Need Suggestions: Furniture Layout

Has anyone done the morning room with the standard island?  There are a few upgrades (like this) that I would have liked to have gotten, but in an effort to save money we decided against.  We actually had the gourmet island listed at the beginning, but then traded it for some other things that I wanted more.  I'm totally ok with the layout of the regular island; my only concern is all of that extra space between the end of the island and the family room.  I was thinking maybe I could put a wine fridge or something at the end of the island, but I don't know how that would look.  Another option would be to put a small kitchen table in the kitchenette area and use the morning room as more of a "florida" sitting-room with some chairs and a coffee table.  I picture myself sitting in there with a book and coffee watching my future children. :)   Below is a sketch and renderings of my first option with the kitchen table in the morning room:



Option 1 with table in morning room

 


Looking from kitchen into family room

 



Looking from family room into kitchen (lots of open space)

 

Here's a sketch/renderings of the second layout idea with the table in the kitchenette area and the morning room as a sitting area:

My other dilemma is where to put our cable jack in the family room.  I was originally thinking directly across from the kitchen because that fits my desired furniture layout the best (and then I could see the TV from the kitchen while I'm cooking dinner), but we are getting two windows on that wall, so depending on how far apart they will be I'm not sure if it would be good to have a tv on that wall.  The other option is on the wall between the family room and the garage since there are no windows on this wall.  Here are sketches/renderings of the furniture layouts for each option.  Any thoughts or suggestions? 

Option 1: TV on wall opposite kitchen (we are getting two windows on this wall... not sure how far apart they will be)



Option 1 rendering



Option 2: TV on wall between garage and living room (no windows on this wall)



Option 2 rendering



First Offer...

Quick update.... our house has been on the market for about 12 hours and we already have an offer!  It's a little less that we would like, but I think it's a great sign that the first showing yeilded an offer.  All of our cleaning is paying off :).

Our current house is listed for sale!

Getting our current house ready to sell, plus keeping up with our Ryan appointments, plus renting out my condo (oh, and keeping up with our full time jobs) has been so stressful/tiring these past few weeks.  Being a homeowner is hard work!!  The silver lining is that our current house is absolutely cleaner than it has ever been (and more than likely cleaner than any house of mine will ever be... my aunts would be proud :)).  If I had known how much work this would be I would have hired someone else to do it; but you live and learn.  Now that it's done, I'm proud of all of the work we did.  It looks awesome and I hope it makes it sell easier/faster.  Here are some pictures of the house we are moving out of:

living room

living room and vestibule to the left

dining room

kitchen

kitchen looking into dining room

back "yard"... can't wait to have a real yard!

master bedroom... look how clean!!!

vanity/dressing area... we plan on using our sitting room in the new house as a dressing area

master bath (I will miss our double showerhead)

2nd bedroom

3rd bedroom on 3rd floor (we use as an office)

"den" area with kitchenette

Outside

I find it funny because the house we are in now is 1500 sf and we only use about 1/2 of it (we hardly ever use the 2nd bedroom on the 2nd floor or the entire 3rd floor).  Our new house is almost twice the size of this, so we are going to have plenty of space that we won't know what to do with!  Hopefully it will all be filled with little ones in the coming years though :).

Kudos to my dad and brother (and everyone else who helped on the house renovation).  They really did a great job. 

Hopefully everyone's hard work pays off and it sells quickly.

Upgrades, Upgrades!!!

My favorite post of others' blogs is always the upgrades they chose so I'm going to share ours with you now!  The incentives Ryan was offering for our neighborhood were the free morning room, side entry garage, hardwood in the foyer and tile in the upstairs baths.  They also threw in corian counters (which we upgraded to granite for a small price), stainless steel appliances, and an upgraded kitchen faucet.  In my FINAL last ditch negotiations I also got them to give us the luxury master bedroom/bathroom with the sitting room for free, $2,000 off of a bay window in the dining room and $2,500 closing assistance (that is actually coming from NVR).

 

Bottom line, don't be afraid to negotiate and ask for stuff for free!  I'm pretty sure our sales rep wanted to kill be by the time we were through, but when all was said and done we got about $35,000 worth of upgrades for free so it was worth it!  Above and beyond the free stuff, we tried to only do structural-type upgrades that we couldn't easily do later... 4 ft family room extension, some extra windows, and the oak stairs.  There's some other little stuff here and there, but all in all I think we were pretty reasonable.  Below is a list of our final upgrade list and approximate prices.

