Closer up of Floor Plan

Bonus Space

Front Elevation

Garage (Two Stall) 44’ x 26’
Single Stall 16’ x 22’
Kitchen 21’ x 12’
Dining Room 21’ x 12’
Living Room 17’ x 29’
Master Bedroom 14’ x 12’
Bedrooms (approx.) 11’ x 12’
Covered Patio 17’ x 13’
Covered Porch 6’ Deep
Bonus 16’ x 41’

Basement?
That is a HUGE mechanical room (why?).
Tell us about your lot. (is there a reason there are no windows on the sides (right side in particular)?)

What will the office be used for? It seems tiny, dark, and closet like....

Dining room twice the size of the great room, which won't actually be able to hold any furniture because it is a *major* thoroughfare zone.

Smart to limit the windows on the north side to prevent that cold Canadian air pushing in, and the covered patio will protect in the winter, shade in the summer.

Nice sized laundry, consider a sink in there, too (especially for baby laundry).

In the living room, where are you planning for the fireplace? Think about furniture/tv placement, because as it is the space might be hard to set up, with passage to kitchen and bonus and master right through it, and only one wall.

The mudroom is a good size; how do you plan to set it up, with cubbies, or hooks, or cabinetry? Is that a basement stair, or under-stair storage? I can't quite read it.

The kitchen is a major thoroughfare, right through cleanup and cooking areas. Consider that.

The pantry is huge! And the door interrupts the workflow in the kitchen. Maybe turn the door to face the side door, and move the whole counter 3' to the south. Actually, there are a lot of ways to make the kitchen work better.

Thinking about views and outside access, where on the 5.5 acres will the house be sited?

No basement, we will be planning for a safe room to protect us from severe weather.

Mech room is large to provide us the storage we lose by not having a basement. I have a lot of "stuff" : )

Not a lot of windows on the North side of the home for the exact reason bpathome mentioned. I did notice we need a window in the 3rd bedroom on that wall!

I have noted for a sink in the laundry. I have actually adjusted that portion of the plan to adjust for a bigger laundry.

The office was made smaller and the North wall removed and half of the East wall. I too thought the space would be "closet like". I thought removing those walls will open up that corner and eliminate some of the extensive hallway we have going on there. Also, our office will serve more as a filing area for paperwork. Neither my husband or I would be working from that area.

I thought the living room space seems a bit awkward as well. I think tonight I am going to cut out some scaled furniture pieces and see if I can find a few functional layouts. That will also help us decide where on the laundry room wall we want to place the fireplace.

For the mudroom I do plan on creating a bench area with hooks and what have you. But to me that is something I can address post-construction as well.

Under the stairs is another "closet" or storage area as we will not be having a basement.

I havent put a whole lot of thought into the kitchen as of yet. That will be something I will sit down with the Kitchen designer and go through layout and functions. I am thinking that maybe I do want my sink in the island to create a better working triangle.

We will be living about 20 miles out of town, so a big pantry was important to me. It will be nice to have the room to stock up on non-perishable foods. We did see a home this weekend where the pantry door's swung in. That is an option we are considering in order to keep the flow through the kitchen

See the picture for a view of the land! The red box is approx. house positioning. barns are to the North.

Is there any way you can orient the house so you have a number of windows on the south side for passive solar or sun tempering? And put the garage on the cold north side. I don't know which way your prevailing winds are though. We lived in ND and got terrific snowdrifts.

I like that your laundry room is near all the bedrooms!

I agree that limiting the windows on the north side is smart, but why is the garage on the south? Why not put the garage to the north, or at least to the west? It seems to me that your house would be a lot nicer in the summer and the winter if all those nice windows on the entry side of the house were oriented to the south, to capture the low winter sun.

Could you rotate the house 90 degrees on the lot? I think that would be a lot nicer for a lot of rooms, except possibly the master bedroom and patio. Then the bedrooms could have east facing windows, and service rooms like the mudroom and mech would face north.

I agree with everyone else on the misalignment of the home. Not taking advantage of passive solar in a climate like SD is very shortsighted. Especially since there is so much acreage involved so you could design anything you wanted. You need to read up on passive solar design and go back to the drawing board.

I don't know how much wiggle room you have at this point but..

