Reaction to 2nd Revision of Floor Plans

So we went back to work going over every square foot of the plans in excruciating detail. And by "excruciating" I mean it was excrutiating for Christina to live in the same house as I did while I spent most of my waking hours talking about the house.

We came out of the first revision realizing the we needed to cut down the square footage. So a lot of our thoughts had that in mind. Once again, I'll take a shortcut here and just cut-and-paste an excerpt of the feedback we emailed our builder, including some sketches we sent:

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(1) The major change here is dropping the front entry closet and lose that 2 feet of width for the entire house. This impacts a lot of areas:

a. Shift the entire right side of the upper floor 2 feet to the left. (living room and deck shrink).
b. Downstairs, cut 2 feet off the guest bedroom width, and what is now the workshop
c. Shift allows for a larger window in the kitchen, and requires re-designed mud room area

(2) leave the exercise room unfinished

(3) push the window wall of the master bedroom out 2 feet. this extra 2 feet can cascade to either bedroom, closet, or bath. Overall this change does 2 things:

a. will help allow to center fireplace/TV on the bed (hopefully). Related to this, opens up that wall in the living space for shelving since it wouldn’t be used for recessing the fireplace
b. It will also allow extension of the room below the master bed, making it logistically compatible with pool table in the future.

(4) Move the entire Bar area down approximately 1 foot (eating into the space labeled wine cellar). push it as far as you can as long as someone seated at bar can still see all of family room and big TV.

(5) Net result of (1)-(4) is cutting out 135 square feet

(6) Kitchen thoughts: With the upper level shift, hopefully this means ability for a bigger window with room with double sink below. Would move dishwasher next to sink, and move the oven to the refrigerator wall. Island would have prep sink, and ample food prep area.

(7) Mud room area is still same size, just sits differently relative to kitchen. We tried to come up with a configuration but feel free to suggest others. Ours does result in a smaller closet, and possibly a cramped bathroom (pocket door the bath maybe?), but still has good size panty, large laundry, and nice locker area. PLUS gives a window back to the mud room main area.

(8) don’t have downstairs bath "jut" out quite so far...just go out 6' instead of 7'. afraid of cramping chairs in the TV room.

(9) entry door to office, would rather shift it over to be next to the AV closet. also add a single door inside the office next to the outside wall accessing the AV closet.

(10)We’ve decided we want to drop the workshop/shed concept in the basement. think it makes more sense to attach workshop off back of garage . also removes need for retaining wall and removes the outside access.

Main Floor thoughts:

Lower Level thoughts:

Mud Room thoughts:

Kitchen thoughts: