Hi Steepleman. I notice you have grid in feet not metres. Where are you? You have list on Houzz Australia. Not that it matters just we like metric system.
Layout looks good

@Kate Hello, we are in Australia (Melbourne). The builders whom I've spoken to often estimate in feet, and I am more comfortable with feet.

No probs. Getting my head around it. A couple of tweaks. Try and rotate the laundry fit out around so it is on the long wall to get some bench space. Is that room wide enough need say 2ft for bench dept and 4 ft for walkway.
Does the master have enough storage. With a fireplace can you fit a dresser?
Dining - Why is the hall door so far from kitchen. Consider double doors to dining or a larger sliding panel. You don’t have a eat in kitchen. Wear we
will you be eating breakfast etc. No probs. Getting my head around it. A couple of tweaks. Try and rotate the laundry fit out around so it is on the long wall to get some bench space. Is that room wide enough need say 2ft for bench dept and 4 ft for walkway.
Consider re-sale can you put French doors or sliding door from sitting to back yard and design the kitchen so wall could be removed later between it and sitting room.

@Kate Good points. We can definitely rotate the laundry and put the sinks back to back on the western wall. We will probably put in a table next to the washing machine so we can move things around more easily though.

With regards to the dimensions, essentially I haven't accounted for wall width at all in the drawing, because frankly I don't know at this stage. The drawn room dimensions will be the interior dimensions of each room, approximately, and the walls will just 'push' the rooms apart a bit more. I hope that makes sense.

You've raised a good point re. a dresser. We might remove the built-in-robe (which to be honest I don't really like in a master bedroom anyway—seems a bit too simple?) which would provide space for a dresser and some free-standing wardrobes around the room.

Also we will definitely think about making it easy to remove the kitchen wall in the future. We currently never eat in our open plan kitchen anyway so no kitchen bar is fine for us. We eat breakfast in the dining room. I think it would be easy to come down, get plates or bowls from dining room sideboard and go into the pantry to fix breakfast.

That reminds me—I should flip the dining room side doors around so the open outwards (into the pantry and drawing room), so that don't potentially bump into the table and chairs.

French doors for sitting room is definitely an option too. Also maybe double doors into the dining room. I'm not too sure what you mean by the hall door being far from the kitchen. Do you mean the front door? Since we'll probably keep the kitchen door open most of the time, we don't want visitors to see into the kitchen from the front door.

Thanks for your feedback!

love separate rooms and will draw up your plans with imperial measurements but do you plan for a garage or sheltered entry for wet weather and do you want only baths and/or separate showers and baths in all the bathrooms and what is the width and length of your block?

Well done for drawing up your plan. However, I think when ordering your bathroom fixtures, windows, window furnishings, tiles, carpets, cabinets, you may have to convert your thinking to the metric system. Most suppliers and builders use the metric system now. Remembering that Australia converted to the metric system in 1970, which is 50 years ago.

Hi re the hall door I meant the door into the dining. You have a large house so it could get congested if you are all going from kitchen to dining via pantry. Plus if your guests are in sitting room are you hiding at other end of house in kitchen?

@oklouise We are thinking of a carport on the eastern side, in line with the front drawing room. Or alternatively, a semi-circular driveway. Perhaps a verandah across the front, although we're worried it will shade the southern face too much. It's not a big deal for us to walk a few yards in the rain.

We can fit a bath and shower in most of the bathrooms (I vastly overestimated the size of toilets and things). The block is 60 ft by 156 ft (18·29 m by 47·55 m) so it's fairly generous

@dreamer Yes, it's just for the planning stages. No doubt the professionals will convert dimensions. On the other hand, a lot of things still come in Imperial sizes, albeit expressed in metric terms.

Kate I would think, in the case, the guests may not enter the sitting room (private space) they will be in the drawing room (public space). Which has a door directly into the dining. And the pantry is a 'real' butlers pantry, a transitional room between kitchen and dining rooms.

