Small (ish) elements you love about your home?

[momofmine]

We are revamping a lot in our house, and I want it to be a place where we just love to come home to, and really enjoy being in our home, enjoy having people over, enjoy and use the things that are here. I am trying to go through room by room and decide what to do in each room, so that little by little we can tackle some of these projects. For example, we have a large window in our LR and I would love to have a window seat with shelves on either side going all along the wall.

I would also like to be able to have music in different parts of the house. Right now, we have Rhapsody on the computer, but if you turn it on in the LR, then you have to turn it up really loud to hear it in the kitchen. So I'd like to have some kind of speakers that go into different rooms. Not sure how that would work, but it would be nice to be able to listen to a podcast or music while I'm washing dishes.

I also wish we had a wider, more open space by the back door, that could be the place for all the stuff as you come and go. Right now it is just a very narrow space at the back entryway.

So, what are some small or not-so-small features that you love about your house, or wish you had in your house, that make it really enjoyable?

[mattemma04]

Deleted the big stuff........

[mattemma04]

A year round sunroom/greenhouse.In the least a garden window would be nice.

I want to paint the rooms this summer.Easy change that can spruce up the rooms. I would rip up the carpet if I knew the wood floors are good.

[Ruthiegirl]

I love my front entry. I hung coat hooks on one side, so we can easily keep winter gear tidy. There is a much loved, old dresser where we store all of our shoes, bags, keys, wallets, etc. And I hung a favorite mirror over the dresser. I have a lovely jug where I put fresh greens from the garden. I rarely buy flowers, but a bit of green is very nice.

I love coming home to this peaceful, clutter free space. I hang my coat, slip my shoes into the dresser, put my wallet and keys in the top drawer. Ahhhhh...home. And then when I need to get ready to go out agin, I know exactly where my personal things are and can leave without a mad scurry for keys and shoes.

It is a small thing, but one that really says 'home' for me.

[momofmine]

What kind of dresser do you mean? Like you put your shoes in drawers? It does feel really good when the front entryway is clutter-free. We have so many piles of shoes though, that we actually do wear. Soccer cleats, tennis shoes, slip-on shoes, work shoes, snow/rain boots.

[Katie T]

A bay window, open staircase, and a built in china hutch in the dining room.

Those are my favorite things in my home.

[mommariffic]

I love our front stoop. I've got pots with flowers on them, and we can sit and blow bubbles and watch our neighbors walk by on nice afternoons and I think it looks nice from the road - it's a typical city type neighbor with old brownstone/brick type houses, and I like that flowers can look pretty and inviting. I also love our front doors, which the previous tenants had imported from Italy [they are recycled]...they open up so that there's a breeze coming through!

I love that the rooms have ceiling fans.

I love the back doors that open up to a garden/deck and view of Manhattan.

I love our "sneaky staircase" off the glass sun room in our bedroom,that leads to the breakfast nook, makes getting snacks easier

[HeatherAtHome]

I love my little pantry under the stairs. It didn't take much space at all but adds plenty of storage. I like the little closet I have under the eaves upstairs with the short door. I love the stained glass door that we have on our smaller, front living room. (It's pretty and makes that a smaller, quiet, "away" space-Not So Big House.) I love the shelves we added in the living room to hold books, photos and art work (need to tidy up that area!)

What I want to add: patio door with deck leading out from our soon-to-be family room (starting renos soon). I have this idea of exposing part of the log wall in that section (family room was added onto the log house so we should have a log wall behind gyprock). I also have some ideas for built-ins along the knee walls upstairs. (1.5 story home). I love deep windowsills and window seats.

I guess to sum it up, I love built-ins and little nooks that really take advantage of space. I feel that they add a lot of charm and 'magic' to a home.

[ASusan]

