I would like to hear about your experiences with DGA. We will buy one of their plans and have them modify it but that won't be until next year. We are building in South Carolina so it makes sense for us to use their services. They have an engineer on staff who is licensed in the state who reviews all plans. So far all of my communication with them has been very positive.

Is there a door from the master bedroom to the porch? If not it looks like it would be hard to move furniture into the master. Might not matter, but something to think about if you have a king size bed or large dresser, etc.

Do you need a closet near the foyer? Even a warm climate gets rain, so I'd want a place for jackets, etc. There's a tiny closet near the powder room, but if you have kids you'll want more than that; I'd want to add a mudroom. (Even if you don't have kids, if you do any yard work or have a pet, it's really nice to have a place to take off shoes and hang coats when coming inside.)

I'd post the kitchen on the kitchens forum to get the most out of your space. Personally I'd prefer not to have the refrigerator on the opposite side of the kitchen from the dining table.

In the second floor bathroom, I'd sacrifice the second sink to get a bank of three drawers.

nanj - so far so good with DGA. They are just waiting on our final decisions about our kitchen at this point before they send off our modified plan. They have been very helpful and easy to work with. This is our first build so we really won't know what we've forgotten or done wrong until we do it...

chicagoans- thank you for your advice. We have made some adjustments to the original plan. I hadn't thought about the furniture issue - thank you! We did add a closet near the garage and enlarged the laundry room and added a pantry. We were able to do this because we extended the garage to 25 x 26.
I think we'll need two sinks - we have 4 small kids. We did add a pocket door in that bath to give space separately for the tub/shower/toilet and then the sinks.

We did move the fridge but still have concerns about the layout of the kitchen. I hope that this weekend I will post the design to get some much needed advice. This site is such a help! Thank you!

I would not want to have everyone walking through the kitchen to get to the breakfast room. I'd remove the cabinets to the left of the sink and put a door to the GR there.

Anne

In the DR, you will probably want a place for a buffet of some sort on the left wall. Since the lighting fixture and DR table are usually centered on the exterior windows, I'd add ~2' to the left side of the DR/K/BF (making it a long alcove in the DR to line up with the utility room), for a buffet or built-ins (for this room to do double duty as a study). Also, I'd want to get rid of the 3 pillars and just put a small corner wall (90 degree corner, with matching short walls going each direction) where the middle pillar is to give a bit more definition to the DR and maintain a little symmetry with large doorways/openings. Our DR is similar, and we put 2 sets of double pocket doors so that this room can be closed off from the noise in the rest of the house, but it still feels open and spacious when they're open.

The 8'4" measurement in the BF looks like it includes the bay. I'd want at least 10' so it's easy to move around the table in this dead-end room. The peninsula just encloses the BF more. If you add the 2' to the left side as mentioned above, you'd have room for an island in the K instead of the U-shaped cabinet run. You could also have 2 L-shaped cabinet runs (much better than a U, IMHO) by moving the K door to the L closer to the garage. You could also put more cabinets along the L wall of the BF area for storage, kid's projects, etc. With the door from the GR mentioned in my previous post, the traffic flow of this entire area seems like it would be greatly improved. I'd have to draw it out to see, but don't have time right now.

We have 3 elementary age grandkids living with us in our lower level walkout, and ofter my daughter splits them up to tables at opposite ends of the area when doing homework or projects if they need a little quiet, or are tangling with each other. Your BF and DR on opposite ends of the kitchen will make this a great possibility for your 4 kids when you are working in the kitchen and they need to be separated, and places for school papers/projects, art supplies, books, games, etc. in these 2 rooms on this floor will help keep their things organized.

Just some suggestions that I think would make this important part of the house more livable, but YMMV.

Anne

I was remembering the size of my own DR incorrectly, so ignore what I said about adding 2' for an alcove in that room. You have enough space to put a buffet or built-ins as is.

However, I think I would still want about an additional 2' on the L side of the K & BF plus 2' on the bay window side of the BF room. 4 kids as they get older take up a lot of space!

Anne