The property. Hands down. It's the view outside of all of my windows.

That's probably not what you were looking for but I feel like I could have put many different houses on this land and loved it. So I am going with location, location, location. So as part of that my #1 is the screened porch. I can sit outside and enjoy the woods bug free.

#2 - a separate laundry room for just laundry. Our last one was super cramped with W/D and 1/2 bath in a very tiny space. No room for baskets or anything if you actually needed to USE the bathroom. Thanks for reminding me how much more useful my current space is. :)

#3 I am thankful for the stairs to the basement from the garage. I am very glad we made that choice.

#4 Otherwise many of the things that make my life easier are the drawer/closet organizers and having enough storage planned in the house for how we live. And yes, those can go in any house. I find it ironic that we never put them in our old one since I enjoy them so much here and it would have been easy enough to do!

Thank you-- very helpful!

Build not completed yet, but I know my favorites will be my screened in porch and fireplace in the great room. Never had either before.

good to hear... I am planning both of those as well. Are you using retractable screens?

I am so glad someone said that about the laundry. I have plans for a desk in the laundry. Now I want to put that thought on hold.

ourgeorgia-it's all about the space and how you use it - the function of it. The space I was referring to in our old house was literally about a 7x7 with w/d and directly opposite sink and toilet with only a door width in between. Super tight, have to walk past the door to shut the door type tight. So if your laundry space is more of a multi-purpose room scaled to be that way then by all means it may be perfect! But it is good to really think about how you are going to use something.

Definitely the screened porch is my favorite. Also, I have a counter for folding clothes in the laundry room that I really like.

all great ideas. Thanks to all.

The kitchen is my favourite. Particularly the 12" depth floor to ceiling pantry that is 5' wide. No digging for things like I would be in a regular depth cabinet. All drawers everywhere else. No uppers. Three big windows. Love that room.

#1: Triple pane tilt-turn windows + motorized exterior roller shades. Quiet, privacy, pitch black bedroom at night.

#2: Digital shower control + tankless heater. Perfect temperature control and won't run out of hot water.

#3: Cantilevered concrete balcony. Use it more than I expected. No columns taking up space underneath.

#4: Basement (I'm in Dallas where basements are not common): Lots of storage.

#5: No mortgage.

20 acres - no more "community"

Hide a Hose

56 solar panels - no more power bill

Geothermal

Morso wood stove

Serena automated shades

All hard flooring

Security system

Automated lighting (Insteon) - and a ton of lighting options

Kohler digital shower

Towel warmers

Neorest Japanese Toilet Bidet

Blum Servo Glide cabinet motors

2 sets of front loading washers and dryers

Standing seam metal roof

Photos

Bdslack, your home is beautiful!!

Concealed stairway, entry tower and courtyard, secret room and secret closet.

I'll definitely 2nd the completely separate laundry, I would have liked our laundry room to be a bit bigger for a table but just the fact that if I'm crazy busy and can't do anything but wash the clothes and they stay in there on the floor and I just close the door, it's SOOO nice, greatly reduces the stress that endless laundry brings. We also put our main laundry upstairs with the kids bedroom and added a separate washer/dryer hookup in our master bedroom closet for a small stackable.
Our house build
I also love that we have a an island big enough for 5 chairs and our breakfast "nook" (which isn't really a nook, it's just in between the kitchen and the family room) is big enough for a dining room table and we can also add a foldable table for when we have large family gatherings. Everyone can be in the same room, which was never possible when we had a formal dining room.
We also put in an attic fan or whole house fan. It's great for energy savings if you want to reduce your a/c usage. At the end of the day when the kids finally go upstairs to get ready for bed we open the tops of all the windows and turn on the attic fan and it pulls in the cool night air, cooling it down fast.
We also put in a full freezer and full freezerless refrigerator in the kitchen, side by side so it looks like one unit. We can fit everything we want and not constantly losing stuff in the back of those super deep fridges.
We also had insulation put around our 1/2 bath so that we can't hear people in the bathroom and it really works!! I really, really wish we had done that around our master bedroom so if one of us has to get up early it doesn't wake the other still sleeping.

We really like our blue star open burner all cast iron rangetop. We just take off a grate and put in a round bottom wok and we're stir frying. Blue Star is a great price for what you get. The cast iron stays looking better than stainless steel and we love the open burners.

I love the layout of our kitchen. The kitchen is mostly used for those quick and easy meals, like cereal, sandwiches, or reheating leftovers. We really thought about that in the design. We open the fridge take everything out and put it on the island right next to it. Then we have the microwave in the island and the pullout trashcan right under where we put things. So it's easy to brush trash and crumbs into the trash and heat stuff up and our sink is close for washing. But for more involved meals we spread out from there which really works if there is more than one person in the kitchen. That's where our sink in the island comes in. We've had 6 or more people in our kitchen preparing food and there was plenty of room.

We have a place for a formal dining room but we made it big enough to be a formal living room which is how we use it. I love it, I sit in there for some peace and quiet while the kids are in the family room. It's close enough to keep tabs on what it going on but separate to relax.

I could go on, but I linked some pictures to my house we built, we since added some things, like built ins in the family room.

I do wish our mudroom was bigger and had a door b/c it needs to be completely functional and it's always messy. I think I would have liked to have a desk in there since that is where mail ends up, oh and a table or something for all those kids crafts that are messy and don't get cleaned up right away.

Tully - beautiful home. Do you have your built in pictures online yet? In a similar situation and curious how you pulled it off with the shelves not kicking out too far past the fireplace . Thanks!

I added some pictures to my facebook page for you to see.Tying built-ins into a mantel when you can't recess them

We really thought hard about how to do it. Between the requirements for the fireplace insert and wanting the mantel to stick out enough so I could make the built ins flush with the mantel.....it's amazing it ended up looking good. I was scared. We had the bottom part of the mantel stick out enough to be the same depth as some upper kitchen cabinets and the top of the mantel we had come out enough to match the depth of the shelves.

Well, this is pretty general, but my favorite thing is that it was designed for us and how we live. It may seem idiosyncratic to others, but it's perfect for us! I do love the curbless shower and I love everything about the kitchen. And the covered outdoor space is wonderful, too. I got some good advice and ignored what didn't fit and couldn't be happier.

I haven't even broken ground yet, but I am super excited that I get to place electric outlets. Finally I will have an outlet in the broom closet for my rechargeable vacuum and an outlet at the top of the stairs so I can use a lighted garland on my staircase at Christmas.

Walk through closet in Master Bedroom. It allows us to walk into the closet from the bedroom, and to also access it from the adjacent laundry. When I do laundry, it is easy for me to deliver clean clothes directly into the closet - most of our laundry originates in the MB closet. The laundry is also adjacent to the garage/outdoors - when we come in from outside wearing dirty clothes, it is easy to just deposit them directly into the washer.