I love our laundry chute that goes from our MBR closet to the laundry room.
I love that our kitchen island has 2 heights - taller for bar-stool seating and it hides the activity going on at the lower level.
I like that we used a curved shower curtain rod in our guest bathroom. I love the added space.
I like that I put a horizontal, block glass window above the bath in the guest bathroom. The original house design had NO natural lighting in that room. So sad.
I love that I added windows on the west wall of the living room and on the west wall of the guest room upstairs. The original design had no windows on those walls. I cannot imagine having those walls with no way to see the sunset. How sad.
I love our gas fireplace. Flick a switch, and it's on. It has a blower to distribute heat nicely.
I like our cubbies - 3 - that are in the space you enter directly from the garage. We are not good about keeping them neat, however, But I cannot imagine the clutter of all that stuff being dumped directly into the kitchen or MAYbe making it's way into the front foyer's coat closet.
I like that the chandelier in our foyer is on a dimmer switch. We leave it on low until DS comes in our room late at night. (We usually transfer him before we fall asleep, but if we don't - it's a good nightlight for him.)
We have an away-room that is play room and reading nook. No one ever really sits in the large living room. The space seems too open.
I love that we put a man-door out the BACK of the garage (why would you want it on the side?), and that we extended the deck so that the man-door leads onto the deck. You can bring gardening things and toys right from the garage to the back deck, and down the deck stairs to the back yard.

DH's cousin gave us the cupboards from his kitchen reno. We are using a giant pantry cupboard with swing-out shelving in our basement as food storage. The rest of the cupboards are in the rear of the garage for storage. DH plans to add formica countertop to those, and it will be very nice for his model RC plane workshop area.

I have a VERY old hoosier cabinet that was in my grandfather's workshop where I keep "my" tools and gardening supplies. AFAIK, my grandparents never used it in a kitchen. It is in bad shape, but works for tools.

I like that we have a larger, dorm-sized fridge and a similar sized freezer in our garage for extra food storage.

Even though it doesn't go with the style of our house, which is brick Colonial, I love our mission-style partial glass door. I love mission styling, and the door is unlike any in the neighborhood. It makes me happy.

We have wires for speakers outside and in the basement. DH has not yet purchased speakers for those areas, although the living room has the hooked up now. He is looking forward to having music in those areas, but we have friends with a similar set-up and they never use it.

We're not great with interior-design stuff, so...not much for you there.

That included a list of smaller and not-so-small things. We did build the house, from a builder plan. The building things that I mentioned were all deviations from the plan, but we tried not to make too many changes, because each one, of course, is accompanied by $cha-ching$.

[ms.shell]

The things i love most about this house are the beautiful golden shiny hardwood floors and the big windows with so much light coming in and the spaciousness of big rooms and a wide hallway. and having plenty of cabinet/ drawer/ counter space and having a big eat in kitchen with the garden right out the back kitchen door. and tho i thought they were weird when i moved in, i love my pink kitchen counters and brick backsplash. and tho the back yard is too small, i love having a big patio and like i said, having the gardens right there is nice. and there is a built in brick flower bed along the front of the house which is awesome...i always thought that kind of bed looks neat since i was a little girl.
oh! and i LOVE my deep double basin stainless ("Neptune") kitchen sink and beautiful tall brushed stainless faucet with detachable sprayer...tho i would love the kind i have seen advertised that you just tap to turn on better, lol.
another thing i like about this house that we will want to have in any house is having a seperate den. DP watches movies and plays games that i wouldn't want children (or myself, really)seeing, so i like that he has his den on the end of the house, with a door. We have the living room for family fun, and dp has his den...we looked at another house recently and i could tell it would be all wrong because you would have to walk through the tv room to get to the kitchen and so dp would have had to watch all that crap in our bedroom, which i wouldnt have liked. Also, i have a sewing room which i love....like i said, its the spaciousness of this house that makes me love it; we are able to have plenty of communal family space but then everyone also is able to have their own private space, which is a luxury i am grateful for.
we also like our long wide driveway; we can park side by side and there is always enough room for all of our guests, plus it is an extra place that kids can play on occasion.

[madskye]

We have four window seats--two in the front room, one in DD's bedroom, and one in the guest room. Very sweet to curl up in.

[Ruthiegirl]

Originally Posted by momofmine

What kind of dresser do you mean? Like you put your shoes in drawers? It does feel really good when the front entryway is clutter-free. We have so many piles of shoes though, that we actually do wear. Soccer cleats, tennis shoes, slip-on shoes, work shoes, snow/rain boots.

Yes, just a regular old dresser. We keep our shoes in the bottom drawers and use two smaller drawers for keys/wallets/small things.

We have the soccer cleat issue too. The kids come home from practice crusted with mud, so we have a basket on the front stoop for cleats, muddy boots, etc.

The dresser seems to fit our everyday shoes, anything dressy or rarely worn get stored in bedroom closets.

[zoebird]

i'm looking to do that with our entry, ruthiegirl.

i'm actually looking for a "manrobe" which is essentially a short wardrobe that has a place for hanging clothes on one side and then drawers on the other. i would use the drawers as you describe, mirror above, and then use the "hanging" side of it to house our large, structured carrier (back pack) and then our daily use pack/bag. and, i want hooks for the winter gear.

so, yeah. getting there.

