Somebody else here had picked this house to build - I recognize the last photograph.

That said, I love it. Boral brick and the Pastelcote is used a lot in my area.

These are things I would consider:

I would make the porch of breakfast area more breakfast room area. With the screened porch, you probably won't sit on this one often. Unless you are going to use it for a grill.

Delete the porch and door entry from the laundry room.

In our last home, we only had a back stairway going up. I would rethink having two staircases, maybe keeping the front one - powder room can become another pantry for bulk items when it is moved to the back stair area. Looks tiny.

Upstairs, change the loft to a bathroom so that the middle bedroom can be large and use the moved bathroom area as a walk-in closet. Or keep the middle bedroom closet where it is and their bathroom can be larger. Or if you keep the loft and delete the back staircase, the loft will be larger.

If you leave the baths as is, at least put fixtures back to back in those two baths. This will save dollars and you really don't want to put plumbing on outside walls unless you have too. Same with left bedroom bath - move plumbing to the interior wall.

Hi,
I just stubbled on the new home site while lurking for bathroom ideas........normally I'm on the kitchen forum : )
Just so you know, I have no experience with building a new home but I have renovated 2, with plans to build some day !
While looking at the pics you posted, I think the outside photo is absolutely gorgeous and I do like the more pastel earth tones shown.
With the main floor the first thing that I wondered was that is seems a long way to the DR from the kitchen if you plan to have most of your meals there. I like the BFnook but I would also enlarge it using the covered porch space, also I'd put in large (4) french doors on the side of the BFnook windows and take out the door leading outside from the laundry room.
Same with the MBR, I would utilize the large windows to put in large french doors there too and not have the smaller one off the side, which would be very nice especially if you had a Hot Tub on the side of the large porch. Mmmmm.........hot tub; )
A mud room would be important to me especially with children, so I'm not sure if that would matter with your family at this time.
I agree with the above post about the upstairs rooms. I'd prefer 2 larger bedrooms with larger closets and not have the 2nd set of stairs but a large bathroom with double sinks etc. Maybe you could incorporate a laundry shoot/lift to the upstairs also........that would be so convenient : P....
I realize that there are different trends in different areas of the Country and more from Country to Country but it's just my Canadian 0.02 cents worth. All in all I think it's beautiful and you should tweak it to your liking/satisfaction.

I agree that I'd incorporate that loft into the bedrom. 9x7 is tiny, it won't be useful for much of anything at that size. If I ever had a 2 story house I always wanted 2 staicases so I can't knock that aspect though. Maybe combine the 2 baths upstairs too unless it's necessary for them to be separate and not share a tub or something. I posted on your cubbies thread about moving the powder bath.

I heard that you were looking for me a few weeks ago regarding that house. That is the house we will build whenever the real estate market improves and we sell our home. However, we had the interior changed quite a bit to better suit our needs/wants but the exterior basically remained the same. It is a beautiful home and I can't wait to build it! The house plans are all ready and waiting!

I have very fond memories of my two brothers, my standard poodles, the cat and me gleefully chasing each other up the back staircase, down the long upstairs hall and down the front stairs of the circa 1900 house we grew up in! No wonder that kids back then were rarely overweight, LOL!

Nice house!!

I would disagree on getting rid of the loft it is a perfect little nook for the kids to have a little play area in or a built in homework station or even a small "office" (desk) or reading nook. I would find something more fun to do with a nice little space like that.

I don't have too many other suggestions at the moment because your master suite is almost as big as the whole first floor of my house (current and the one I want to build) so it all looks way too big to me :) lol

Looks BEAUTIFUL! Someone mentioned a mudroom area...we have a similar setup, where you walk into the house from the garage and the laundry room is on the left. To the right, we had our carpenter build a "mud bench", with room for shoes underneath, places for coats to hang, and a spot to sit. It has been the "dumping area" that we couldn't live without. You could incorporate one on the angled wall of that 1/2 bath.

That said, I've always loved that house. Seen it many times while searching for my own. Good luck!

Wow! Thanks for bringing this topic back to life nanner10! We are still in the early stages of building our dream home. We purchased a lot and are getting our house ready to sell. We have a FOR SALE sign in the yard but have not advertised yet. We did take the original plans to a draftsman. We have an initial set but are meeting him again to tweak it some more. Somehow it ended up being over 5000 sq ft-YIKES! I do not want to pay for that or clean it! I can't wait to be able to post our plans for all of your expert advice. We are having a mud room. We kept the 2 staircases, I love that! We dropped the screened porch and will have a nice sized patio out back. We kept the loft and added a bonus room over the garage. DH has 3 car garage-more space for his man tools! :) I'll keep everyone posted!

I really love this style of home. We've been looking for something like this. Can you or someone please provide the source for this homeplan? We'd be very grateful. Thank you!

I found it on www.dreamhomesource.com