1. The squared space between the garage and the sink window (currently nothing there) seems the most valuable south-facing space yet you don' use it. The inside of the house in general will be very very dark this way. Not much natural light. Could you find a way to place a great room there? From your plan, it's almost like the great room (your only family/living room) does not exist.
2. Enlarge the master suite and you can make the patio anywhere else. You have a huge lot. That covered patio space seem like another waste of indoor space..I'd actually move your master bedroom to the left and make it a bit remote from the rest of the bedrooms. You don't want to be too close to the rest of the bedrooms. Where is the master bathtub? The master bath is a bit small! The entire master suite could be a larger. Need more WIC, too. Not sure if the plan is in scale but the dining room larger than master suite?
3. I'd like at least one more en suite bedroom. You can do this by moving the second bath to between two bedrooms and putting two or three doors (two to bedrooms and one to the hallway.)
4. The office is awkward. By all means, reduce your dining room space, move the entry to the left, place the office differently so that you have a window for the office, place bedrooms and the second bath differently so that not ALL the bedrooms need to have a hall bath.

This post was edited by ttonk on Sat, Sep 28, 13 at 18:29

You might consider posting your kitchen on the kitchen forum. One thing that jumps out at me is the separation of the range and the only sink. Imagine a hot pot of boiling water, taking it from the range to the sink. You have to cross a walkway. I lived with that for 20 years, and it is not fun.

- Agree with the orientation of the house concerns.

- Fairly simple footprint. Economical to build.

- I think I'd flip the living room and dining room. The dining room is vastly oversized in comparison to the rest of the house. If I could have ONE big room, it'd be the great room.

- I'd definitely want that aforementioned fireplace in the living room. Or a wood stove. I wouldn't quibble between the two.

- The living room is going to be dark. Since you're in a cold climate, I don't much see the point in a covered patio. I'd have a plain, uncovered patio out back in exchange for better windows for this very important room.

- Another way to get better windows: Flip the master bedroom and bath/closet. This'll put the master bedroom on the corner, and you'll be able to have windows on two walls. So much nicer. Yes, you'd lose the door to the covered patio, but this is one more reason to bump the patio out back.

- If you don't want to flip the bedroom /bath, how about flipping the closet and bathroom? It does stretch your plumbing farther, but it would give you more bathroom windows. I just can't see wasting a valuable corner on a closet.

- I hate toilets shoved into closets (uncomfortable to use, very difficult to clean). In this case, doing away with the toilet closet would give you natural light by the sink area -- a very big plus.

- You're okay with no tub?

- Love the big pantry, but the kitchen could be better-designed. The sink is the biggest workhorse in the kitchen. I'd want it more centrally located.

- I'd bump the pantry wall over to the entry hallway . . . and go with NO door. Of course, I keep my pantry nice and neat, so I don't mind people being able to see into it. This would give you slightly more kitchen space. I'd also add a pass-through from the kitchen to the pantry ( which would allow you to enter the pantry and set several cans of beans and your biggest cookpot onto the countertop, even if you have a baby in one arm -- big step saver).

- Plan to insulate your laundry room for noise. We had this type of set-up in our first house, and the laundry was soooo noisy in our living room. The laundry room looks nice, but corners are always a bug-a-boo: Inefficient, difficult to reach into . . . and you have two of them. I think I'd consider going with L-shaped cabinets and using the other wall for a pegboard for storage . . . or similar.

- The office is minimal, but I'd be fine with it. I'd consider something like an opening (I'm picturing shutters) that could open towards the dining room. This would take away wall space for office shelves, but it would prevent the room from feeling claustrophobic and would allow an adult working in the office to see kids in the main areas of the house.

- I might steal some space from the laundry to enlarge the office. Between the two, I'd value the office more highly.

- I wonder about flipping the laundry and the office. The office will be a heavily used space, and placing it near the master would be convenient. It would also give you a better view (in future years) of what kids are doing on the computer.

- The secondary bedroom that shares a wall with the bath: I'd bump the door down to the other end. This would mean that eventually all the kids' doors would open up next to one another -- this appeals to me. It would also mean you could enlarge that closet a bit, and every bit of storage space is a win.

- One hallway bath is ample to service three bedrooms, especially when you're talking about small children.

- Why an oversized garage for only two adults? Don't say storage -- not when storage is cheaper in the form of an outbuilding and you have several acres.