I just got back from an extended weekend trip to Arizona to visit one of my best friends for her birthday. Her and her husband recently purchased a brand new home in a beautiful gated development in Phoenix. Needless to say, we discussed custom house designs/building a lot on our trip.

After showing her our current design (Version 6), she immediately thought of a different house floor plan that is available to buy in her own neighborhood because of the kitchen. If you’ve been following this blog at all you’ll know that the kitchen nook area has been a big question mark for us. My friend mentioned that this floor plan is actually featured as one of the model homes. We were out her door and to the model as soon as possible! I absolutely wanted to check it out.

Here’s the floor plan, and as you can see, that the kitchen has double islands and the informal dining area in the kitchen is almost the same size as what we’re proposing for our house. With nearly the same layout.

Floor plan of the main floor of the model home

The model home actually has a wrap around couch in the informal dining area to create a nook feel. In addition, the interior decorator realized that the space is pretty large as well, and they actually put two tables in the space. To me, it feels a bit awkward to have two tables in one nook. As we were sitting in it, discussing the space it gave off a restaurant vibe.

We agreed though that a rectangular table will definitely work in the space, even if it didn’t have a banquette. So, this gives me some options and flexibility with the room. Maybe we’ll end up starting with a table and chairs and build a banquette later if we’d like. One thing that was interesting is that this home added 2 feet of walls on each side of the seating area to create an “alcove-like” feel to the informal dining space. That’s a great idea and it did define the space well.

Model home kitchen with double islands and informal eating area

Model home’s informal eating area with 2 tables and a wrap-around couch

This kitchen / great room layout is extremely similar to ours with the great room being adjacent to the kitchen. The biggest difference is that our current plan has another run of cabinets between the islands and the great room and although we’ll have a large opening into the kitchen, there will be a fairly significant wall dividing the two rooms. Below is a picture of the model home and of what our house would look like of we removed the wall between the great room and the kitchen. It’s pretty open, and our house has slightly larger rooms than the ones shown below. But is it too open? It is great for entertaining, that’s for sure.

Model home’s great room view into the kitchen.

Now I’m beginning to think that our own design might be too separated. It was nice to have the space open to each other, however I’m certain that Joel and I would think that it feels too open. I’ve got to discuss it with Joel, but I’m beginning to think that maybe we want to still keep the large cased doorway opening between the two rooms, but add a pass through window onto the dividing wall. This would be something similar to the examples below.

Pass through into great room adjancent to another door opening.

Pass through idea in kitchen.

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Or latest design revision has really been both fine toothing some areas while others are still figuring out their layout. In the upstairs, minor tweaks have been done. This includes the addition of a picture wall inset at the wall opposite the top of the stairs. The office also changed with the extension of the master closet and the office closet, and the addition of a window seat on the north wall. I’m not 100% sure we’re done with changes in the office though. I’m starting to think that maybe the addition of built-in bookcases might be nice since we don’t have those anywhere in the house yet. The HVAC ductwork also moved near the entry which created more useable space for the laundry room…LOVE that!

Preliminary Design V6 – Main Level

The lower level was rearranged a little bit as well…trying to find the best layout downstairs has been a bit tricky. The boys’ bath was reconfigured to both reduce the bathroom size (since bathrooms are pricey) and create a walk-in closet in Bedroom 2. That’ll be nice for both boys to each have a walk-in closet for sure. Bedroom 3’s closet was actually reduced slightly to create a hall linen closet. That was much needed and will likely hold everything from blankets and sheets to towels and washcloths. Who knows, maybe a few games or puzzles too!

The hallway for the guest room area was also flipped so that the entrance is to the stairs for better flow. The closet in the guest room was also rearranged to allow for windows to be placed on three walls. Since the guest room is located under the main deck, having ample light in that room is important to us. A hall linen storage closet was also added by the guest room.

