Seems that this is by far the best forum around for house building planning and discussion. I've been reading this and the kitchen board for about a month now.

We're moving from a house we love, built in 1912 which we've extensively renovated with floor refinishing, paint, finished basement, replaced/repaired doors and windows, landscaping etc. But we've simply outgrown it and there's not a lot of room to expand the 1 car garage, add to the single bathroom, or add bedrooms (2 reasonable sized bedrooms, 1 small one).

We've closed on a property just this last Friday, and we're at this point planning to go owner/builder on this project with construction starting spring 2014 or 2015. I'm also doing the floorplan/elevations design. I expect I'll need to take my plans to an architect for final building drafting and review. I'm hoping that by bringing a fairly detailed plan at the start I can save some time and money on this expense.

As far as region, we're building in Iowa.

Our needs/wants are:

1. Single story, planning a 'forever' house.

2. Accessiblity considered in design per #1 above.

3. Garage with room for two daily use cars and room for storage of other cars (kids/summer car), small boat, workshop, general storage, etc.

4. 3 bedroom/2 bath on first floor

5. Ample kitchen space, we LOVE to cook

6. Open floorplan for entertaining and family life

7. Future space in the basement for an additional bedroom, bathroom, office and media room/home theater.

Some of the things I've designed intentionally are wide (wide enough?) halls, bathroom/toilet stalls, counter-to-counter distance in the kitchen, doors or door openings, etc. The dining room will be the eating location 80% of the time, and the kitchen island/deck will be 20%.

Total living space is 1860 square feet, which is what we have today on three floors, so this will be huge for us given we can expand to the basement down the road.

At this point I'm just interested in any feedback you guru's might have. I've seen a lot of good floorplan discussion here and I've tried to take a lot of the comments on other plans into consideration.

(Trying to attach a link to a directory index of my images of the plan)

Here is a link that might be useful: House plan images

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