar would stretch farther for an already-existing home.

Having said that, I think a number of areas are just too tight for comfort, especially with four kids:

- The numbers might say your table can be set in this area, but it won't really "fit". In this plan, the dining room is ALSO a hallway: It'll be used to reach the back door, the half bath, the laundry room and the master bedroom. While the table might be squeezed into this spot, you're going to grow tired of walking around it, especially if the chairs are pulled out. You'd have a better chance of doing this comfortably if you went with banquette seating against the wall -- but the doors prevent that from happening.

- I understand not being a clothes horse, but this master closet is just too small for anyone. However, the master bedroom looks like a comfortable size -- I'd steal some space from this to enlarge the closet.

- The toilet space in the master bath is too small. You need 30" minimum in front of a toilet (more is preferred), and squeezing by the vanity to get into the toilet spot is going to be difficult. This vanity is too small to support two sinks, especially since without a linen closet in the bathroom, your ONLY storage for towels and toiletries is under the sink. You'll be better off with one sink and drawers on each side of it. The shower looks comfortable, but with a tight budget I'd consider moving it to the interior of the house; this will allow you to move the toilet to the other side, and you can have a window over it. Windows IN showers are expensive and problematic.

- With the tight budget, I'd consider doing away with the half bath and arranging the master so that it can serve as a downstairs bath. OR arrange the master bath so that the half bath opens into the master, eliminating the toilet in the master -- I didn't say that very well: I'm saying plan a half bath for the downstairs . . . and attach it to a shower /sink room available only to the master bedroom.

- Especially with a family, I'd absolutely insist upon a pantry.

- Is that a sliding glass door in the dining room . . . and a hinged door right next to it?

- You have too many doors in that back door /bath /laundry area. You'll have to scootch up next to the wall to open them. If you keep the half bath, I'd consolidate it with the laundry room.

- You say you're in a beach community. The kids're going to need a place for beach towels, etc. downstairs. The laundry room is the obvious place, but there's no space for shelving.

- I'll echo what another poster said: I'd close in the "open area" over the living room to make a fourth bedroom. In a small house like this, it'd be good for each child to have a small space of his or her own. And I agree that two-story rooms aren't all they're cracked up to be -- though in this case, I think it'd make a moderate-sized living room seem more spacious.

- The bathroom is do-able for four kids, but -- again -- I'd lose the second sink in favor of storage underneath. Especially with the need for beach towels, you're going to need it. And I'd turn the hallway linen closet "in" for the front bedroom, then turn that bedroom's large closet (best closet in the house) "in" to serve the bathroom -- good storage is going to be the key for this bathroom working for all the kids.

I think the location of the front door is accident waiting to happen. A child comes running down the stairs and at the same time someone opens the front door into the child. I suggest moving it back to where it is located in the original plan.

Four kids and no place for them to play indoors except their bedrooms or in the smallish living room??? And while you may not feel the need for privacy outside of your bedroom, when your kids get to be teenagers, they probably will.

There is no place in your house where a teen could entertain a friend and not be right under Mom and Dad's nose EXCEPT to take the friend to their bedroom...which they might have to be sharing with a sibling. I know I'm old-fashioned but I'm still uncomfortable with the idea of tee- aged boys/girls taking friends of the opposite sex into their bedrooms - but I'm smart enough to know that teens need to feel like they can at least have a private conversation with their latest crush or even just work on homework and complain about their teachers without Mom and Dad automatically hearing every word. When I was a kid, I took my friends into the kitchen if Mom wasn't cooking or if she was getting a meal together and I had a friend over, she and Dad would retire to the kitchen together and let me and my friend have the use of the living room. With today's open floor plans, that doesn't work too well.

So, IMHO, families with kids need some sort of secondary "living area" - whether that is a den or a library or a play room or an "owner's retreat" in the master bedroom, there needs to be some place where kids and adults can each have a little bit of privacy.

I understand that you're on a budget so I'm hard pressed to understand why you would decide to have that two story living room. That second story space would be very cheap useable living space if you gave up the idea of a vaulting ceiling in the living room.

Besides, having a two story ceiling in such a small room is probably going to turn it into echo chamber anyway. The vaulted ceiling is going to make the room taller than it is wide or long. It is probably going to wind up feel like you're sitting at the bottom of a well in there. Plus there are all the problems with keeping a two-story room at a comfortable temperature etc.