[Ruthiegirl]

Originally Posted by zoebird

i'm looking to do that with our entry, ruthiegirl.

i'm actually looking for a "manrobe" which is essentially a short wardrobe that has a place for hanging clothes on one side and then drawers on the other. i would use the drawers as you describe, mirror above, and then use the "hanging" side of it to house our large, structured carrier (back pack) and then our daily use pack/bag. and, i want hooks for the winter gear.

so, yeah. getting there.

I used to have one of those! It was a lovely smallish wardrobe (love 'manrobe', I have never heard that term). It had drawers along the bottom, a small hanging closet to one side and little shelfs for odds and ends.

I think it was an IKEA piece. We got it second hand and painted it a pretty red color.

Good luck finding the perfect thing. I love the hunt for just the right piece of furniture.

[~Charlie's~Angel~]

I love my first floor laundry. We live in the north (So we have a basement) and the house is older (50s) so thats where the laundry was when we bought it. My husband framed in the breezeway to make it livable space, put a sliding back door to the back yard, and ran all the plumbing, gas, and electric needed to have a first floor laundry closet off the dining room.

I love that my house is a ranch.

I love the layout of the original section. It goes in a big circle. You walk in from the front door, to the right is the living room, to the left is the hallway. The dining room is behind the living room, with a door way to the kitchen, and the hallway also has a doorway to the kitchen. Very open, and my husband has plans to make it even MORE open. I love being married to a handy man.

In the new section, my bathroom is AMAZING. The shower is custom built, with a 6.5 foot tall, 5 foot wide glass door. And I have a walk in closet!

I love to brag about our house. It really is my dream home. Just enough for our little family of four, but not to much where im overwhelmed trying to keep it clean.

[thewaggonerfamily]

Originally Posted by zoebird

i'm looking to do that with our entry, ruthiegirl.

i'm actually looking for a "manrobe" which is essentially a short wardrobe that has a place for hanging clothes on one side and then drawers on the other. i would use the drawers as you describe, mirror above, and then use the "hanging" side of it to house our large, structured carrier (back pack) and then our daily use pack/bag. and, i want hooks for the winter gear.

so, yeah. getting there.

The "real" name for that is a chiffarobe or chifforobe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chifforobe Might help you look for one...

[jtbuko]

I have one of those houses that it hard work to love, and is a never ending work in progress. These are some of the most important little touches that have made it more of a home over the years:

front door - hated it until we painted it purple. now I love it

swing - bought used on Craigslist and it totally changed the vibe out front. Now we love to sit there and watch the world go by. It feels like the porch we never had.

hand made ceramics - we eat off nice hand made pottery most of the time. it pleases me greatly. we also got a handmade ceramic house number to put up out front instead of generic home depot #s

FM transmitter - allows us to listen to whatever is playing on ipod in living from from radios elsewhere in the house. it is like a wireless speaker system. not sure if they are legal everywhere though

closet door removal - our house is small and the closet doors were noisy, tacky space eaters that made me CRANKY. We replaced them all with curtains and I am grateful for the change EVERY TIME I SEE THEM.

garden - my thumb is not very green, but I love going outside to pick rosemary or mint to use in the kitchen

yellow! - I love that the outside of our home is yellow.

[Drummer's Wife]

Since you said you would like music in each room, I have to comment that I absolutely love that we have a central radio/intercom system. There are even speakers and controls outside, so the kids can listen when they play basketball, or are in the backyard, and I can when I'm hanging out upstairs on the balcony/patio. Very cool, but I'm not sure how much money it would cost to istall something like that in an existing home.

We also have a central vac which rocks my socks - but those are even pricier, I think.

[MisaGoat]

A few little things:

The kitchen sink has a built in soap dispenser and filtered water dispenser. The faucet can be pulled out and used as a sprayer.

I really like all the light our house gets and having a front porch with a swing and glider and a back deck. I like having a fireplace (although I want to change the hearth).

[p.s]

Originally Posted by jtbuko

hand made ceramics - we eat off nice hand made pottery most of the time. it pleases me greatly. we also got a handmade ceramic house number to put up out front instead of generic home depot #s

LOL, like these... http://www.heathceramics.com/go/heath/
...when my two ds outgrow plasticware (Preserve).