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lilacsnviolets

Help on a 4bed 3 bath single level floorplan

lilacsnviolets
11 years ago

I'm amazed at all the valuable advice given freely here on this site from so many of you. Some people post their hazy, unworkable ideas, and go away after the discussion with charming floorplans. I hope mine doesn't need that much work. (?)

The first home we built was our builder's stock plan, with tweaks. Why do most stock plans seem like they were designed by bachelors who don't cook or do laundry? I want this next home to be our last.

We've lived a lot of places, mostly rentals, and looked at bajillions of floor plans. The only floor plan I've ever fallen in love with is a 4000 sf two-story French Country style home with 5 beds and 5 baths. I'd love to build it, but I need a single floor, under 2800 sf home. So this is a mash up of elements we liked from that plan and several others. I don't have a design program, so I'm drawing in Excel. I realize that my walls have no thickness. I think my rooms are sufficiently large to allow for actual walls.

There are some things we don't want.

No wasted space.

No stairs.

No laundry room doubling as hallway to garage.

No formal dining room. We wouldn't use it. No bar eating either. Just our table.

No Jack and Jill baths.

No fireplace.

No front porch.

No vaulted ceilings, just 9 foot flat.

There are some things we do want.

Compact footprint - to not take up too much of our lot.

Master bedroom near the laundry room.

Large kitchen (190 sf minimum). I need to love my kitchen.

15 linear feet of desk space on a great room wall.

Very large pantry close to garage and kitchen.

Lots of storage.

Separate, more formal music room.

Covered porch in back.

So, any feedback would be helpful. Will our exterior be workable, or are we stuck with a massive roof, dwarfing everything else? Oh, and it faces south, and it's as wide as I think it can be and not be too close to the neighbors, but it could go deeper.

Comments (5)

  • kirkhall
    11 years ago

    What are the dimensions? I have 2 concerns: 1) your family room is going to be dark. 2) your house is too deep and will be very expensive to build due to having to span such a deep front to back (that might be mitigated with a load bearing wall or 2, but you are going to need to pay attention to this part, especially).

    Renovator will be one of the best to comment on your roof size.

    And, I think it would be "better" if you could have a sight-line from front door to a back window, but right now, your game room wall juts into that space making that not possible... What will be in your "game room"?

  • lavender_lass
    11 years ago

    If you haven't walked through a plan like this one...I would advise you to go look at some triple wide manufactured homes. They are very similar to your design and the middle rooms tend to be dark. Usually the middle area is for closets or open to a room with windows on one end. If you like that feel...then you're on the right track. If not, then I would make some changes to your plan.

    I would also look at more single story ranch plans. Here is a site that might be helpful. An advanced search will give you some great results, but you'll probably have to simplify the roof lines.

    This plan looks like a good possibilty. The laundry is close to the Master Bedroom and Bedrooms 2 and 3 could share the hall bath, with Bedroom 4 (guests?) having its own bath. I'd probably tweak the kitchen, but that's true with almost any plan. Since you don't need stairs, the study could gain that square footage and make a nice game room :)

    Here is a link that might be useful: Link to eplans home

  • lilacsnviolets
    Original Author
    11 years ago

    Kirkhall � you always notice the sight lines. And here I thought I�d considered it all. The game room is for fuzball, air hockey, darts, whatever, and the walls are for noise control. But it shouldn�t be right there. It should be tucked away somewhere over the garage, or in the basement. Neither one works for us. The plan would really work better without a game room, and the porch in that spot.
    Sorry I didn�t mention it in my original post, but the scale is 1square to 1 foot. So the depth of the plan is 52 feet. If that is too deep to roof cost-effectively, what is the solution? Can it be solved with tweaks to the layout, or am I back to scratch?
    Lavender lass � I love your practical comments here on GW. I love light and windows, so the cave look isn�t the effect I want at all. In the past I�ve had solar tubes in laundry room, hall, and master closet. Would they work in the master closet, laundry room, and family room?
    The thing I don�t like about J&J baths is the two separate doors into a private space. The plan you link to has this problem for the master suite. That�s easy enough to fix, but as soon as you do, the laundry all needs to be lugged through the kitchen. I�ve spent my free time on eplans and houseplans for years, and I can�t find a stock plan I like.

  • Annie Deighnaugh
    11 years ago

    I think the place you will spend most of your time will be the darkest of all...kitchen/dr/fr. That would make me crazy.

    I think you should think about a real split plan with FR, DR, Kit running front to back and with guest room, game room and music room on one side and master and bedrooms on the other. You might also think about making the plan narrower and deeper rather than wider.

    When we were looking, we needed wide and shallow given lot constraints and were frustrated in that most of the model home places did the opposite so they could cram as many houses along the street as possible. It did yield some very interesting and functional home plans though.

  • DreamHomeDreamer
    11 years ago

    Just thought you might find some use in Sweet Home 3D. It is a free (not a trial) house drawing program download, that is pretty decent. You can do a virtual visit and walk through your house. It might help you visualize everything while 'sitting' on your couch. You can add windows, change the height at which the windows are off the ground, etc. You might also find it helpful because it includes the wall width which add a decent amount of space to a floor plan. The only thing it doesn't do, is roofs. But since yours is staightforward, you can visualize it.

    Here is a link that might be useful: Sweet Home