Floor Plan Advice

[bg09]

What do you love about your floor plan and what would you change about it if you could?

DH and I are just starting to look at floor plans for our new home and I'm overwhelmed with the possibilities!

[amblor]

More than one bathroom. haha

And, if you're planning to have kids, not a master on the first floor with kids room upstairs. I was thinking it'd be great but I was envisioning 7-10 year olds. Not infants and toddlers :/.

[boiler717]

My sunroom is by far my favorite room of the house. It's off the kitchen and fully open to it. Other things I love:
- first floor play room with doors
- loft upstairs
- office with doors
- massive island and pantry in kitchen
- his and hers master closets
- each bedroom has an en suite bathroom (jack and Jill for 2 of them)
- roughed in bathroom and kitchen in basement
- Mudroom!

One thing that didn't work that I would have liked was an upstairs laundry.

[sju]

Like - The family room is very open with lots of windows and has the fireplace as focal point. We also have a big empty wall in line with the room entrance and do not need to put the TV and other equipment near the fireplace. I also like having a walk in closet in each of the three bedrooms.

Dislikes - we have a 3/4 bath downstairs and the door is located between the dining room and kitchen. If you leave the door open you can see the family room. Also, pay close attention to how you would need to set up beds in the bedroom.My master bedroom is not the best even though it is spacious at 19'x13'. The previous owners set up was not great but we were distracted by the view from the room (just green open space but it is nice for where we live).

[ssmjlm]

Our current floorplan is very colonial style (since it was built in 1987 and is a 2 story colonial) and I wish there was better flow between dining room, kitchen and breakfast nook. Truly I would prefer a more open kitchen dining space and not the separated dining room and EIK.

Also I wish they would have done a FROG (front room over garage) so we would have an upstairs playroom.

And why is the linen closet so small!

[minniebee]

I love our huge kitchen island. It's not only good for cooking/baking, but is great when entertaining. Our island is 4 x 8.5 feet. It's just a solid granite top ... it doesn't house the sink or cooktop or anything. There are cabinets underneath for storage and a built-in wine fridge. I love my kitchen island, I wish I could move it with me.

Master bath: 2 sinks is critical, as is a toilet separated from the rest of the bathroom with a door. As our realtor says, master baths without a commode room are bad for marriages :-)

I thought I wanted a formal living room AND a family room on the main floor. Turns out we never use the living room. We don't need both.

While someone else said not to have a first floor master with the other bedrooms upstairs, that's exactly the layout we are looking for in our next home. We want a first-floor master.

[adhdfashion]

I love my open floor plan. I wish the house had one more bedroom. 3 isn't going to cut it for us. We want a couple more kids. So we have plans to add on.

[cajungal]

I love that our kitchen is very open to the living room, but it has a tall bar separating them so it's still a separate space. I love having an island with nothing on it - it's great for baking and other prep. We have a guest bedroom with attached bathroom downstairs which I love.

Our master is downstairs, and it has a sitting area and the master bath has two separate sink areas - DH's is taller than mine, and mine has a long vanity to sit at in addition to the sink. That has been something I've really loved. I was worried about being downstairs with the kids upstairs (they're 21 months and almost 3), but it's worked out really well. If/when we have a 3rd child, he/she will either be in our room or in the guest room until they sleep through the night and then will also go upstairs.

I love having sinks for each bedroom - all have ensuites or jack n jill baths.

I wish we had a mudroom or enough room for a sink in the laundry room. Otherwise, so far, I absolutely love our floorplan.

[knitty]

If you're building, make sure you position the house with regard to the direction of the sun, not the street. Rooms without natural light suck.

Don't forget you need to clean even unused toilets, and tiles and plumbing are expensive, so don't go overboard. Also, bench space matters more than sink space.

Cluster the bedrooms together. Have a mudroom/entry that's where you'll actually enter the house. And pay attention to the size of bedrooms! a 10x12 room is just stupid.

Rooms over garages are hot or cold depending on the season, and two storey spaces are cold in the winter.

[TBM]

You might find it helpful to tour models homes and note things that you like and things that you don't like about different floor plans. You have to get past the 'shiny/pretty' and think of actually functioning in the space.

Since I have been house hunting online in cities or states other than where I am living, I have spent a lot of time figuring out floor plans and seeing things that will/won't work for me. There is one floor plan, of a house no longer on the market (and out of my price range anyway) that I have become kind of obsessed with. I wasn't actually aware of it until I realized that I was using it as a meter to judge other homes by...it is always lingering in the back of my mind. Now that I am aware, it has me wondering if we should build rather than buy an existing home.

