WOW...Ok, I am not an architect or designer and I don't even try to act like one....my initial reactions was WOW...LOVE IT! Gorgeous! I didn't look carefully at the interior, but I just love the exterior. You are working with a great design crew!

We are building something similar...but smaller (one story). We have dormers, and a partial copper roof, we even have the same style front doors...We have an angled garage also....alot of elements are similar!

Good luck with your build! Post pictures as you build!!!

Pam

These are the two things that I would look at again. I wouldn't be happy with them, but you say this plan works for your family. I know my children would not be happy with the bathroom arrangement. I have a 14 year old son and 11 year old girl. My daughter spends a ton of time in the bathroom already doing her hair and getting ready and we haven't even reached the teenage years yet. If your DD is using the sink area, your son won't be able to get in to use the toliet/tub.

The kitchen doesn't have enough cabinets for me. For such a large house, I'd expect to see a bigger kitchen area.

These are the two things that I would look at again. I wouldn't be happy with them, but you say this plan works for your family. I know my children would not be happy with the bathroom arrangement. I have a 14 year old son and 11 year old girl. My daughter spends a ton of time in the bathroom already doing her hair and getting ready and we haven't even reached the teenage years yet. If your DD is using the sink area, your son won't be able to get in to use the toliet/tub.

The kitchen doesn't have enough cabinets for me. For such a large house, I'd expect to see a bigger kitchen area.

The kitchen space is large, but I don't think it's very well planned. The lack of upper cabinets seems fine to me with the large pantry space, but there are other issues. The refrigerator is pretty far from the sink. The double ovens are stuck in a corner. Being small in stature, that would be a huge problem for me if I needed to remove something that fell into the oven and could not get to the right side of the oven. Storage below the bar/eating area will be inconvenient to access. There seems to be too much going on at the island, but not enough practical function designed into the kitchen.

Bedroom 2 back up to the kitchen and to the bathroom. Those two walls seem the most likely spots for a bed. It's going to be a loud room with noise from the kitchen and/or the bathroom directly behind the bed.

Is that the laundry, by the garage? It's a LONG way from the master bedroom. You might want to think about adding a washer/dryer to the dressing area. Save yourself a lot of walking back and forth :)

The plans are a bit difficult to read. Perhaps that issue and the fact that it was a holiday weekend have kept comments to a minimum here.

I don't see an elevator to have elderly people be able to get up and down from one level to another. If you've got them in the basement, where are they to park and enter the basement from? The expensive "garage over garage"? What if they want to come upstairs? Also, that's NOT an ADA friendly bath. If someone were to need to use a walker, even temporarily, they wouldn't be able to stay in the home.

For the secondary bedrooms, I'd put the bath next to the great room and make it hall accessible so that Bedroom 2 has windows in 2 directions. Since there isn't a bath in the family entranceway from the garage, all of the last minute "pee before you leave the house" will need to use that bath, and it needs to be more readily accessible.

There's no "kids entry" to the outside where they can come and go and leave messes. Traditionally, that would be through an exterior entry into the mud room, but even if you had that here, there's no good access to the back yard from that. When they're out playing and getting dirty, they're going to track that dirt into the home. If you relocate the bath, you might think about a small porch and exterior entrance into that bath to serve the kids and adults who will be outside and need a restroom.

Be sure the bonus room uses "live load" trusses instead of "storage" trusses if it's to be inhabitable space in the future. You'll also want to pay attention to air sealing and insulation to keep it from being the coldest or warmest room in the house. Your stairs from one level to another also don't appear to work for the heights given. That's a major design issue, as there isn't any wiggle room at all. I don't see a large piece of furniture making it through either set of stairs.

Not sure what price range you're getting, but here, that would be around a 600-700K home (depending on finish level), and we're in a low cost area to build. The garage over garage (and all of that paving!) probably isn't an insignificant portion of the build. I'd think about having a completely separate rear entry garage by just increasing the depth of the existing garage, or doing a gabled bumpout at it's rear on grade. That's probably cheaper.

So is this the Richelieu plan by Donald Gardner? (See link below.) If so, did you work with their firm to get the changes you made or did someone else do that for you?

