Modern Home, Open Spaces with High Ceilings

Modern Home, Open Spaces with High Ceilings

This contemporary one story home by the Nelson Design Group, HPP 17566,  has an open floor plan, four bedrooms, three baths and 12 ft ceilings throughout much of the home. You could call this a Florida home or your next vacation home. Better yet, this could be your I never want to leave home.

The three-car garage gives you plenty of room for the vehicles you need to get back and forth from work and shopping, (plus for that charging station you always wanted), and it will also provide space for storing essentials you might need to tidy up outside. Organizing with cabinets, using hanging hooks for your tools, or utilizing countertops for the projects that are just too messy for inside the home will increase the efficiency of the garage. A room with a sink, perfect for washing up after working outside, is conveniently found in the far corner. There is also an entrance into the first floor of the home, leading you into the expansive laundry room. Here you will find space for your washer and dryer, as well as that for folding clothes and a utility sink that can be multipurposed (washing the dog, arranging flowers, or rinsing boots that saw one puddle too many).

You enter the home from the front porch, where you can arrange terra cotta pots with low growing vegetation that is suitable for your climate. Boxed columns (hollow, usually rectangular in a cross-cut) grace the entry. You are now in the foyer, with a twelve-foot ceiling and you have stepped into an open floor plan that allows both privacy and a feeling of welcoming.

To your immediate left is the closet where you or your guests can deposit winter coats or umbrellas from those rainy days. When you step forward, you will find yourself in the living room, where the ceiling soars upwards to twelve feet. From this vantage point, you can see the lanai, kitchen and great room. The living room implores you to insert a sectional sofa that faces the fireplace, while adding other personal touches of your own. Perhaps you would add bookcases to either side of the fireplace.

Walking counterclockwise from the living room, you enter the formal dining room, which has a boxed ceiling. You will find a niche in this room to store your linens for those special occasions when formal dining is mandatory. Then stepping towards the great room, you will pass by the wet bar with sink, where soft drinks or adult beverages await you. On the left wall of this gorgeous room, an optional fireplace can be installed, with bookcases built in on both sides. The twelve foot ceiling in the great room invites you to imagine different ways to add light to your home, while you decide on the bright white or steel gray sofa and chairs that complement the lighting.

Turn around and you are facing the kitchen; this multifaceted area is open to the breakfast nook and great room. A 42” high bar where you can sit to enjoy your repast (or charcuterie), while your significant other loads the dishwasher nearby, is designed to make eating and socializing fluid. Partly open, partly enclosed, the kitchen also has room for the oven, stovetop, refrigerator and a butler’s pantry for storing extra dinnerware.  A kitchen island with sink completes this nearly heptagonal area.

The breakfast area (perfect for the open back chairs, accompanying dining table) looks out onto the porch and lanai; the porch is a more intimate area where the furniture can complement that of the interior of your home. The door to the lanai, which is a larger area, is adjacent to the breakfast area and is just right for family gatherings or overnight guests. Imagine a wishbone chair, a hanging pendant for evening lighting, and lemongrass in large ceramic pots to keep pesky bugs away and you have the perfect evening in your new home. The lanai also connects to the master bedroom suite, right to the sitting area.

Unroll the area rug and place a fainting couch here (the comfortable kind, not the horsehair-stuffy-reminds-me-of Victorian-age-kind) for the ultimate in your getaway sitting bay. Then walk into the master suite, where an optional fireplace can bring you toasty toes on chilly mornings. Two large walk-in closets are next to the spacious master bath. His and her sinks are opposite each other, and you will find space for extra linens (those soft, huggable towels you love) in separate places.  A glass shower with seat and a whirlpool tub, (you can pick the luxury massage one), complete the master bathroom suite.

An arched opening leads you back into the foyer; keep walking and the second bedroom suite is next to the great room. The bath with sink and shower/tub is accessible to both rooms. A generous walk-in closet completes this suite. The third bedroom suite shares a bath with the fourth one; the former has a reach-in closet that extends the width of the interior wall. The shared bath suite (also known as a Jack and Jill bath) has a single sink, space for extra linens, and a shower/tub combo. The fourth bedroom suite has a reach-in closet and a door that leads to your back porch.

No matter where you are in the process of searching for a home plan, this one by the Nelson Design Group deserves a second, in depth look-a modern home with space to gather as family or to disperse when privacy is needed, a place you can claim as yours by filling it with the people you love.

For there's never any laughter, howsoever far you roam, like the laughter of the loved ones in the happiness of home…..Edgar A. Guest