[Deleted]

I love the extra storage. In addition to a closet with a closet/hanging system in each bedroom we have a linen closet in each bathroom, a closet in the hallway for misc. cleaning supplies and other stuff like my sewing machine, and a closet between the family room and the kitchen that will house the kids craft supplies, games, toys, etc. In addition to these we have an 8' long pantry. Our old house had really small closets (30" wide) and only linen closets in the bathrooms because we added them.
I love the open, great room concept with a lot of counter space. This was also a requirement when we were looking to build. Our old house was split up so it was hard to entertain since people would be in all sections of the house. You also had to walk through the kitchen to get to any bedrooms and I hated that. We won't have that problem in the new house.
Cons: I would like an extra 1/2 bath. I have three kids so I would like for them to have their bathroom and then have a 1/2 bath that is always nice and clean without kid yuckiness. A 3-car garage would be nice too but we didn't want to set our house back any farther on the lot so we didn't add one. We are at the end of a cul-de-sac so our lot is wedge shaped and we would have had to move back a good bit in order to have the clearance from the property line. We would much rather have the large back yard.

[wawa]

Nov 16, 2012 10:56:26 GMT -5 knitty said:

If you're building, make sure you position the house with regard to the direction of the sun, not the street. Rooms without natural light suck.

Don't forget you need to clean even unused toilets, and tiles and plumbing are expensive, so don't go overboard. Also, bench space matters more than sink space.

Cluster the bedrooms together. Have a mudroom/entry that's where you'll actually enter the house. And pay attention to the size of bedrooms! a 10x12 room is just stupid.

Rooms over garages are hot or cold depending on the season, and two storey spaces are cold in the winter.

stupid how?

Otherwise ditto. Also rooms over garages have garage door noise. This is not at all a problem for playrooms. It is a huge problem for bedrooms though.

[stephm0188]

I love our current floorplan. It's somewhat colonial-ish. Center foyer, living room to the left, dining room to the right. Kitchen behind the dining room, family room behind the living room. It forms a big square. The rooms are not open to one another. I don't like open kitchens. I feel like they create a lot of noise for the living space.

Four bedrooms, laundry, and a bonus room over the garage. I disagree with the notion that the room over the garage is cold and that the bedrooms are cold in the winter. Our upstairs is warmer than the downstairs in the winter months, and the room over the garage isn't cold or noisy. The original owners did a great ob ensuring that the garage space was well insulated and soundproofed. Our last house had two bedrooms over the garage, and they were noisy and cold. It depends on the quality of the home.

I love having a second floor laundry. I also like that our master bedroom does not share walls with any of the other bedrooms. It offers a little more privacy. Actually, none of the bedrooms share walls now that I think about it. The only thing I wish we had is a mudroom.

Our last house was an open concept, and I really didn't care for it. There was a lot of wasted space downstairs, and really not much wallspace. I wanted a china hutch and there wasn't a single wall I could put it on. Ditto with bookcases. So, so annoying.

[starlily]

Huge open living space with the kitchen, dining nook, family room, and finished patio all flowing into each other.

Lots of light.

Loft area upstairs near the bedrooms for extra playspace.

Guest room on the first floor with its own bathroom.

[tabithasoren]

A main thing for us was that the TV in the living room did not share a wall with the master bedroom. My dh likes to watch sports/movies on the weekends and I like to sleep, so that was a dealbreaker for us.

We also wanted the kitchen to be open to the living room and we wanted an island. We wanted a separate laundry room that was not the entrance to the house from the garage which is very common around here. We also took out one of the windows in the master bedroom to ensure we had enough wall space for the bedroom set we already have. We almost didn't think about that and everything would not have fit.

[bunnymendelbaum]

I like very modern houses and non-standard things in floor plans, but:

Big open main space (containing kitchen, living & dining) with one entire wall of hidden storage and opposite wall all glass with plenty of doors to open the house up to an outdoor area.

Bedrooms all together away from living space (I love courtyard houses.)

Bathroom split into its parts. Separate toilet room, shower room and open sink/counter area between.

[heygrey]

Love - the kitchen and living room are distinctly different rooms, but still open to each other. I'm not a huge fan of some of the newer builds I see here that are basically one big great room with a kitchen in a corner. I like open concept, but I also want a distinct line where one room ends and another begins.

Hate hate hate - the bathroom is off the living room and because of the size and layout of our space, the couch shares a wall with the bathroom. Therefore if you are sitting on the couch you are privy to all noises in the bathroom even if the bathroom fan and tv are on. We've lived in two apartments like this and have hated the bathroom placement of both. I wish it were tucked back closer to the bedroom(s) and out of the main traffic areas. I see this in houses too, not just awkwardly laid out apartments. Powder rooms meant for guests off the kitchen or living room. I just want a little more privacy as it relates to bathroom matters, I guess.

