At Design Basics, we’ve been designing homes for over 35 years. During this time, building practices, design trends, and customer preferences have changed. Homeowners want a great look with a floor plan that incorporates the newest trends and amenities that meet their needs; therefore, we created our “New Trend Makeover” program. With the primary goal of keeping the existing foundation footprint, we incorporate the best of today’s design philosophies, practices, and trends. See the examples below based on two of our original top-selling plans.

Home Builders: We can give your plans a New Trend Makeover for a nominal fee. AND, if you are enrolled in our Builder-Centric℠ Preferred Builder Program, you will receive a 50% discount on your first New Trend Makeover! Contact us today to learn more.

Design 1748

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While the elevation remains unchanged, the modifications to the floor plan make this design a more modern layout. Below are highlights of the changes:

Changes to Design 1748

We created a transition space between the garage and kitchen in place of the laundry room; no one enjoys walking from the garage through the laundry into the kitchen.
We added a seat for changing shoes or boots and a ‘drop zone’ for the mail, keys, purses, and other clutter that usually ends up on the kitchen island or table.
In place of the formal dining room, we split the space into two distinct and different areas:
- We created a dedicated laundry room with plenty of space for sorting and folding laundry.
- We also created a Pocket Office. Not intended to work as a home office or formal den/library, the Pocket Office is the perfect space for those who occasionally work from home but need privacy.
In the kitchen, we’ve added a large, useable pantry and oversized triangular island with a room arrangement perfect for entertaining.
In the owner’s suite, we removed the rarely used jetted tub in favor of a walk-in spa shower.
We compartmented the hall bath to ease the stress of multiple people needing to use the same space at the same time.

Design 1748 – Before

1911 Sq. Ft.

View Design 1748

Design 42159 – After

1925 Sq. Ft.

View Design 42159

Design 2733

To see either plan in greater detail, click the ‘View Design’ button below.

Design 2733 has been a bestselling plan for many years because of its many great features. A few years ago, we updated the design to account for current building code requirements as they relate to the stairs treads and risers. The new requirements made the stairs longer and thus required us to remove an important design element from the plan – the walk-in pantry. While reviewing other elements of design 2733, we wanted to make other updates to the kitchen and owner’s suite bath. Following our current design philosophy and our desire to keep this plan within the existing footprint of the original, here is what we’ve done:

Changes to Design 2733

Moved the main laundry room to the second floor near the bedrooms, creating nice rear foyer; then we moved the powder bath to the new rear foyer.
Added back a larger pantry, changed from a peninsula layout to an island in the kitchen, adding better flow in the kitchen and creating stations rather than a work triangle.
Added a large linen closet outside of owner’s bedroom.
In the owner’s bedroom, the added transoms allow for more natural light.
Changing the vanities to be back to back in owners bath allowed for a more interesting design and for more natural light.
Enlarging the toilet space allowed us to add a small linen or storage space for water closet necessities.
By removing the tub, we designed a larger walk-in spa shower; we’ve also included an option layout including the tub and a smaller shower.
For convenience, in the owner’s suite walk-in closet we added a stackable washer/dryer.
For the upstairs secondary bedrooms, we added the previously mentioned laundry room and redesigned a compartmented bath.

Design 2733 – Before

3904 Sq. Ft.

View Design 2733

Design 42160 – After

3926 Sq. Ft.

View Design 42160