Dallas-Fort Worth Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
What do you love and hate about your house?
About to build... what do you love about your house? What do you wish you had?
Re: What do you love and hate about your house?
I like the high ceilings, the built-ins in the LR, and it has a pretty open floor-plan.
I wish it had a covered porch area out back and a bigger garage.
Love:
- our extremely efficient layout. Our house feels much bigger than it is because it doesn't waste much space.
- having a master suite. It really feels like a retreat and when we have guests we have our own space and the guests have their own space... love it, love it, love it!
- Our kitchen. It has a great layout and is the right size for us to both cook in very comfortably.
- our fire place. We really didn't think we would love it as much as we do. We probably made a fire 2/3 times a week in the winter.
- Built in book case in the living room
- 2 car garage that also has extra space. We can fit both our cars, all our lawn equipment, shelving, and a freezer in it. I hate leaving my car parked outside, so this is awesome.
- our yard - Front yard: 2 big trees and easy to maintain landscaping Back yard: 2 wood patios/decks and big trees with plenty of yard for the pups
- No formal living room (because we would never use it.)
Wish we had: ( I really love my house, despite the list of things I would change, but if I were to custom build this is what I would do... some of this is very picky!)
- a fence that was about a foot taller and had boards that overlap... ours right now has boards that are side by side and you can kinda see through... which makes the dogs bark at all the cars in the alley. We will change this eventually.
- we walk through our laundry room to in order to come in/out of the garage. I would make it a bit wider and have more storage space. We come in and out almost exclusively through the garage and I would love to have shoe/coat/bag storage there as well as space for cleaning supplies.
- walk in pantry to have more storage for appliances or the types of shelves in our cabinets that pull out so it is easier to reach things stuck in the back of the cabinets.
- a covered patio- in the summer direct sun is too hot!
- picky things like moving/adding outlets or light switches to be a bit more functional.
- I am a big fan of pocket doors (such a space saver!) so I would add some going from the kitchen to the dining room, put them on both doorways to my office, and put one on the door to our closet (possibly all closets)... and maybe the master bathroom door.
we love our upgrades: covered porch, tile in the kitchen/livingroom/hallways, corner lot, better brick, tall kitchen cabinets, kitchen island.
We probably should have gotten better insulation in the attic, it gets scorching hot up there. That's where the corner lot is not so good, we have the sun shining straight on our house. But the houses are built so close together, we'd be staring into someone elses house from the living room windows.
I wouldn't want to build in another master planned community with an HOA.
Love: the floor plan, the vaulted ceiling and large LR, the wood floor and tile (no carpet!)
Hate: the small bedrooms, wish we had one more bedroom or an office (we have a 3 BR, we use one as an office), wish the backyard was bigger
hate: weird/little backyard, indention in the wall for a big screen tv (we are fixing this one in a bit by popping it out).
things we hated, but fixed: carpet - put in walnut wood floors. banister- replaced the italian basket railing with a stainless steel banister. Gold fixtures & door handles- replaced. fireplace- double mantle monstrosity that we took down and are putting up black tile and a modern mantle.
just dislike: kitchen cabinets were tea-stained, but we are going to have them resurfaced to a dark wood color to match the floors.
love: everything else about the house! It's a large, open floorplan with a kitchen that opens into the second living room & the eat-in kitchen area. I have a formal living room and dining room. I love that all 3 bathrooms are full-size. I LOVE the jetted tub and separate glass shower in the master bedroom. I love the size of the master bedroom. It's big enough for a king size bed, a sitting area & an exercise area. Tons of space & closets.
Kitchen--It's huge, lots of counter space, lots of cabinets, space for a kitchen table, and huge, huge walk-in pantry. Next time I want a built-in island for easier serving when entertaining.
Dining Room--That we have one! We didn't really think we needed or wanted one, but we loved the floorplan and it came with a dining room. Even though we don't use it that much, it's one of my favorite rooms. I love that it is right off the kitchen with easy access. Next time, though, I think I will want one a little bigger.
Living Room--It's huge, which I love. We have oversize furniture, so we needed that.
The floorplan of the above three rooms is very open. My DH is kind of claustrophobic and we had lived in tiny apartments and a tiny house, so it was nice to have something so open not only for entertaining, but for every day living.
Master Suite--Again, really big. Bathroom attached. Next time, I will want a larger master bath and a separate shower and tub (we do still have the garden tub, though. that was non-negotiable). And I think next time I will want separate closets.
The extra bedrooms are 12 x 12, which is pretty big in newer builds these days, so no complaints there. Guest bath is a little small. Garage is way too small--cannot fit two cars plus trash bins, lawn equipment, etc. While I love the room that I have in the Laundry Room, next time I want something better laid out. Next house will not have garage so far from kitchen.
The number one thing I hate about the house is the floor. We did not upgrade the carpet or the pad and with two small dogs, this was a huge mistake. If nothing else, upgrade the pad! We also chose not to upgrade in the kitchen/bathrooms from linoleum to tile. We will remedy that soon. We did not have the option of hardwood for this house, but that will most likely be a requirement for next house.
Love: big laundry room, tall ceilings, no houses behind us (park/greenbelt), front porch, landscape lighting (under the trees in the front and around the flower beds), stone around trees and flower beds, all bedrooms have walk-in closets, huge dining room with big front bay window.
I love, love, love that our windows are cased. It's rare to find a starter home (under $175K) with molding around the windows. I guess not being from TX, I thought this was odd.
We changed - painted all the rooms, changed all the lighting, and bought a great front door.
Next house will have a bigger garage (at least 2.5 for more storage), big pantry, a silent dishwasher, if possible find a house that the family wall with the tv does not share the master bedroom wall - I sleep directly behind the tv wall and it can be a problem if DH is up later than me watching a movie or playing a video game.
My dream home will have a door from the master closet directly into the laundry room!
James Sawyer 12.3.10
Leo Richard 9.20.12
We just sold ours not long ago, but this is what I loved:
Wish we had (and will hopefully get on the new house)
We love our home and it's probably our forever home or at least very very long term home for raising our children in. Ours is a complete cutom, took 14 months for us to build, but everything is exactly how we wanted.
Some things that stand out that are really just convenient and make my life so much better are:
Master Bath - Large walk in shower with no door and 2 shower heads. The master bath connects to DH's walk in closet which in turn connects to the mud room which goes out to the garage he parks in. This is probably the best thing. He gets up about 2 hours before me and just has to go to the bathroom, shut the door and get dressed and leave through the garage without me hearing all sorts of things in the bedroom. Very convenient for doing laundry too!
Mudroom - Sink, drip dry shower and storage areas
Land! If you can get something that doesn't sit right on top of your neighbor with a little bit of room, that's ideal.
I love our large secondary bedrooms and all the extra storage space. I love having a garage (though I wouldn't mind if it were a bit bigger).I'm glad we upgraded our carpet and carpet pad, as our dog is a busybody and she would have torn regular carpet to shreds with her constant circling by now. I love my big front flower bed (but I hate every cheap ugly thing the builder planted, so I re-did everything). I love my huge kitchen! I could build an island in there and still have plenty of room.
I don't hate anything about our house, but there are some things I would like to change over the years. I regret that we did not have gutters and a sprinkler system installed during construction; now we have to save up to add those on. I would also like to change our master bathroom and closet doors to pocket doors. I would like to eventually change the vinyl tile for ceramic and change the dining room carpet to hardwood. We plan on living in our house for a long time, so we have plenty of time to change things as we can afford it.