[wawa]

Nov 16, 2012 16:54:53 GMT -5 heygrey said:

Love - the kitchen and living room are distinctly different rooms, but still open to each other. I'm not a huge fan of some of the newer builds I see here that are basically one big great room with a kitchen in a corner. I like open concept, but I also want a distinct line where one room ends and another begins.

Hate hate hate - the bathroom is off the living room and because of the size and layout of our space, the couch shares a wall with the bathroom. Therefore if you are sitting on the couch you are privy to all noises in the bathroom even if the bathroom fan and tv are on. We've lived in two apartments like this and have hated the bathroom placement of both. I wish it were tucked back closer to the bedroom(s) and out of the main traffic areas. I see this in houses too, not just awkwardly laid out apartments. Powder rooms meant for guests off the kitchen or living room. I just want a little more privacy as it relates to bathroom matters, I guess.

the bathroom thing would have never occurred to me without somebody else mentioning it - but huge huge dittos. My husband's best friend used to live in a rental that was set up like this. I HATED hanging out there because every time I used the bathroom I was acutely aware of the fact that everybody on the couch could hear everything i did. Especially back when he was just my boyfriend, not my husband, and I had just met the best friend and his roommates recently. Awful awful awful.

[knitty]

Nov 16, 2012 11:41:15 GMT -5 wawa said:

Nov 16, 2012 10:56:26 GMT -5 knitty said:

If you're building, make sure you position the house with regard to the direction of the sun, not the street. Rooms without natural light suck.

Don't forget you need to clean even unused toilets, and tiles and plumbing are expensive, so don't go overboard. Also, bench space matters more than sink space.

Cluster the bedrooms together. Have a mudroom/entry that's where you'll actually enter the house. And pay attention to the size of bedrooms! a 10x12 room is just stupid.

Rooms over garages are hot or cold depending on the season, and two storey spaces are cold in the winter.

stupid how?

Otherwise ditto. Also rooms over garages have garage door noise. This is not at all a problem for playrooms. It is a huge problem for bedrooms though.

Stupid as in far too small to be a useful room. You can't even fit a queen sized bed in one, let alone a bed, dresser, desk and random teenager crap.

[hereonceagain]

I loooove our laundry room Connecting to our master bedroom. It's so easy to do laundry and throw it right on our king bed to fold.

[pickle123]

Open floor plan, mudroom, walk in tile shower, laundry in close proximity to bedrooms

[SusanBAnthony]

Nov 16, 2012 18:23:24 GMT -5 knitty said:

Nov 16, 2012 11:41:15 GMT -5 wawa said:

stupid how?

Otherwise ditto. Also rooms over garages have garage door noise. This is not at all a problem for playrooms. It is a huge problem for bedrooms though.

Stupid as in far too small to be a useful room. You can't even fit a queen sized bed in one, let alone a bed, dresser, desk and random teenager crap.

That is a matter of preference and age of the house.

I would rather have smaller kids bedrooms bc all that needs to fit is a twin bed and a desk, and I would rather have other rooms be larger. We have looked at a few 30's-40's houses with more like 8x10 kids rooms and that is a-ok with me.

I like a eat in kitchen, OT kitchen open to a dining room. I care less about it being open to a living room.

I hate wasted space in master bathrooms- a shower,toilet, and one sink is plenty. I don't like giant master closets either. Have a master bath and walk in closets at are as big as a whole nother bedroom just seems wasteful. I realize I am in the small minority on this, though. I want to spend my sq footage on a room I use more than 15 minutes a day.

The biggest thing by far for me is natural light and big windows. Nothing would make me happier than a north or east facing house with tons of windows on the south or west side, and a sunroom facing south or west. We have walked away from plenty of otherwise nice houses bc the natural light was awful.

I actually prefer not to have a formal dining room bc we don't ever have formal meals. W may end up with one anyway, and it might become an office. Or sewing room. Or something other than dining room.

Eat: another thought! We are house hunting right now so I have lots of opinions, lol. Kitchen layout is way more important than sheer size. A good work triangle (sink, stove, fridge) is critical. I hate when they stick a fridge way off in the far corner of the kitchen and you have to hike there and back every time you need something. Also, I like a long stretch of counter space (like at least five feet) next to the stove if possible for food prep. I don't like having two or three or four short choppy pieces of countertop, none of which are big enough to spread out your cooking project on.