It's hard to follow your two plans for review-where is the garage-circle or arrow the 2 options. Why are there so many stairs? Is there a grade to the property/multi level home? do you have 2 dining rooms?

I'm sorry, I've been staring at the plan for so long I forget that it isn't going to make sense to the whole world. Beyond the breakfast room is the backyard. That table out there is for al fresco dining. The new rear entrance comes up from the driveway. Those stairs are required to get up into the house from ground level. I only have the one plan to share--the other image is the entire first floor, for context. Hope this helps.

First floor rear:

Entire first floor:

I have one room that serves as my powder room, laundry room, and mudroom and I hate it. I want to have a separate powder room. It is a planned project hopefully for this fall but it may shift out for budget reasons. Not having a separate powder room is a down side for me.
I don't really understand your second question: "Would the powder room be too far from the front of the house?" If it is in the same place whether in a large multi-use room or a separate room isn't it the same distance? Did I miss something?
One flow concern, and only 'cause it would bug me, is that guests have to walk through the mudroom hallway to get to the powder room. Now, I shouldn't complain about this because when I finish splitting my multipurpose room I will have this exact scenario, but I would prefer to have a powder room that guests can use without seeing my mudroom mess.
Will guests typically come in the front door in the living room, or will they typically come in through the new rear entrance?

Thanks localeater, I guess I still wasn't clear. The rooms would still be separate as they are now, but the entry from outside would shift towards the rear of the house and go in the breakfast room area instead of closer to the front of the kitchen so that if you were hanging out in the living room you'd have to walk though the dining room and the kitchen in order to get to the powder room. (Or guests would anyway, I would probably go upstairs to "my" bathroom.) I agree with you that ideally people would not have to walk through the mudroom to get to the powder room, but I'm not sure if we will be able to avoid it. Oh well, maybe that will be motivation to keep the mudroom neat? We shall see...

Guests, except possibly close friends, will still come in the front door.

Hi again,

I spent some time working on the rear entry layout and came up with something I *think* might work. Does anyone see any issues with this or have any other suggestions for me?

I like that-you shifted the powder room and laundry a bit/this is a new door and also you'll have a patio door-is that right? It is similar to a side entrance at our lake house which in reality becomes the day to day entrance-fine with me.I'd pull the door away from the corner and omit the little window. We have a little window and door/altho slightly differently situated. I've thought many times I wish the window wasn't there-on the inside more use could be made of the wall. In your case I'd want that door out of the corner.On the interior-on the scape of wall where door is you will really appreciate more hooks/and I'd give up a couple feet of the lower right part of closet down in the corner and mimic the bench-maybe a deeper bench with storage below and more hooks above....cubbyholes? but do leave sufficient closed closet as well. You won't believe how handy an area like this is with open places for hats/scarves/light hjackets/drying wet items/larging shopping totes-[I could just go on]. I see there are 2 little windows-do you need them both? You can get glass in the door and a storm door with screen for air movement in the summer-think of all the ways to use your walls and perhaps forgo the little windows.

Sorry, but I would not like this latest layout - now, guests will see your dirty laundry in all its "glory" - whether going to the PR or to/from the Deck.

To me, Laundry Rooms should be in the "private" parts of a home, not public.

You appear to be "stacking" the washer & dryer in this layout - does that mean you're open to stacking them? If so, I would prefer the first with stacked W&D and a cabinet + counter next to them.

you could probably reverse the bath sink and toilet and place the door to the bath from the hallway on the left. There is no perfect way if the bath and an entrance and laundry and day to day drop zone are all in this unit of space. I think this plan has some advantages-is the closet area next to W/D for clothes folding/and storage/etc?...with a big enough space and closet doors that seal it off as needed,I think you'll be ok.

If you could reconfigure the study, stealing some space up top and pushing the bottom part out creating somewhat of an "L"then I'd put the powder room there (using the existing door) and put a new door into the study down a bit.

I have no idea if that made any sense to anyone...

Thank you all so much for your feedback--I really appreciated hearing everyone's thoughts. We went back to the architect and she has made the following suggestion. My husband and I like this version a lot, but do have some questions. The architect is very keen on being able to open up the whole nook area to the backyard, but we're wondering whether all these doors might be overkill. I could see it in Hawaii, but we're in the SF Bay Area--it's warmer here than a lot of other places, but for most of the year I don't see us getting to throw open all these doors. I'm also not sure about having the kitchen cabinets broken up by the door to the mudroom. It might be fine and I'm sure I have seen some designs that do that on here, but I just hadn't envisioned it in my kitchen. Does anyone have any thoughts about this new design?

Note: the outside stairs to the basement had to be relocated to accommodate the new entry off the deck. Those are the stairs at the bottom of the pic.