We’re not a Saturday sports family. Unless you consider touring model homes an olympic sport. It’s not, but I do take it very seriously so here’s the highlights.
Not to spoil the ending but this home actually impressed me.
This is the smallest home of the 4 modelled but the space had been designed well so it felt bigger than 1900 square feet.
I really liked the separation downstairs. When you enter through the front door the kitchen and living are to your right and there’s a hallway to the left. The hallway holds a storage cupboard, drop zone for keys, a full bathroom and a bedroom. This perfect if you have guests stay a lot (like I do) and can’t stand clutter in your kitchen (guilty again).
As a mum I leave the house looking like a pack horse and somehow every bag and key and random note ends up next to the sliver of counter space next to my stove. Not ideal. These days developers throw the word drop zone around to look like they’ve considered your family but this home has built ins and optional upper cabinets as well.
The primary bathroom reiterates my suspicion that whoever designed this plan valued function. When I first entered the bathroom I was really confused because the layout is essentially flipped. Typically the toilet and linen closet are at the entrance (as you’ll see later). But in Rhea Plan 3 they’re at the back which is so much better for privacy and also aesthetics. I prefer to walk in and see a luxury shower instead of a boring cupboard.
This way they were able to have a walk-in linen closet that was so much larger than average I started to worry it was actually the designated primary wardrobe (in which case it was very small). Don’t worry, it wasn’t! I’d just missed the wardrobe on the way in.
I was impressed that even with a substantial linen closet in the master, the home also had a decent closet in the hallway across from the laundry.
The laundry wasn’t huge, the washer and dryer were stacked, but they still managed to squeeze in a small bench top. However, across the hallway from the laundry was another linen closet and that added storage was a clever way to extend the laundry space.
The position of the downstairs bathroom (Bath 3 on the plans) made me feel uncomfortable.
I can’t stress to you how close it is to the kitchen. Even my studio apartment’s bathroom was further from the kitchen than this. At first I thought it was the pantry door, that’s how close it is. Using the bathroom in any capacity would offer zero privacy.
There’s a guest room there as well, which again isn’t the optimal location for a bedroom, however I think I would prefer that the bathroom was an ensuite, walled off to the kitchen, and everyone had to walk through the bedroom to use the bathroom.
The Callisto was the last house I toured so I was comparing it to the other models the entire time.
This is a really nice primary ensuite but compared to the reverse layout of the Rhea Plan 3 I like it less.
Another example is the laundry (see the video here). It’s an almost exact copy of the Selene Plan 5 however they’ve added a sink. I will always be pro a laundry sink, to me it’s as necessary as a kitchen sink. But now there’s no bench space so it really comes down to personal preference. Neither is better than the other.
Callisto Plan 6 had the best kitchen hands down though. Besides being huge and stunning, everything flows really naturally. There’s bench space under the microwave, the pantry is a nice walk in, there’s space around the fridge. Of course the built in across the back wall and the floating shelves is a statement but also functional. Also this is super random but their pendant lights over the gigantic island bench are unevenly spaced. Will that be the new thing? 4 pendants instead of 3 with the centre 2 closer together?
The Callisto Plan 6 doesn’t have a casita but it does have a nice separated guest quarters down a corridor just like the Rhea Plan 3. Although the Rhea had the benefit of an additional drop zone which this home is missing.
There was a 4th home that I toured but I had no notes, it was standard with nothing remarkably good or bad worth mentioning.
Final Thoughts
Even though Rhea Plan 3 was the smallest square footage of the 3 it had my favourite layout and the most intentional design choices.
Callisto Plan 6 had a show-stopping kitchen and a more upgraded laundry but it also had the advantage of more square footage for these things.