House Update: How We Feel After One Month

We've lived there for almost 7 weeks, so how do we feel about things now?

Overall - good!

But....we still have no sod.  I'm SOOOOO over the rain and our landscaper.  It is truly a sore subject in our world.  I cannot even deal anymore.  We live in a mud pit!  Poor Millsy!  He wants a yard again!

Floor plan:  we are still really happy with how we laid our floor plan out.  Everything logistically works so far.  

Molly Anne's room is on the far side of the house from our room and away from the stairwell where the sound can carry upstairs.  It's above a room that isn't used at night so it's quiet in there.  We can function at night without having to be quiet and without a sound machine. 

We like having our bedroom upstairs being close to her.  I know some with older children like the master on the bottom floor but we like being up right now when we have young children.   

I'm glad we didn't do a huge laundry room like all of the other houses in our hood.  We couldn't justify that.  I enjoy having our real washer and dryer upstairs and the stackable washer/dryer down.  I use that stackable SO much.  

Our kitchen/living room/outdoor patio is amazing how it's one big area and I'm so glad we spent the extra money on the many steel beams that made that happen!  No one that walks in our house can see those but they were required to make it all function how we wanted it.  

The playroom - oh the playroom - best idea ever.  I'm so glad we have a whole room for this.  And put built in cabinets in there (hide those toys!).  


Other things:
 - two dishwashers - possibly my favorite so far.  No we don't use these only for entertaining, we use them every day.  I LOVE having them. 
 - gas lanterns out front - LOVE the look and glad we got the electronic switch to turn them off.  They are beautiful.  This was something Kevin really wanted.  And after a lot of research and looking at other homes, they are hung at the correct height.  Whew.
 - Flagstone on driveway out front was definitely an upgrade but it really brings the house together.  Also, we splurged on slate for the back porch and it is beautiful.  We made an effort to spend money on things we would see and use every day and these are in that category. 
 - Technology - we did our house right on the technology front and I'm glad we did.  We pre-wired the heck out of it so we'd have accessibility to do more than we have now.  Every room is wired for speakers (including bathrooms).  We used Sonos and the sound is amazing with the speakers that our guy Chris picked out and Dad approved! ;)  We have 6 WiFi access points so there is no shortage of Internet at our house!  We have too many locations wired for TVs and we aren't using all of them now and probably never will.  

I guess everyone has priorities with how they spend their money and since we had lived in our other house for 5 years, we knew exactly how we lived, what was important to us and what we used the most.  So far, we are pleased with what we chose to spend money on and what we chose to save on!  

Things we aren't loving:
 - garages - they are too small.  Kevin is not thrilled about these.  One in particular is not very functional.  
 - our yard needs grass ughhhh
 - we have more kitchen cabinet space in this house and less pantry than our old one so I'm still working on organizing properly (this isn't really a con, just something to get used to)


Neighborhood:
We have two really good sets of friends in the neighborhood (both have young children!) and are really excited about that!  We've met two other nearby neighbors and they were very kind.  We know a few other families in the hood but not well.  Hopefully once the weather warms up, we'll meet some more people.  So far, everyone seems really nice and waves when you drive by etc.  It's definitely different than our old hood but both are great in their own ways.  


Our list to do inside (one day!):
 - wrap up punchlist work  (not much left to do)
 - buy a new breakfast table
 - get curtains for our dining room, Molly Anne's room, our room and guest bedroom
 - maybe get plantation shutters for Kevin's office
 - lay down the rug in the living room
 - buy some hallway rugs
 - maybe get a chair or two for our bedroom
 - buy a bench for my closet
 - hang pictures