I loved the north facing window over the kitchen sink in the old ski house.

Well, that's nice to hear. In our new house I worried that I will not like my North facing window over my kitchen sink. Glad you liked yours.

What we thought was a good idea but really wasn't:

we just sold our home to build the new one. We had a nice entry door on the side of the house near the side entry garage, which we thought was a good idea. It was meant to be an entry for family and kids that flowed through the laundry room. Even though we had a nice circle drive in the front...inevitably guest ended up going through the side entry and through my laundry room.

My previous home had a basement option with an outside entrance which I declined during the build thinking it would be a security issue. In hindsight it proved problematic since I'd bring in these huge gas model planes through the front door and sometimes drip oil on clean fawn carpets and each time was a nightmare to clean the carpets; in later years I replaced the carpet with tiles. No hobbies through the front door!!

No more major rooms opening to the west in FL. Even with the balcony overhangs at a certain point in the day it's just unpleasant.

I despise rain head shower heads, but my DH likes them.

In my new build, I made sure there is a place next to the shower to put hooks for towels. (I prefer hooks to rods because with rods, DH flings the towels over the rod and it never dries and always is a mess.)

No toilet paper holders that need to be released because DH never will put the toilet paper on the holder then. (The truth is I don't either unless we're having company.)

We don't need a huge tub but do want a soaker.

Virgil, that would help some, but this house has relatively deep eaves and it still doesn't help as much as you would think due to the low angle of the sun and the reflected glare off the snow. Also you need to be careful about do snow load and snow shed below.

Red, I know I get warmer working in the kitchen than in any other place in the house, so a north facing window really works well to keep the heat down. I like natural light, but like everything there are trade offs.

Sparrow, good tip.

Pine, you just made me happy we are going ahead with sliders in the basement even if we wait to finish it.

CP, agree with everything. I love towell hooks, coat hooks, hooks of every kind! Even here I am a bit concerned about out west facing covered deck, but we are building where the valley narrows with a mountain to the west that will block the worst of it in the late afternoons and at the old house the east facing deck got chilly on summer afternoons.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Now available at reasonable price:

Hey now, you're reselling my place???? Virgil, you already sold me that ol' jalopy. ;-)

And the bedroom has low milage...

Now, Mr. Virgil, that's just SAD.

(Says the mom of 5... *blush*)

Wow Virgil and that tiny house is even handicap accessible!

Nice Virgil. Outdoor plumbing included?

A leak issue led to us doing a master bathroom remodel. The designer suggested we pay extra to move our shower head away from shower entrance in order to have a trendy doorless shower. The result was an icy shower experience that simultaneously splashed water all over the trendy new tile floor.

Is there a way to avoid that with doorless showers? That's what we thought we wanted but not if you can't get the shower to temp first!

In my new build, I made sure there is a place next to the shower to put hooks for towels. (I prefer hooks to rods because with rods, DH flings the towels over the rod and it never dries and always is a mess.)

And I prefer rods to hooks because I'm concerned about the towel not drying where it's bunched up around the hook! We always spread them out flat over a rod or the curtain rod to dry. I've always wondered why bathrooms don't have more rods...maybe now I've figured it out. :o

The big garden soaker- We went with a smaller one wtih a landing space, and it's excellent for book-reading after a hard day :). Less water/energy/heat, and gave us the shelf for the same footprint (still deep, just narrower).

My mom designed her kitchen in 1970. Very forward thinking for the time, with pull-out trash, pop-up built-in blender in the island, stations instead of work triangle. I still love it. One special thing she did was have the base cabinets designed for her height: she was 5' tall. So the cabinets are an inch or two lower than normal. That's fine for most things, but it meant the dishwasher had to be set lower than the floor. That's okay, but they didn't account for possible replacement.

They should have made the countertops so that the section above the dishwasher was separable from the rest, or a removable section of the floor right in front. As it is now, they would have to do major kitchen work to replace the 1971 machine.

one other thing: mom examined sun positions to site the kitchen. What she didn't take into account was the sun's movement across seasons. So in the late fall when there is no foliage to block it, the sun really glares right in to the kitchen. Overhangs are not the solution, they have 4' eaves already. It's when the sun dips below the eave but above the horizon, and with a half-mile of flat field, that's a long time.

inevitably guest ended up going through the side entry and through my laundry room.

Yep, I grew up in a house where all guests funneled through the laundry room, and in my current house all guests come in through the office ... neither is a great situation. I've purposefully designed our new house so that no door except the front door is even remotely available to guests from the driveway.

I despise rain head shower heads, but my DH likes them.

Well, that's an easy one since you can have two showerheads on separate controls. I'm sure you don't mind the presence of the rain head, if you're not required to use it!

No toilet paper holders that need to be released because DH never
will put the toilet paper on the holder then. (The truth is I don't
either unless we're having company.)

Yeah, who needs more effort for thankless small tasks.

We don't need a huge tub but do want a soaker.

Agree! I don't get the mania for big tubs and for jetted tubs. Big tubs require so much more water, and the water cools off quickly. But a deep tub, that I like.

Nice Virgil. Outdoor plumbing included?

Oh my, even I'm not from that deep in the country.

Two story foyers. Sure they look beautiful, but dang, they let you hear everything that is going on downstairs when you are upstairs.