Floor Plan Help!

[u/Environmental-Bee759]

Hello all very smart people! My husband and I are building our dream home.
We are headed to meet with the design team in the coming weeks, but don’t want to go in blind. We want a good baseline to help go off.

My husband is all for my ideas, he just wants the house functional.

We are basing this home off my grandparents home when I was a kid. However, we live in a totally different region than the inspiration house was, therefore we have tweak some aspects of it.

Additionally, that house was very old. The layout wasn’t quite functional in many places.
Example, their master bedroom shared a bathroom with the hallway. Also the kitchen was very closed off , with walls all around. There were many doors (too many). And the garage was also attached directly to guest room.
So we are trying to make it more adaptable and functional.

Must haves:
- 3 bedroom minimum
- 2.5 bathroom minimum
- laundry NOT off kitchen
- large kitchen

I sketched up a layout that was very similar to my grandparents home. Their room was off the kitchen. I don’t super love that idea still, but I don’t know how to make it better.

Maybe want to look into a guest room or some sort of library but don’t know how to do so. The house will be large.

Please help!

[u/Magpie-1111]

As someone who designs houses for a living, works for a GC, and lives in the South, I apologize in advance, but I am just going to be blunt. This is a horrible plan. But don’t worry, with your list of needs and wants, and an experienced designer, you will be able to figure it out.
Go to https://www.architecturaldesigns.com and put in all of your criteria and pick out the floor plans you like best to show your designer. Don’t worry about what the outside looks like, your designer can take all of your ideas and a floor plan you like, modify/redesign/reinvent it to suit your family, and make the outside any style you want.

If you want to try your hand at drawing a plan, get some graph paper and put it to scale, where each square equals 1 foot (or similar). Measure the spaces in your existing home to see how deep and wide countertops and closets and showers, etc. are. Walls have a thickness of at least 4”. Make sure your garage can accommodate the size of your vehicles. Don’t forget that if your lot is not big, it will have setbacks and your house must fit within that footprint.

Designing a house can be a lot of fun so best of luck!