As seen here, our future house is under construction.  Some of the general goals were in that first article but to quickly summarize what we are looking to do:

1. This will be our "last" house until old folks home.
2. Needs to be completed while our children are young so that this will be their "home" when they go away to college or sugar mines or whatever they are going to do.
3. Needs to be "green". I.e. I am willing to spend extra to make the house have as little impact on the environment as I can which will be tough given its excessive size.
4. Needs to be large enough to be able to entertain (for business and family purposes) and for people to want to come there.
5. Needs to have enough "features" so that two home bodies (Debbie and I) will be happy spending lots of time in it.

So what are the specific features we're looking to have on the main floor?

• 2-story library. I go through a ton of books each month and like collecting books and other nick knacks.
• Conservatory.  I have a 55 year old pet turtle named Cuddles. My boys and I love critters. My Internet handle is "Frogboy". So we want a room where, despite being in Michigan, we can have aquatic life forms living all year around as well as plants and such in a cool space.
• Media room. We want a place that is good for getting together for watching sports, movies, what have you.
• A huge "keep". When we have friends over, we end up being in the kitchen area anyway. So we want an area large enough where people can get together and have fun.
• A large formal dining room. Someday, we hope to host holidays with our kids and such and want to make sure it's large enough that it is the logical place to host such a thing.
• Big mud room and laundry room for dealing with the laundry and dirty needs of 3 children and a..ahem messy husband.

For the top floor, our goals are:

• Master bedroom that is practically an apartment unto itself so that if our kids' are having company or what have you, we can have some privacy upstairs.
• Rooms for the kids with the boys sharing a bathroom. Ashley, our little girl, would have her own room and bathroom.
• Guest room with bathroom so that when my friend Neil or other friends from Europe visit, they can stay for extended periods and feel like they're at home.
• Extra area for future expansion.

As for the bottom floor (walk out basement). It's going to have a 10 foot ceiling so it won't seem like a basement. We haven't decided precisely what we want to do yet. We have 2 years to decide that.