A full bath for the guest room.

A powder room (half bath). Currently have 3 full baths but wish there was a bathroom for guest only.

Another garage bay (garages and pantries - can never be too big!)

A bigger master walk in closet. I've thought of a few ways to re do the area, but the hubby is saying he'd rather move than to deal with making a closet bigger. :/

Its funny. I spent a few minutes trying to think of the ONE thing...and I considered a half bath, a garage bay, a bigger master closet and yes we too have that on the list of about 10 things we want to fix if we are still here in 5 years!

A pool and hot tub in the backyard and composite decking instead of cedar. I also would have made our basement suite different but not sure how that would have impacted other things.

Real staircase to the attic over the garage instead of pull down stairs.

Extra garage bay. Had more than enough room re: lot width. The extra cost was not that much when considering the entire cost of the build - my ex husband fought me on it. I should have never given in on that item!

Would have made my dish pantry 6" wider to have room for 18" lower cabinets instead of 12".

If I was building now I would spend the money on black windows .

Natural light in all bathrooms (either a window or skylight).

2 dishwashers.

Nothing. This house has everything we need and want.

I would change one thing though. I'd switch where my washer/dryer is with my hall closets.

butlers pantry

More natural light in my kitchen, living and dining room. (We have deep porches that provide too much shade ).

Can I subtract something? I'd cancel the last minute decision to have a cathedral ceiling in our guest room. It's pretty, but not cozy, and it's *cold* because the HVAC wasn't planned for it. At least I didn't make that mistake with our MBR!

More money on landscaping. But given we are just finishing our home build it's a struggle to find something I'd change right now when we're so excited!!!

I wish I would have known more about building a home so it would have been easier communicating with my builder. I would have included window treatments, and landscaping in our bid for our loan. We thought we could save money later but now it is hard to spend that much money!!

@patricia - Black windows on exterior? Or exterior and interior?

I agree with Patricia and would love to do black in and out. But it was cost prohibitive for us.

Screen room. It was nowhere in the budget though, so has to wait.

Stairs that lead to a loft area.

@Rebekah L We had a screened-in room in our initial plans and had to cut it out for budget reasons. I was a little worried about where it was positioned as well. So, it may be for the better ultimately... Or at least that's what I'll keep telling myself. LOL

Counter height for the full island.

In and out and really thin metal frame

Awesome, thanks all. Finishing the plans for our née home and trying best to think ahead on all little things.

We removed our plans for a screened or glass room but kept the roof on one side so we could do it later if we chose. Initially we were going to have 2 overhangs, but I'm glad we didn't by the master because it's brighter in there

A 3 bay garage, as my husband does all our car maintenance and maintains all the equipment in our garage: generator, large snowblower, lawnmower, etc❣️

More wall space in the utility room so I could install Tesla batteries (2). It’s impossible to expand the utility room, and the batteries can’t go in a ”living” space. I already have 100% solar, but the electricity uploads to the grid, and I don’t have storage onsite.

I’m the only one on this thread so far addressing rapid climate change and/or our awful, frail, aging, low capacity, unfrastructure? But maybe the hot tub counts? Yikes!

@tangerinedoor, I'm a bit jaded when it come to adding alternative sources of energy. We were living in Los Angeles when we added solar (12kw) and what a scam. We paid cash for the system because we could. Didn't apply for any incentives because we didn't need them. The power company forced us to upgrade the meter and not surprisingly the new meter favored the power company by a crazy percentage. We were also not allowed to do any type of battery back-up. In some areas special interests have a lot more say in how things get done than a single customer. All they cared about was still making their profits ... saving the planet is last on their list! Also unless we can "control" what China and other large countries are doing, some of this is all pointless ...

@tangerinedoor As far as alternative energy, aging grid, etc... We ran wiring for e-vehicle chargers, heating/cooling w geothermal, propane backup generator. Solar may happen once I build a pole barn, but that got delayed with lumber increases.

@doc5md .IMO so important to have all those things you prepared for. I doubt that I'll ever afford an electric car (though costs and regulations are changing so fast, maybe), but I ran the power conduit to the side of the house in case I need it, and I put extra capacity on the power box.

@chispa In my state, most people who have battery backups get the stored power from the grid, not directly from the solar panels. I doubt you could hook up batteries directly to the solar unless you're off grid. Because of solar, I pay ZERO for electric (my house is all electric, including heat in our -10F winters) all year; I only pay for the meter, which averages maybe $20 per month. My house has also been audited for high efficiency, so the construction was compatible with low energy usage.

So, no scam at all. I did have a lot to navigate, though, to put all the pieces together; I didn't know anything about solar until I got to designing the house, but the builder just thinks in terms of solar-high efficiency-sustainability...

Now, if only I could add a windmill to power me when we have a blizzard....

You should be able to hook up batteries directly to the solar panels, you just need a switch that shuts off the connection to the grid, which is exactly what people do when they run a generator. In LA county it was about controlling access and profits.

@chispa The batteries don't work that way in my state. We are net-metered here (good thing, too, since we're one of the darkest states in the country); all the power generated by solar panels gets uploaded to the grid, and then downloaded when you need it. You charge the batteries from the grid, and they kick in when the grid is down. If you're on a tight budget, you can also let the power company have access to your battery-stored power on a specific schedule. This way, the state has a distributed storage capacity and doesn't have to build it.

The exception to this generality is if you're off grid.

The state has a very solicitous power commission that controls what the power companies can do.

Low income folks in my state can get very large grants to install solar. We can also buy into a solar farm if our home is not in the sunshine.

Back to the OP question, my biggest problem is that I don't have enough wall space to mount two Tesla batteries. I need a bigger utility room, and there's no way to add it on. I qualified to get the Teslas, too. Too bad I didn't think of this before.

The only thing that we are doing differently for our new build, in the realm of power, is to add a whole house surge protector so that we don't have portable surge protectors connected to all of our electronics. We also added a tankless water heater. We will have a heat pump and a gas furnace.

Back to the question, I cannot think of anything we would have added... if we could.

Because of the lot size, we have gone from a 3 car garage to a 2 car garage. The children are grown and out of the house, but that 3rd bay is always nice to have. We have made a circular drive to accommodate when the kids visit.

If we could have, I would have liked to have a window in one of the upstairs guest bathrooms. It's located in the middle of the house. Thought about one of those light tunnels, but I did not want the bathroom to look too modern. Our family has had bad experiences with skylights, so that was out. We do have plenty of bright light in the bathroom, however.

If we had the room, I would have added a powder room next to the kitchen. I could have, but decided I would rather have a larger pantry. The walk to our M. bedroom is a hop, skip, and a jump, so no big deal for us. We do have a guest powder room located around the corner from the foyer. It's off of the front room (can also be another bedroom) that I will hang out in the most during the day, so I can always use that bathroom instead of going around to our M. bathroom.

We are not even in the house yet, but if I could change one thing, it would be the layout of our M. bathroom. When you enter the bedroom and turn right down a short hall, the first thing you see is our huge shower! I wish that somehow we could have moved it over to the opposite side of a double window so that we looked at a wall coming into the bathroom. We would have had to add another couple of feet.

Larger mud/laundry room. We didn’t have a dog when we built and now we have 2. 😂

Oh, I do wish that my laundry room were bigger. I thought it was large enough, and it is without the W/D. But if I could have made it wider, that would have been great.