If you want a somewhat higher ceiling in the living room, consider raising the roof in that room by 12 inches then put two step going up from the upstairs hallway into the room over the living room. Even if the main part of the ceiling in room upstairs room is just 7 ft high, it will still serve quite nicely as play space for the kiddos and could even be pressed into service as an extra bedroom if 4 kids should someday become 5...or if grandparents come to visit.

While you may not like reach-in closets, they are MUCH more space efficient than walk-in closets. Especially given that the corners of walk in closets (where two bars meet at an L) are pretty much useless. You can only hang things on one of the two bars and those items hung in the corners are hidden by things hanging on the other bar and therefore seldom get found to be worn. When one is on a tight budget and building a smaller home, one NEEDS to be space efficient.

In the same space where you have two "walk-in" closets upstairs (each with probably less than 6 linear feet of truly useable space each) you could have two back to back reach-in closets with 7 ft of useable space each PLUS a reasonably nice-sized 2 ft deep hallway linen closet.

Doing that would then also allow you to basically flip the bathroom horizontally so that the closet space that now serves the bedroom in the back right side of the house could be used for a closet for the office instead. That way it really can BE a bedroom and you wouldn't have to cheat and call it an office because it has no closet.

You could then rearrange the upstairs bathroom to make it more user friendly for 4 kids. Right now, if someone is in the tub (which is typically the bathroom function that takes the longest amount of time) and wants any privacy, no one else can use any other portion of the bathroom. With 4 kids, it would be GREAT if you could have separate rooms for bathtub, toilet, and sinks but I don't think you have the room for that. However, I do think you have room to create a larger more user friendly sink area and a separate room for the tub and toilet. Lots of kids are willing to share the bathroom while they brush teeth, comb hair, etc - but even then, they need room around the sinks for their toothbrushes, hair curlers, etc.

The sketch below is rough because your images are too small to see the dimensions and when I magnify them to maximum extent, they're a bit fuzzy when translated to my paint program. But I think if you did something like shown, one child could be bathing and/or using the toilet while two others are using the sinks. Note that I recommend pocket doors for the kid's bath because that way you don't have to deal with swinging doors. Having vanities on two sides of the bathroom gives everybody a bit more space around his/her sink. Depending on the genders of your 4, girls could have one side and boys the other.

As for downstairs, I agree that the master closet and masterbath need major reworking. YOU and your spouse may be perfectly satisfied with 3 feet of useable closet space each but if/when you want to sell this house, no potential buyer is going to be satisfied with that! That master closet would be a total deal breaker for me...and I'm not even a huge clothes horse. But I do want more space than THAT!

Also, as another poster has already pointed out, there isn't enough space in front of the toilet and the two vanity sinks are too close together leaving you no room for storing anything. In fact, hardly room enough to set an electric toothbrush and a razor.

And, that back "hallway" is a disaster. Too many doors opening into way too little space. The laundry room size is fine as is the powder room...but getting to/from them is not. I would shrink the master bedroom and start over on designing that space. Wish I had suggestions for making it all fit, but I really don't. Maybe someone else can chime in.

I'm just afraid that if you build this house as it is currently designed you are going to be very unhappy with the results.

The drawings are too small and low resolution to be understand well but it appears the rafters will rest on the top plate of the upper wall studs.

For a house of this design it is far better to install a full upper level band joist and subfloor and rest the rafters on a plate on top of the subfloor. This simple detail costs little and greatly increases the head room of the upper floor and allows more wall above the exterior windows and a larger eave overhang.

ALL THE CHANGES BEVANGEL MADE.

The walk-in closets do not work. You will get more storage and more "efficient" storage if you take Bevangel's suggestions.

Downstairs I'd lose the door to the laundry room. The laundry room is quite hidden and out of sight, anyway, and today's washers and dryers are much quieter than in the past. And you might want to put hooks for each child and adult along that back wall for beach towels. Take them out of the dryer and hang 'em on the hooks. :)

You are building into your house the absolute thing I HATE THE MOST about my house: your staircase is sharing a wall with your master bedroom. YIKES. Clomp, clomp, clomp, clomp...all day long and all evening. Six kids and even the german shepherd clomp, clomp, clomp..... Are you getting the idea how much I hate this setup? :)

I would never build without a closet serving as a buffer between the stairs and your bedroom. Even if the room was only 11 feet wide, I would do it. And then I would totally rearrange the bath and vestibule area to make everything more spacious. I have some ideas if you are interested.

Good luck!