@Kate Oh I see what you mean. We'd funnel the guests into the drawing room/lounge unless obviously they were good friends in which case it would be fine to have them join the children perhaps in the sitting/family room.

Generally we find that whoever's cooking works best if able to concentrate on cooking, if it's going to be a sit-down dinner, and not have to entertain as well. There's plenty of time entertaining during and after dinner.

So in that case, as dreamer said, the guests would go directly from the drawing room to the dining room and then back to the front room after dinner to chat or play some cards or billiards upstairs or something. The kids can watch TV or something in the family room or whatever they like.

Even if the guests are in the sitting room, they can walk down the hall to the main dining room door. We don't plan on guests passing through the pantry or hanging around in the kitchen. Might sound attractive on paper but no one likes looking at dirty dishes and the cook in a harried mess!

Also yes, pantry will be staging area like a butler's pantry and also normal pantry.

is there more than one person in this house who cooks?
Is there any desire to have natural light in rooms during the day?
Whilst open plan can be very overrated this seems to be a house which is designed of a shopping list of rooms all added together.

@C P Yes, multiple people cook. The house is orientated to let in sunlight to the sitting room and kitchen, and into the hall during the afternoon. The dining room will receive morning sunlight. Bedrooms should get cooling evening breezes in summer off the bay.

I don't quite follow how it's a shopping list of rooms. Could you elaborate a bit more? Thank you.

My fellow Houzzers, call me cynical but I think we have our first troll. Something not quite right.

@bigreader What do you mean? I'm definitely legitimate.

Quite like this traditional plan. I can already envision this house with flemish bond, painted timber windows and doors and a slate roof.

I would really only consider narrowing the hall to make the dining wider. This however depends on furniture placement in hall. Not a fan of the cooker location with doors either side but again this is a traditional (american and english, etc) layout. Needs more separate showers rather than baths but depends on personal choices. I'm not a fan of the shower over bath scenario.

Think billiards room would be better used on ground floor, don’t think it’s practical on 1st floor when there is no seating area or kitchenette so you could at least make a drink.

@MB Design & Drafting Thank you. Probably wouldn't go for real slate, but I'm interested in slate-look tiles which look quite modern but still in keeping with the rest of the design.

There should be room for separate showers in most of the bathrooms. However, I'm not too sure if we want them to be honest. They remind me of changing rooms. But, they would be useful and more convenient so I'm a bit divided.

There are no bars to moving out the dining room wall a bit, but we do want a fairly open hall. Maybe by two feet or so (61 cm) would be good? I also don't want the dining room to be too wide, which would make us feel like ants (well sort of).

@K s Yes, some other people have brought that up too. I don't think we'd want such a big space downstairs though. There would be seats inside the room and probably a cabinet or two for drinks (there is a foot or two of extra space around for a standard 8 ft table. Might make the room a bit bigger (and also make the kitchen and sitting area bigger too).

If only they would invent portable billiards tables that could auto-level!

despite having a 60' wide block there's not enough space for a carport at the side so a driveway along the west and carport at the northwest corner of the sitting room would be the best location and could also be used as an outdoor alfresco area and provide covered direct access into the house and screen western sun.. your laundry projects too much and creates challenges with kitchen layout and is not a great view from the dining room so the new laundry allows for a proper butlers' pantry and storage area, the bay window in the dining room isn't rectangular and isn't needed for extra space, attempting to include baths as well as showers in every bathroom needs much more space than you realise and freestanding baths need more, you mentioned wanting more space upstairs so i've added an optional kitchenette, rearranged the bedrooms and baths and included a few other ideas to consider...i've included space for 4 inch internal and 8 inch external walls but haven't added all the furniture as that depends on how you would use the rooms, the numbers and ages of those who will live in the house or stay overnight regularly ... total floor area is 4200 sq feet..42 SQUARES or 390sqm with a simple hip roof and front porch but there are many opportunities to reduce the size/costs without changing your basic design

Regarding billiards table and size around it, we have a pool table and you need at least a meter(3.3feet) around each side to be able to use a cue without banging it into the wall every time you take a shot.