Here is a link that might be useful: Richelieu by Donald Gardner

@Spottythecat and @sanctuarygirl: Thanks! I hope the budget will allow copper standing seam on the porch, but that's a want, not on my list of must haves. I just checked out your house on the Sept Build thread... you're right, it is very similar. I like yours a lot too, and looking forward to seeing your progress. The plan is based on the Richelieu, but I hated it's interior layout, especially the closed off kitchen. I used the rough exterior dimensions and front elevation to draw out a plan for our draftsman. My focus was on an efficient space that would carry us through until the kids leave for college, yet not be so bloated that we had unused space. Some people probably think I'm crazy to leave off a breakfast nook, but that represents who we are. We're not formal or fussy, but we like to eat together. The large island will serve that purpose. I kept the dining room for entertaining, but the reality is our friends are happier having drinks and chatting at the island. We all have things that fit in our lifestyle... the beauty of GW is that we can get great feedback that we may not have considered.

@neroselover: You may have to click to get a link to the full-sized image on photobucket, but there is a pocket door between the sink and tub/toilet area. The kids assured me that will work... and if it doesn't, I'll be on the other end of the house where I can't hear the argument. ;-)

@rrah: There are upper cabinets in the kitchen. If I get some time, I'll scan the rough sketch of the elevation. What am I missing about the refrigerator being near the sink? I'm trying to think about how I cook now, and I don't make many trips. I get all my ingredients together, then prep. Actually that was why the sink is across from the stove... mine isn't now, and I find it aggravating to cross over to it during prep. I put the ovens out of the way of traffic. It seemed like it would be annoying to have to wait for someone to pass before I could open the door. I thought I had considered prep, clean-up and baking zones, but it sounds like I'm missing something. Help me see what it may be. By the way, the storage side of the island will hold the things we don't use often: ice cream maker, deep fryer, holiday dishes, and that sort of thing.

@lavender_lass: Excellent idea, but the hubby won't go for the extra bucks or the chance it would ruin our hardwoods. I guess I'll be getting some exercise.

@live_wire_oak
If you go to the link, you can enlarge the plan. An elevator isn't in the budget. The purpose of the basement is for our parents to continue independent living for as long as possible. When we pass that point, I will hire a live-in sitter, and there will be a room down there for her. Yes, that bath needs to be ADA. It currently marks the rough in locations. I'll definitely make sure we have plenty of room for a walker or wheelchair. The basement garage has to remain. My husband is a car collector and needs room for his toys. ;-) He's even building another 4 car garage/workshop on our property. Some might say he has a problem.

I originally had the kid's bathroom separate, with a hall entrance, but this layout makes more sense for them since my son is sharing the space with a teenage girl. Speaking of boys, and dirt... he's trained to enter through the basement garage door (which hasn't been added to the version yet) and remove his dirty clothes/shoes. That floor can be sprayed down with a hose. There are harsh penalties for getting my floors dirty. Ha!

Tell me more about what you're seeing with the stairs. The bonus room will be a crafting room for me, so I'm not worried about large furniture needing to go up. It's mostly shelves and a couple of desks and a cutting table. All of those things will easily fit. Anything going in and out of the basement will pass through the quad sliders. What do you mean by the stairs don't appear to work?

The rough estimates are 500-700K. We start getting hard numbers this month. The garage under is actually a very cost effective way of gaining space, and worth every penny.

Thanks for all the comments, I'm going to look at making a few more tweaks, but I think it's FINALLY time to start building.

I saw all 3 pocket doors on your the kid's bath. However, knowing MY children, my daughter would go in to do her hair/makeup/etc. and would lock both pocket doors for privacy leaving no way for the other one to come in to use a toliet/shower.

Maybe you've already discussed this with your children and it will be fine, but from having a Jack and Jill bathroom now that my children share, I've watched them lock each other out on purpose and also for privacy.

I see no problem with the kids' shared bath. The brother can walk through to the toilet/tub while his sister is using the sink area. Kids learn to compromise and live with other people by sharing, and this is a large bathroom for two kids.

