Here is the floor plan for the First Floor. Thanks.

This may be bigger Main Floor.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Bigger 2nd Floor Plan

Here is a link that might be useful:

Here is the Front Elevation. The question here is... should we do a metal roof for the roof on top of the porch in metal and in a hip roof vs. a gable with asphalt shingles? Thanks.

I might ditch the shutters, but otherwise, I love the elevation.

Please don't switch to a hip roof or a metal roof. What you've got is timeless, and if you go with a metal and/or hipped roof, it'll look trendy and then dated.

I'm sure you'll get comments on things I haven't noticed (other people are better with exteriors than I am), but I think you've got a really strong start.

For the plan, my only comment is that with such a large house, I don't know why you'd put the elliptical in the laundry room. Laundry rooms are hot when they're in use. If the secondary bedroom with the sitting area is a guestroom, I think I'd put the elliptical in there with the plan of storing it in the laundry room when the guest room was needed for guests.

A good elliptical is large and heavy and not easily moved from one room to the next. Ours would need to be partially disassembled to go through a doorway

Thank you for your input Zone4. I should add that our current plan for bedroom 2 is to be an upstairs playroom for the boys. They have a large collection of Legos and army soldiers and that is where my wife hope that they will congregate. She is tired of stepping on all those pieces and having to clean up after them in our current living room/family room/sunroom/etc.

And chispa is right. Our current elliptical machine will not be easily moved. Also, we do laundry one day a week(typically Sunday). So, the washer/dryer will only be operating in a small slice of time for the week. We could put a part wall next to the washer or dryer.

Finally, for those looking to re-arrange the floor plan, the left side of the house is most private. We are on a corner lot where the garage side will face one street and the front(Southern Exposure) will face the other. That is why we have the upstairs covered porch and the main porch on the left side.

Obviously I'm not an elliptical user, but I do have older kids, and I suspect you may find yourselves doing laundry more often as your boys get bigger.

*I* wouldn't want to exercise in the same room where my dryer was running, and I don't think you can count on only doing laundry one day a week when you've got bigger boys in sports and other activities. It is *astonishing* how much more laundry teenagers make.

Maybe you've got a plan for this, but it's something that sticks out for me in an otherwise very nice plan.

A living room AND a family room AND two sitting rooms AND a covered porch AND an exercise room . . . do you not like your family to congregate together? Ever? Why so many public gathering rooms? I'd consolidate some of these.

The upstairs bedrooms and bathrooms look okay . . . except that the master bathroom is all doors. I think those're going to be inconvenient -- always knocking into something else.

You have a monster-sized walk-in-closet for yourself, but your kids have rather puny closets. Big closets for kids = cleaner rooms.

The plumbing is spread out across the house, which will cost more and will give more opportunity for leaks. Consolidating plumbing into one area of the house is always a good idea.

I'd flip-flop the downstairs bedroom and closet/bath. It'd allow you to have more windows to the back of the house, which would be a huge benefit.

The dining room is too far removed from the kitchen. Carrying all the dishes and food (2 directions) will be such a chore that you'll never use it.

I'm fine with the exercise equipment in the laundry room, but I would definitely add a ceiling fan -- maybe a shelf that can hold a smaller, oscillating fan too. I know that at the gym, the machines nearest the fans are always in demand.

As for doing laundry infrequently, once your boys are old enough to need more laundry done, it's also time to teach them to do it themselves! The sooner they pick up small responsibilities, the better off they'll be as adults. I'd start them washing their own sheets and towels (hard to destroy) at around 8, then they'll be ready to take over the whole chore around 10.

I'm not crazy about the angles. They're expensive to build, and they result in spots of unusable space and weird-shaped closets.

Angles=expensive lost space & awkward movement through the space. Those stairs don't look like they'll meet code with those winders either. All because of the angles. The whole kitchen complex is awkward, with wasted space and a not the best layout. Angles again are the culprit. The master space takes up about 1/4 of the home's space. It's out of proportion. Can't blame that on the angles, but it is a skewed priority. It seems that your family priorities a lot of time away from each other rather than time together. Not that that's bad per se, but it isn't the principle that the usual family home is designed around.

To your first question about master closet access through the bathroom, we had this in the house we just sold ... loved it and will miss it in the new house we're building but just couldn't make it work. The only thing better would've been to have a washer/dryer in/next to that closet (we're having it in this time), so I liked your original plan of the larger closet with access to laundry room. Very convenient.

Since bedroom 2 will be a play room, any chance you could set up elliptical in there?

No expert here, but I like the kitchen layout. However, if all those angled walls would stay, I'd prefer to switch kitchen and FR, to have easier access to the DR. If you do that, it might be a good idea to have an entry to the bath next to the BR/office from the new FR.

I can't read the dimensions, but here are a few ideas.

Bedroom 4: If you move bath opening more to the left wouldn't it be possible to move the sink to the right corner (facing right wall) and have more cabs on the left of the sink? If you do that it might be possible to move the small closet in the bedroom to the right side of the bath entry.