I guess I'm wondering why you wouldn't engage an architect for a build which is likely to cost a million dollars.

@oklouise Gosh, thank you for that. That gives us some good ideas. I didn't realise that's what you meant by 'will draw up your plans' haha.

We were planning to have the house off-centred on the block, close to the western side, to reduce hot summer sun from the west in the living areas. That should give us enough room to put in even a double carport or garage.

Your ideas have made us want to try and utilise the somewhat wasted hall space a bit better with storage. However, we do want to maintain the north-south dining room orientation. I agree that the dining room bay window is a waste.

I agree that the laundry should be moved somehow so it doesn't jut out, but I'm not sure if I like the warren of service rooms. What do you think of something like this? I've seen houses where laundries and pantries are combined. Would the window pose too many issues if we have cupboards under the counter for 'larder' items like potatoes or things? It's east facing so it will get some morning sun.

Not too keen on the upstairs rearrangement though, but they're food for thought. I can't see ourselves using the kitchenette, and we have a house rule of no food upstairs. And yes, we want to minimise the square metreage (is that a word?) if possible, whilst still keeping things reasonable. So it looks like a lot of the rooms could be made a bit smaller, to keep costs down.

@C P We obviously intend to engage an architect but at this preliminary stage (several years until completion probably) it's not worth it. We know what we want, a closed-plan house with a formal and informal lounge, billiards or games room and a guest bedroom on the ground floor. We though that the architect would simply revise the idea, apply the finishing touches and then get it drawn up by their draughtsman. I understand most people begin designing with an architect but we don't want anything innovative. Might be in for a rude awakening once we actually discuss with architects, but it's a fun exercise at least.

if you like the laundry combined with the pantry that's what you should have but that's not usually done in such a big house but i strongly recommend you include a potential garage/carport in your planning as it needs at least 20' x 20' plus setbacks and can't just be squeezed in at the side of the block as the house already uses 43' which only leaves enough room for a single driveway down one side and the necessary setback on the other side despite the fact that i removed the old laundry to make the building narrower..and, placing the house toward the western boundary loses the opportunity for a driveway with a row of tall narrow trees to shade the building ..more info about passive solar design is easily available starting with yourhouse.gov making the house smaller isn't just about cost savings (although you need to ask your builder for a rough idea of costs so you can set a budget but i would expect you could pay at least $4000 per sqm and more) the rooms need to be sized to suite the purpose eg as Ks advised there needs to be more than 40 inches on every side of the billiard table so there can only be a 9' billiard table in that sized room and, having the dining room NS, makes the hallway 9' wide but how will you use that space? and why is the study so big and why so many bathrooms?..all questions you need to be able to answer for any future architect...this copy of your original plans might be useful for you to enlarge and make scale sized furniture, baths, toilets, kitchen cabinets plus walk around space etc to place in the rooms so that you can decide what size rooms are the most comfortable for your family..eg none of your bathrooms has enough space for a shower as well as the bath and comfortable walking space

have you checked any applicable planning policies? what are your proposed building setbacks? What is the surrounding context? Are you potentially overlooking any neighbouring private open space amenity? What are the site levels? This layout concept is like something you'd find in England circa 19th Century. No issue with a traditional aesthetic, but typically the function of yesteryear is compromised in terms of the modern day Australian lifestyle considering our climate. Good luck with it!

@Paul Di Stefano Design Thanks for reminding us. It's a bit smaller than the existing dwelling on our lot so it should be fine, but we will definitely look into things more in the future. Re the climate: can't bear the heat so indoor living is a must. We don't really see our lifestyle to be incompatible with traditional closed floorplans but I don't think most would call it a modern Australian lifestyle so probably it wouldn't suit everyone.

@oklouise Thank you! To be honest we hadn't really considered the actual dimensions—it was more of a rough plan with approximately dimensions. We will probably look to reducing the dimensions of rooms, especially on the left wing.