I do like the suggestion about flipping the secondary bath and bedroom. Butting the bathroom and the kitchen up against one another is a money-saver because it consolidates plumbing. In fact, that's wise beyond the savings: Less plumbing = less possibility of leaks. And I'll almost always vote for a bedroom with windows on two walls, which would become possible if you do this flip-flop.

Are those three large closets for the master? That looks like overkill to me, but I think it's become necessary to accommodate the angles. I'd definitely include at least a small stack-up washer/dryer in that area. It can be set in a "pan" that will prevent damage, if a spill should ever occur.

I'm not crazy about the hallway to the master. It seems long and dark. I don't see any way to fix it, so I'd go with a light color paint, and I'd consider something to liven up the walls: Artwork in niches, perhaps. Something to make it less flat, less corridor-y.

I would cut the bay window in the garage. I like some light in there, but this is not where I'd splurge on a big, beautiful window.

As for a room for your parents, I'm not sure the basement is the way to go. You're talking about future need, not immediate need, right? Typically people aren't willing to give up their independence unless a tragedy has occurred (health problems, loss of a spouse, financial difficulties) and made it an absolute necessity. Likely by the time that comes to pass, your 14 year old will be away at college, or perhaps even out of the house altogether. Take it from the mom of a college student -- 14 to high school graduation will feel like a week.

Also, having just lost an elderly relative, I can tell you that there's a reluctance to spend on renovating the house for an aging parent. My grandmother steadfastly refused to move in with any of us until two summers ago. When she finally agreed that something had to happen, we all agreed that she was either going to move in with me or another relative. I was going to put her in the master bedroom, and my husband and I were going to move into the office. It wasn't going to be ideal, but since she was 99, it wasn't going to be forever. In the event, she ended up moving in with another relative -- it was the better choice for several reasons. He spent about 50K adding a bedroom and handicapped bath to his house, and she lived in it one year. The rather hard-hearted fact is that IF it comes to this with your parents, you will ask yourself, "Should I spend this money to renovate? How many years will it be used?" You'll want to do all you can for your parents, but with your own kids needing college tuition and you thinking of your retirement . . . you may well decide it's better to keep everyone in the existing space.

Anyway, you'd have the option of putting your parents into what was the 14-year old's room, and putting the home-only-occasionally college student in to the study (a smaller bedroom). With the possibility of keeping everyone on one level, I'd do two things now:

- Make the kids' bath (maybe the study bath too) proper dimensions for a handicapped bathroom. You can always add safety bars, etc. later, but arranging the square footage afterward is hard. This will cost pennies now, but will buy you choices later.
- Place doors on both ends of the walk-in closet nearest the study. You can use it for yourself now, but IF the study becomes a bedroom later, it can service that bedroom. Again, pennies spent now = options later.

double post.

This post was edited by neroselover on Tue, Sep 3, 13 at 23:30

tonyab122,

I think it is wonderful that you are planning for your parents to live with you at some point. Even if an elevator is not in the budget for you now, I would urge you to seriously consider designing in stacked closets so that it would be easier to add an elevator in the future if you wanted to do so. You might even place the closets so that a future elevator would also be able to serve your bonus room.

Having an elevator in the house was very important to my mother-in-law, who was planning to live with us. What do your parents think? Who knows, perhaps when it comes time, your parents would pay for it.

Good luck!

Sorry to give you bad news this morning,
While you did obviously changed the interior, your exterior front is a copyright infringement and you should probably be worried about that now that it is posted.

Regarding your children's jack and jill bath:

I would place the locks in the vanity area so that they locked from INSIDE the bedrooms; this way, each child will have complete privacy available in his bedroom, while not getting locked out accidentally in the vanity area. Of course, include a lock for the toilet/shower area.

Good luck!

Regarding your children's jack and jill bath:

I would place the locks in the vanity area so that they locked from INSIDE the bedrooms; this way, each child will have complete privacy available in his bedroom, while not getting locked out accidentally in the vanity area. Of course, include a lock for the toilet/shower area.

Good luck!

Beautiful house. Love the changes you made.

For the price of 1K, I would purchase the plan just for peace of mind.