If BR 2 entry is moved to where bathtub is and laundry enlarged towards BR 2, would that give you a room larger than BR 3 (maybe use more of BR 2 on the right side for a wic)? BR2 can be laundry+exercise and BR 3 can be the playroom with a 1/2 bath.

Master bath+ wic: if passing thru wic to go to bath would be acceptable, the bath and wic can switch. I think, when 2 sides of the shower are made equal, toilet can be under the shower and with no closet, the bath will have a rectangular shape. If bedroom door can be moved to the left that part of the room can also be included in the wic, maybe both bath and wic can have their own entry.

This post was edited by sena01 on Sun, Oct 6, 13 at 15:39

Thank you all for the input. I can't argue that this house plan is too big for our family of 4. How we got here is that we fell in love with the elevation from an online plan site. We were able to find a reputable custom builder to adopt an existing house model from their current portfolio to our desired elevation. By doing this, we saved over 40% in the cost of the build.

The other driving factor is that we are building in one of the most expensive real estate region in the east coast. We know that when the boys go off to school, we will most likely sell this house. We want to make sure that we are aligned with the region's buyers' expectations.

For the first floor, we don't intend to use the formal dining and living rooms day-to-day. We currently eat 99% of our meals in our now "breakfast" area right off the kitchen. Those rooms will only be used when we have holiday gatherings and occasional parties. Again, we recognize that they are there for resale purposes only.

Now back to the issue at hand, are there ways to maximize efficiency of the 2nd floor, given bigger bedrooms for the 2 boys and minimizing the footprint of the master suite with that angled stair as something we can't change.

Jujubean - thank you for answering my original question. I am thinking of adding the door back in between the WIC and the laundry/exercise room. I know that that will knock down on the amount of hanging space in the WIC. Perhaps I can compensate by adding a wall of closet space in the south wall of the master bedroom.

Sena01 - thank you. I will explore your bedroom 4 ideas with the architect. I need bedroom 3 or 2 to be another bedroom for the other boy(bedroom 4 is for sure for one of the 2 boys). Our preference is to use bedroom 3 as it is not over part of the garage.

Is the 2 story foyer a must-have for you? If not, you could use that space for nice big closets in BR3 and 4. (I personally would rather have better closets than an 2 story space.) With closets back to back, you could put in a low 'secret door' that the boys might enjoy when they're younger. My friends' house had this in their boys' closets and when they were young they thought it was great. They're teens now so the door has probably been closed off.

If you want special treatment for the foyer, you could still have a high ceiling there but just a few feet higher than usual; you could then build some reading lofts into the space over the foyer, a few feet up from the floor.

I think the kids would love that for a cozy reading spot, or put a mattress in there for sleepover space.

Kind of like the picture below but not nearly so high, and they wouldn't have the sloped ceiling so they'd be more usable.

I can't agree with building an extra-large house just for resale. You're not just talking about building. You're talking about paying taxes, maintenance and heating/cooling on a house that's bigger than you need . . . in hopes that in a decade or more the housing market will still expect this type of house. I'm not sure the generation who's in high school /college today (that is, the group who'd be poised to buy your house when you're ready to downsize) is going to follow suit and buy into big, expensive houses. Most of them are graduating with student loan debt, and they're walking into a difficult financial picture -- many of them won't be able to buy, even if they want to do so. And they are less motivated by the things our generation sees as necessary -- like big houses. I think building something you don't want just for resale is a risky proposition.

Chicagoans, I like the idea of doing away with the two-story foyer and going with an extra-large "between the bedrooms" closet. I'm not that crazy about two-story rooms, and no one hangs out in the foyer anyway. But everyone likes extra storage! When I was a small child, my grandparents had a house with something similar: Two bedrooms. Between them stood two walk-in closets. One closet was "dedicated" to the left bedroom. The other had two doors, one opening to both bedrooms. In the years that they lived there, the rooms served many purposes. At times, the right bedroom was a guest room, so the person on the left had TWO walk-ins. It'd be cool for the kids when they're small, and it gives you versatility for the future. Some family who looks at your house in the future might see that as a two-closet bedroom for a teenaged girl. Or they might see it as space to store items for an at-home business. Really, this extra-large closet idea is solid gold.

As for that picture of the loft . . . one absolute: It could go into BOTH boys' rooms, or it could go into the playroom. You could not build it for one boy and not the other. It would cause nothing but fights! It's just too cool.

I do agree with leaving the room over the garage (the least desirable room) as the playroom.

Mrs. Pete - I agree that the lofts should be for both bedrooms - wouldn't that be fun? It looks like the foyer is about 8' wide, so you could have at least 3'6" depth in the loft space on each side I think. Stick a twin mattress in there or a big floor pillow and it would be such a cozy spot. (You could have a little window between the two rooms there too - kind of a fun little connection between the two.) Now I want one...

Sena_01's suggestion for Bedroom 4 is a good one. And the closets become a walkthrough area, and no funky corner for DS to toss his dirty laundry in (even though the laundry is handy!)

Loving the raised ceiling for the foyer with a loft above! There could even be a ladder from the landing to it. Saw that in a Sarah Susanka "not-so-small" house.