After posting so many shortcomings about the new house last week, you're probably wondering what it has to recommend it besides the level lot. I'm simply lost in the things I loved about my former house, and if I had built a house as I'd originally planned, I would have made different upgrade choices. But there are a lot of awesome things about this new home and I am truly grateful for it.
I have a tiled shower with a little seat. Every previous shower I've had has been a fiberglass insert with no seating. This shower is also the largest I've ever owned. It's not huge, but it's a little bit bigger and that little bit makes a huge difference.
The master bathroom is a little larger.
My new powder room actually gives guests enough room to move around. My former home had an extremely narrow powder room and people had to stand at the sink, close the door, and then step back to the toilet. You literally couldn't get to the toilet without closing the door and the door nearly touched the far wall. Yes, it was that narrow.
My kitchen is huge and it has built-in ovens. I had a built-in oven in my Minnesota home and I loved it! One of the things I really disliked about my first Georgia house was the range. It seemed like a huge step down from the built-ins, but now I have that again. Even better? I have two ovens! That means at Thanksgiving that we were able to cook a turkey and my dad could still cook his rice pudding.
The eat-in kitchen is large enough that I can actually put four chairs around the table. My former house was tight enough that we could only put two chairs at the table. Part of that was my fault because I had an upright freezer in the way, but I have that same freezer in the way here and can still fit all the chairs at the table.
Dining room is bigger and the living room actually has room for all my furniture! At my former home, I had one of the chairs in the front room because it didn't fit. Again, my fault, but I didn't want my television over the fireplace and that left one place to put it, which meant my furniture was arranged 90 degrees from where the builder intended.
I can put my bar stools at the counter! All four of them! My Minnesota house had a large island and I had four chairs around it. My former Georgia home did have a space for two bar stools, but because I had my furniture arranged wrong--see paragraph above--I couldn't use them and still walk between the stools and the living room furniture. I'd actually thought about selling them or donating them because they were all bunched up against a wall in my dining room, but now I have space for them again.
More storage. Not just the upstairs bedroom and loft, but actual closets. My former home had a tiny, tiny linen closet for the main bath and the storage closet and coat closet were one and the same. Here I actually have a coat closet near the front door. I have a storage closet under the stairs that's actually quite large. And the family linen closet is probably double the size of the one in my last home.
While the backyard isn't nearly as private and the covered patio isn't as large or as nice as the one I had in my last house, at least I do have a covered patio here and the privacy fence helps a lot with the neighbors. Bonus is that I have no house directly behind me, although if I look to my left, I can see houses on the next street. This backyard is also larger and much more usable because it's gently sloping. The front yard is completely level.
I have a walk-in pantry. This has been a dream of mine forever and I finally have it!
And while the woman I bought the house from didn't do hardwood floors in the living room, master bedroom, and dining room like I would have chosen, she did add the hardwoods in the hallways so I have more solid flooring in this house than in my last. My preference is to have zero carpet on the main level, but I did improve even if it isn't perfect.
My garage is close to my kitchen. This is a huge deal on grocery day. In my former home, I had to walk through the entire house to get from the garage to the kitchen--with bags of groceries. Over and over. Here, I walk in and it's a short hallway to the kitchen. Definite improvement.
I'm sure that once I've been in this new home a while, I'll become as tied to it as I still feel to my former home. It really does have a lot going for it.
