I don't feel picked on. *I hear what your saying but its a hard pill to swallow. One of my favorite sayings is a person convinced against their will is of the same opinion still. Usually I'm not on the recipient end though! *
Eddie I respect your opinions although I think they might be a tad on the harsh side. I get the difference between building for your own tastes versus building a marketable house. ...
Thanks again,
Nathan
Nathan,
You are doing the right thing by requesting feedback on you house plans. I posted the ugly details of my entire house build in my thread,
At Home in the Woods. We moved into the house a year and a half ago. I know very well how painful it can be to put your heart and soul out on the web for people to take jabs at your project. However, the more objective you can be reading people's responses, the better off you will be.
First of all, you should carefully absorb Eddie's comments. He made some suggestions when we were building our house that helped us greatly. For the most part, Eddie's comments regarding your house plans are spot on. I would call your plans a "rough draft". They are far from production ready. Like you, we drew up our own plans using some house plan software. When we thought we had finished our design, we ended up scrapping it and starting over because House #1 ended up being too large. We then drew up plans for House #2. Our house is 1 1/2 stories with a full walkout basement like yours. House #2 only had 2 bedrooms on the main floor. We did not intend to ever finish the upstairs and might never finish the basement. Thus, a house as large as ours with only 2 bedrooms would be odd. Plus my wife got pregnant so she wanted 3 bedrooms on the main floor instead of 2. So we scrapped House #2 and designed House #3 which is what we built. We ended up partnering with a house designer to assist us but we were deeply involved in the process.
It sounds like you are on House #2. I believe that you, like we did, need to move on to House #3. I gave my wife fits when she wanted to scrap House #2 and work on House #3, just like your wife may do to you. While your second stairwell seems kind of neat, it is going to end up costing you tens of thousands of dollars, maybe $100K+, over what a comporable house with the same usable square footage would cost. I suspect that part of the reason your architect ended up designing a 5600 SF house, was because a massive house is required to support 2 stairwells and a kitchen with an island.
If you are like most people, this house will be the largest investment you make in your life. As such, it needs to be something you can sell if you need to. Being 34 years old, you may not foresee that possibility, but life happens. You are just only one significant life event away from all your plans changing direction. That could happen tomorrow (illness, career crisis, economy, family issue, etc.). So you don't want to invest a significant chunk of your life savings in something you will have trouble selling. I think you would have trouble selling a 2650 SF house with two stairwells. If you ever have to sell that house, you might lose your shirt. You should get a sense of this possibility already based on multiple comments from people in this thread. It would surprise me if you could find someone else willing to pay so much money for a second stairwell.
When looking at people's comments in this thread, I see one word or thought that keeps coming up: "inefficient". Your house plan has a lot wasted space in it, for example 2 stairwell landings, the large empty space in the middle of the second floor, etc. Carrying groceries from the garage to the kitchen will not be fun. Ideally, the door from the garage will open into the kitchen. Your master bedroom is larger than the living room. The island in that size kitchen will cause a traffic jam if you ever have a family gathering at your house. The fridge and pantry should be closer to the stove. Getting food out of the pantry or fridge and carrying it around the island to the stove on the opposite wall will make for a long trip. You need counter space beside the fridge to help loading groceries into the fridge or to help pulling leftovers out of the fridge.
Like your house, our main floor is 2000 SF. However, we have 3 bedrooms, a formal dining room, an eat-in kitchen, a grand piano, both a tile shower with 2 shower heads and a claw foot tub in the master bath, and lots of space for entertaining guests - all on the main floor. We can have 20 people inside our house for a gathering without any crowding issues. You can see our house plans
here. We obviously have more yard work and landscaping to do.
I'm not implying that you should build a house like ours; our tastes may not be yours. However, I'm just trying to show you an example, following Eddie's comments, of what you should be able to do with only 2000 SF. Your house plans are 2650 SF and you will have trouble fitting a significant gathering of people in your house at one time.
Also, your house with a 2000 SF main floor adds only 650 SF if you finish the entire upstairs. Our house with a 2000 SF main floor will add 1700 SF if we finish the upstairs. Our house with the same footprint as yours can have 1000 SF more living space than yours. The extra 1000 SF adds up to big dollars when it comes to resell. That's one reason your two stairwells may cost you $100K+. The other reason our house has so much more space upstairs is our garage is located adjacent to the house so the space above the garage is just a continuation of the rest of the space in the upstairs. One person mentioned that square/rectangular houses have some very practical advantages. Our house is a traditional rectangular house but it has a great room floor plan so we get some of the advantages of old and new designs.
Please understand that I'm not trying to say that my house is better than your house. That's really not my intention. If I have come across that way, please accept my apology up front. I'm just trying to give you some practical suggestions and give you some examples to back up my suggestions.
Good luck with your project and please put up a thread when you start building. It sounds like it would be fun to follow.
Obed