Initial Thoughts and First Floor Ideas

[Jeff McDavit]

Love the layout of house!  Agree we should aim to be a bit over 4,000 sq feet. 

Ideas to decrease sq footage-

1) take out living room, (put as court yard with outdoor fireplace) 

2) Reduce size of 2nd master/bath/closet.  Having a 2nd master downstairs we agree is important for re-sale but since we arent planning on selling for decades , we could expand these at a later time.

We can get approval for the 4th garage but not build at this time.  Money is better spent right now on more square footage and also work-out room/man cave space looks already available in the 3rd car garage space!  I can see my flat screen up on the wall with a Giants game on!

First Floor:

Keep laundry room as is, we like the hallway from the garage to entry and how laundry is off to the side.  Cat box can go in laundry and be away from main living area.

Need Bar Area and walk in Pantry for kitchen.  Also would want to explore if we could expand kitchen a bit to have an island. 

If possible an additional powder room (can be small!) closer to main living area would be nice (if kids have to go to bathroom while watching movie at night might be a bit far for them to go)

[Jeff McDavit]

Hi Tim, you rocked it!  We totally love the kitchen and bar.  Looks so good!  Even though we are at 4400 sq feet, we have to try and make that work, house is so cool!  Thank you for getting back to us so quickly on these changes.  Off to post elevation pics ;) --jeff

[Tim Haley]

From your e-mail:

We really like the changes.  Love the guest bedroom and how you connected the bathroom to the rest of the house.  Powder room is perfect.  The garages really do have plenty of space for the man-cave workout area.

Sounds good - but the Powder did get modified from the Bar Addition

We really hate to decrease any more square footage, in fact we would like to expand the kitchen a bit.  Would be nice to have a bit more upper and lower cabinets.  Pantry is great.  The island the way you have it looks really nice but christine really likes a more central island so she can take stuff out of fridge and put right on the island.  I assume the kitchen would need to be expanded a bit to accomodate that so people wont be crowded in the kitchen.  Is it possible to add a decent size island more centrally and also bring back at least one pennisula with at least 3 bar stools?  Also, for the bar, we would prefer the walk behind type but it doesnt have to be very big.

So we would say go ahead and expand the kitchen a bit and add the bar even if square footage overall goes up.   But if we re-classify that 81 sq feet perhaps we could stay at 4300?   Thanks so much! --Jeff and Christine

Added the Bar and increased the kitchen to add an island.  Also reduced windows to add more upper cabinets but with the bumped out addition I added a side window to the main kitchen sink so you can see both yards - out the north window or out the east window.   The addition only added about 100 s.f. to the plan because the bar mainly was incorporated into the space we had.

[Tim Haley]

Replying per you post above

• We are still large at 4,300 s.f. but down from 4,800 s.f.   The main level was able to take out about 550 s.f. but we added in about 50 s.f. with the fireplace, window seat, and larger bedroom 3 (removing the chimney stack) - see upper level comments.
• Added Courtyard
• Reduced Guest suite
• I actually just removed the 4th car garage and trellis.  Since we are large on the s.f. still I thought it more important to save on the budge to get what you want (and these can be added on later on - I didn't move the house on the site plan so there is still room for these.  The Garage still has plenty of space for your man-cave / workshop area.  We may need to find another location for the Heaters / AC / Water Heater.
• Kept the Laundry as is
• I didn't add the Bar yet since I didn't know if you want just a counter bar or full walk-behind bar (note this may increase the house size depending on what you want) - let me know.
• Added Pantry in Kitchen (some prefer to have cabinet pantry but this is a corner pantry so it doesn't take up that much space
• I didn't expand the kitchen (but we still can) - but swapped out the double peninsula's for the island - let me know if this works or if you want to expand it (again hesitant since we are still large on the overall size). Up to you - let me know.
• Moved the Powder Room next to Great Room and turned the Guest Bath into a possible second option off the hallway (but still functions as a suite with the room - you just control it by which door is locked when you have a guest.