Preliminary Design V6 – Lower Level

Mike also gave us another iteration of the exterior of the house with this round of edits. The exterior combines some of the features we liked about his first sketch with others that we liked about his second. As shown below, the roof line is swept and gabled roof lines have been added to the front of the house. Windows have been added above the front door to create a focal point. Mike added two versions for this – one with a gabled roof as shown in the top and bottom perspective views and one with a shed dormer as shown in the middle true elevation view. I’m really not sure what to do about that or which I like better, and I keep thinking about the previous version without windows above the entry with the overlapping gables between the entry and the dining room. All of the designs work, but honesty, none feel perfect right now. I think that we’re going to need to work with Mike and discuss the options more to really come to a good conclusion.

Preliminary Design V6 – Front Elevation

We’re so excited. Just two days after our last revision we received the latest plan set from Mike. He was working of the exterior of the home and I wanted to make sure that some of the changes I wanted were incorporated before he got too far on the exterior. That meant sending a quick email to him with a list of changes.

Take a look! By rearranging the guest room and bathroom downstairs we were able to bump in the kitchen in the informal dining space on the main floor by 2 feet instead of just 1 foot. He also rearranged the mudroom and its finally to a size that we love. It will have built in lockers for the boys and a coat closet for us which will not only hold the large array of coats that we have because we live in the northwest, but be a place to store the vacuum and other cleaning supplies as well.

Preliminary Design V5 – Main Level

He also shrunk down the great room downstairs which feels so much more appropriate. He did that by increasing the storage on the back wall and by creating a hallway to get to the guest suite. An extra bonus is that by bringing in the back wall, there is now a true “entrance” to what we call the boys’ area. They’ll have a great play/art area and then off of that their bathroom and bedrooms. Also in this round of edits you’ll see that we increased the size of the boys’s bathroom. It now includes a bathtub and a shower. I really like this idea, but since bathrooms are pricey and because Bedroom 2 doesn’t have a walk-in closet, we want to see a different layout for the next round of revisions. We’ve left that design completely up to Mike to create. He’s also thinking that we should have a linen closet outside of the boys’ rooms as well.

Also downstairs, we’ve moved the outdoor living area underneath the main deck. That will create a covered area for hanging out during the summer and keep the main deck for dining. Summer evenings on the property should be pretty shaded due to large evergreens that line the south side of the property so having a covered lounge spec isn’t the highest priority for us. Upstairs we really only want a covered area for barbecuing in the rain.

Preliminary Design V5 – Lower Level

Mike also sent over a preliminary sketch so that we could see what the outside of the house is now looking like since there’s been significant changes since our first preliminary design. This is only the second time that we’ve seen the outside revision so it’s fun to see how it’s taking shape. The design is pretty rough though and it’s hard to really see what’s going on. The main change is the double gable over the entry/dining room.

Preliminary Design V5 – Front Elevation

Mike incorporated mostly all of the edits that we had given him and the house is really taking shape. The mudroom reduced significantly in size, although still feels too large and open. However, he was able to add in a door from the front of the house, something I love and think will get a lot of use. The laundry room was expanded by reducing the size of the pantry. The pantry size is now much smaller. Our thoughts were that we really have a lot of cabinetry in the kitchen, so we really will only store food items in the pantry. This is more than enough space to do that. I’m not sure if you noticed, but the previous pantry design had a fridge in there. I love that idea, and it would be so handy, but realistically, I’d rather use the space for a laundry room and put an extra fridge in the garage. The garage is so close to the kitchen anyhow that I doubt it will be a huge issue for us.

The informal dining area in the kitchen was only bumped in a foot on each side. At originally 19 feet wide, this space was too large for our main family eating area. I wanted the room to be bumped in 2 feet on each side which would reduce the width to 15 feet. However, if we did bump it on by 2 feet there wouldn’t be enough room downstairs in the guest room to move around the bed. So, we were only able to bump it in one foot, bummer!

Preliminary Design V4 – Main Level

The downstairs didn’t change too much, besides getting resized due to the rooms on the main floor changing in size. The great room still feels too big and we’re not really sure what to do about that. Mike felt the boys bathroom was large enough for the boys. I’m still disagreeing abut that and want to see it expand in size. The downstairs feels so large and to have such a small bathroom feels like a mistake. I’m betting that both boys are going to be over 6 feet tall in high school and since we don’t plan on moving I definitely don’t want it to be cramped in there. We’ll need to see some other ideas that he has to increase that space.

Preliminary Design V4 – Lower Level