I agree with emily. if you want leave connections and/or a little extra room for what you don't want, but feel you may need for resale. I think the tub is a pretty important item. wet room not at all, and shower is give or take. i would prefer a big shower and a tub for soaking in, but I have always had the combo. I remember my mom built during big wet bar craze, she did not care for one. had space built, capped off connections and use as a closet. Now it is 35 years later, everyone wants to buy and tear down. Darned if you do, darned if you don't. i agree, I would also really like the separate toilet, we are not share everything people.

You could reverse the layout of the ensuite, and have the door to it through the walk in wardrobe (so you would only have one door coming off the bedroom). If I were you, I'd consider swapping the positions of the ensuite and wardrobe, so the current ensuite door becomes the wardrobe door. That way you could move the bed to the east (right), and you would have room for a seating area in the north west corner of the room (as your bedroom looks huge!). I'd also add a window on the small bit of north facing wall in that room; you already have corner windows in the living and another bedroom, so you could match those in style. Personally I don't particularly like the current layout of the main bathroom, although I can see the reasoning behind it (i.e. vanity at entrance, toilet hidden behind wall, window above bath). I think it might work better if you put the shower in the corner where the bath currently is (i.e. beside the toilet, opening to the west), and the bath on the same wall as the vanity. You'd have to move the window, of course. Alternatively, do you actually need three toilets? You could remove the toilet in the main bathroom, and you'd have room for a freestanding bath and/or a bigger shower. You could consider stealing a bit of space from the kitchen to create some storage at the entryway. I'm not sure where your garage will be, but it's really handy to have a designated place at the point of entry for all the stuff you tend to dump when you first come into the house (schoolbags, coats, mail etc). Overall, I think the layout is pretty good, but you could potentially lower the build cost by making it all a bit smaller. It's really worthwhile taking the time to figure out just how much space you actually need, and where you need it. For example, if it were my house, I'd take about half a metre off both the east bedrooms (so the house is shorter from east to west), plus I'd make it smaller north to south by slightly reducing the size of all three bedrooms, and making the kitchen a bit smaller (so the hall cupboard lines up with the back wall of the small living room). But your priorities may be completely different from mine!

This thread deserved more attention. The layout was pretty good too! dart, pest spraying service

Thanks Mel. We'll see what we can do to make the rumpus enclosed - it's probably more of a "man cave" at the moment :) Grandad had a dining table in his current place (which is bigger) and got rid of it because he never used it. He also wants more bench space than he currently has. So, this was a deliberate choice rather than a compromise due to lack of space. You've reminded me now that someone did warn us earlier in the design process about the back and forth between wardrobe and bathroom becoming annoying over time. We don't currently have an en suite so it feels wonderfully convenient for us by comparison. However, that feeling will change if we realise it could have been even better. We did have the en suite off the wardrobe in some designs but have been warned this can lead to dampness in your clothes no matter how well ventilated the bathroom is (especially in Auckland's humidity). Would love to hear people's experiences of this configuration - good and bad. On top of that, there are lovely private bush views to the south so we've tried to make the most of those.