Custom Floor Plans

Starting with how the household lives

A good plan starts with your daily routine rather than a room list. Who comes in through which door. Where the groceries land. Where the kids drop their bags, where the dog gets toweled off, who cooks and who sits at the island while they do. Who works from home and needs a door that closes. If a parent might move in within a few years.

We walk through a day and a week with you, and through the seasons, because a New England house is used differently in February than in July. The answers end up shaping the plan more than any picture does. A layout that looks good in a magazine can be wrong for a family of five with two hockey bags and a dog.

If you are working from a stock plan you like, that is a good place to start. We look at what it gets right and where it fights your routine, and we adjust from there.

It helps to bring a list of what frustrates you about the house you live in now. Most people can name five things without thinking: the kitchen with no landing space, the bedroom that shares a wall with the television, the closet you cannot reach. Those complaints are often the best guide to what the new plan needs to get right.

Room sizes, circulation and sight lines

Room sizes are where plans most often go wrong, in both directions. A dining room that seats ten but gets used twice a year takes space from a kitchen that is used every day. A family room sized to fit a sectional and nothing else feels cramped the first time guests come over. We size rooms around the furniture you own or plan to own, with walking room around it.

Circulation is the path people take through the house. A good plan keeps traffic out of the work zones of the kitchen, avoids hallways that lead nowhere and does not route everyone through a bedroom or the living room to reach a bath. Sight lines matter too: what you see when you open the front door, a view of the yard from the sink, whether the television is the first thing a guest notices.

Windows are part of that conversation from the start, placed for light, views and furniture walls together, rather than dropped wherever the framing happens to land.

Ceiling heights belong in the plan too. A taller ceiling in the main living space and standard heights in bedrooms changes how rooms feel without adding much floor area. So does where you put a step down, a wide opening or a cased doorway between rooms that should feel connected but separate.

Steve keeps you informed from the first sketch through framing, so the house that goes up is the one you agreed to.

Entry, mudroom and the realities of winter

In Massachusetts the front door is often the least used door in the house. Most families come and go through the garage or a side entry, so that path deserves real thought: a mudroom with room for boots, coats, bags and wet gear, a bench, a closet or lockers, a floor that handles salt and slush and ideally a half bath or laundry close by.

The formal entry still matters for guests, and it should not open straight into the living room or a wall of stairs. We think about where coats go, how a guest finds the powder room and how the entry relates to the rest of the house. Those small decisions decide whether a house feels organized or cluttered every single day.

A first floor laundry near the mudroom is a common request, and it pays off with children or pets. So does a garage entry that lands near the kitchen, so groceries do not travel across the house. A coat closet by the guest entry and a drop zone for keys and mail near the family door sound minor on paper. They are the parts of a plan people thank themselves for every week.

Drawing the plan with the structure in mind

A floor plan is also a structural plan, whether it is drawn that way or not. Large open spaces need beams and columns. Rooms upstairs need bearing walls or beams below them. Bathrooms need a path for drains and vents, and kitchens need room for ductwork, a range hood vent and appliance clearances.

Because we build what gets drawn, we check those things as the layout develops. If a wall you want removed is holding up the second floor, you hear that while it is a line on paper, along with what it would take to open it up and what that does to the price. Stacking plumbing, aligning bearing walls and keeping stairs where they work on every floor make a house simpler to build and quieter to live in.

On a new house the plan also has to fit the lot: setbacks, the driveway, the septic area if there is one under Title 5, the sun and the slope of the land.

Reviewing the plan before anything is framed

Before a plan goes to the town building department, we walk through it room by room with you. Where the light switches are. Which way doors swing. Where the outlets for a desk or a bedside lamp go. How deep the closets are. It is easier to picture these at full scale, so we often mark out key rooms or walk a similar space with you.

Changes are cheap at this stage and expensive later. Once the plan is approved, any change after framing starts is written up with what it does to the price and schedule before it is built. Steve keeps you informed from the first sketch through framing, so the house that goes up is the one you agreed to.

We also look for the small things plans often miss: a linen closet near the bathrooms, a place for the vacuum, room for a second refrigerator, a spot for recycling bins and a storage closet that is deep enough to use. These cost little to draw in and a lot to add once the walls are closed.

See the rest of our homes work, or browse the gallery for rooms we have finished.