Today we received the latest design from Mike Blondino, and the house is really starting to take shape.  We wanted to focus on the floorplan before we start editing the exterior since the outside is really built upon what the floorplan is shaped like.  In addition, the main floor really drives what the downstairs is like.  So you’ll see that there is a lot more detail and thought put into the upstairs and a lot less in the downstairs.

He took into consideration all of the edits that we had and this is what he came up with.

Preliminary Design V2 – Main Floor

We absolutely love the kitchen!  It’s really starting to become the space that we want.  Extra large for cooking and family gatherings since everyone always seems to end up in the kitchen, a prep island and an island for serving and barstools.  The informal dining room seems pretty large to me.  Right now it’s bigger than the dining room.  We also think that the pantry is too far from the kitchen.  We use our pantry a lot to store all of our food, so to have it separated by a hallway seems too far away.

The dining room placement is perfect though.  Near the kitchen and the table is able to extend into the great room when needed.  The bump out is nice for a vintage buffet or built-in too.

Mike gave us an outdoor kitchen area which is something that we hadn’t thought about, but absolutely love.  And the backdoor from the mud room is perfect for the dogs accessing the dog run area during the day.  I’m not sure if I mentioned before, but the mud room will serve double duty – a place to drop shoes and backpacks and also a place for the dogs to stay inside during the day with access to the outside for them to do their business during the day.

Preliminary Design V2 – Lower Level

The downstairs seems pretty big and open – the lighter gray area is what’s included in the square footage calc.  Oh yes – the square footage…much too big right now.  We’ll have to keep working on trimming that down for sure.  Back to the basement though.  The main thing I don’t like is that visitors downstairs would need to use the boys’ bathroom or cut through the guest room to get to that one.  I would rather have people use the guest room bathroom since it won’t be in use very often.  And I’d like to have the same doors to the backyard downstairs that we’re having upstairs for consistency.  This is definitely a space that will need more thought as we’re getting pretty close to figuring out the upstairs.