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.

I love the functional things that we changed in our "refresh" last year: a large single-bowl sink, wipeable tile backsplash, replacing light-sucking black appliances with light-reflective stainless, converting base cabinets to drawer bases with soft close slides, adding a light-reflective quartz countertop on the sink side & a warm cherry butcherblock countertop by the range, and replacing upper cabinets with open shelving for everyday dishes, Our kitchen had an existing seating area with built-in banquette, which we (and our cats) love, and use daily.

I regret not taking any before pictures. But it was a standard wire shelf walk in closet with the same ceiling lamp. There was also a healthy purge of items from the before as well. I did this reno from an Easy Closets online design and it turned out great. I added 12v COB style LED strip lighting to eliminate the little dots you get from normal LED strip lights. The pull out hamper on an angle I would change to a drawer (you can see we opted to keep using the plastic ones). DIY FYI - those big pieces of wood are heavy and can be tight to get into place like the top shelf running the entire length of the closet. Not much room to maneuver but can be done. You may scratch your newly painted walls a bit in the process. Get the spackle and paint ready.

My shopping habits and likes have changed so much the last few years. I used to enjoy going to flea markets and antique malls. But now, i know I’m not going to restore/repair/collect anything, and so many things I, ahem, already have from my own and my parents’ lives! So that’s a little depressing. I used to like home shopping, but I’m not really updating these days. I used to like stores like Home Goods, but now I find them overwhelming and a cacophony of colors (if I can mix my terms a little). Kind of like the first (only) time I went to Times Square: 2 minutes and I told DH we had to leave. I was lucky enough to find my new dishes at Home Goods a few years ago, they were in the front of the store; but, I know they won’t have them again, so if I want to replace that chipped dinner plate I have to go online. I like hardware stores, but I’m not doing my own home tasks anymore. I like stationery/office supply stores, but I already own all the pens. Bookstores, I already own all the books. And i’m not reading as voraciously as I used to, and really need to pare down the current tower. Besides, my local public libraries have good and current collections. I do still like kitchen and bath stores and displays. There’s some really cool stuff out there, it’s usually well-organized, and the displays give me ideas if I ever do my kitchen, which is looking less and less likely.