 

Our floorplan can be viewed here, with some of the options shown.  Here are the options we went with:

 

Elevation C, siding front ($6,495) (I would have loved brick, but that would have been $20,000)

*Morning room ($0, normally $16,795)

*Luxury master bedroom/bathroom layout with sitting room ($0, normally $5,995)

4' Extension on family room ($5,895)

*2 car, side entry garage ($0, normally $5,495)

Full basement, unfinished ($0)

*Bay window in rear of dining room ($495, normally $2,495)

2 extra windows in morning room ($990)

2 extra windows in family room ($990)

Recessed lighting (6 lights) in kitchen ($895)

Level 4 maple cognac cabinets ($1,995)

*Level 1 granite counters ($1,100, normally $3,650)

*Stainless Steel appliances ($0, normally $1,895)

Double bowl in upstairs hall bathroom ($695)

Level 1 Maple spice cabinets in both upstairs bathrooms ($280)

Oak stair with oak bullnose handrail ($3,125... Greg tried to fight me on this one but I really wanted them... it makes such a difference in the entryway from the normal carpeted steps with the plain handrail)

2 ceiling fan rough-ins (morning room and family room) ($350 for both)

Floodlight in back yard ($250)

Extra outlet in front of house for spotlight ($225)

*Kitchen faucet upgrade level 1 (pullout faucet) ($0, normally $295)

Upgraded carpet pad (level A) in family room and upstairs ($875)

*Hardwood foyer ($0, normally $1,000)

Hardwood powder room ($150)

 

This is what it would have looked like if we didn't get the upgrade :( ...

...and this is what it will look like with the upgrade :)

 



As for colors, we chose a clay siding with black shudders/door and white trim.  It will look like this (we won't have the peak on the garage, which I'm bummed about):

 

 

 

I am already starting a list of projects I want to do to upgrade ourselves... hardwood, backsplash, finished basement, crown molding, wainscoting, etc.  It's going to be so hard to wait a whole year to start anything!  I am very excited to be able to start making our home OURS!

The Beginning

I have learned so much from all of the Ryan homeowners' blogs I've read so I decided to start one of my own.  Hopefully our experiences will help another potential homebuyer in the future, inform our friends and family (or anyone else who's interested) of our progress and make a record of our first home purchase together.

While it's my husband and my first purchase together, we both have purchased homes separately in the past.  Our current living situation is a bit complicated.  Before I get to that, let me give you a little background on us:

We met in the summer of 2007.  Greg had just bought a house with two of his friends in which they lived for the next 3 years.  I was living with my parents when we met, but soon after I got a job in the city and bought a small condo for myself.  These purchases were in 2007 and 2008... before the housing market went nuts, so our experiences were very painless.  I didn't have to provide ONE piece of documentation for my mortgage approval.  Crazy now that I see how strict it is now!

Greg and I got married October 1st of 2010 and we lived in my condo together for about 6 months.

Flashback...

My dad and brother bought a crappy old townhouse in the city around 2006 and completely gutted/renovated it together over the course of the next 5 years (you can see the finished product here).  My brother and his wife and baby were living there until he got a new job in the suburbs, so they bought a house out there.  Since my dad owns the place, he asked Greg and I if we'd like to move there to have more space.  It was a tough decision since I loved my condo so much, but we really did need more space and it would cut Greg's commute by about 15 minutes (though it increased mine by the same amount).  So we moved to the townhouse in February of 2011.

Around our year anniversary in the townhouse, we decided that if we were going to have kids anytime in the next few years we had better think about moving back to the suburbs (I'd like my children to have a yard with grass and not find 40 oz's of Old English on their front sidewalk when they leave for school in the morning).  Also, we were starting to be over living in the city.  We both loved living here and are so glad we did it while we are young, but we're getting to the age (mostly Greg... he's 31, I'm only 28 ;)) where we don't enjoy the things that make living in the city worthwhile as much... bustling nightlife, thousands of restaurants within walking distance, people everywhere, etc.  Me being the compulsive planner that I am, I formulated a timeline for our house-hunting process:

March to May - Start driving around to narrow down areas to live.

May to July - Start looking at actual houses.

September-ish - Choose a house.

November-ish - Move.

I think I am more anxious to get out of the city than Greg, so it was a bit of a challenge getting him to commit to that first Saturday afternoon in early March of driving around to look at houses.  However as soon as we stopped in the first model home, he was hooked.  The first place we stopped was a Ryan homes community near where I grew up.  We didn't like that particular development, but we loved the homes and they had another development in an area we liked better nearby.  Greg was in love.  1.5+ acre lots, open farmland stretching for miles, no traffic, little noise, and a large brand new house to make our own.

We did our homework and looked at a ton of other houses ("used" and new) in several different areas, but none stole Greg's heart like the first house.  I, on the other hand, actually liked another smaller house nearby better (I liked it mostly because it was $20K cheaper and taxes were $2K less per year), but I couldn't convince Greg. 

Long story short, we are buying the Courtland model on a 1.5 acre lot in New Jersey.  I am the type of person who over analyzes every situation and doubts every decision I make, so there have been many ups and downs in the 2 months since that first visit, but ultimately this is the best decision for us (I hope). 

This will be our house (minus the stone and different colors)!

**Update** 
Check our home tour (in progress) here, and all of my DIY projects here.
Check out the deck we built ourselves here.
Check out two Courtland Gate model homes here and here.