We have been our new house now for five months. It works well for us. We love to sit on the screen porch and look at the trees in the woods behind the house. We love the big open kitchen with the fireplace and all the windows that all look out onto the woods. We only considered after the fact that all those windows face east so the sun shines into the room in the morning, but is shaded in the heat of the day. There are ceiling fans in many of the rooms that keep it way cooler than the rental house we lived in last year in Apex. There are some small issues that we need to remedy like the lack screens on many of the windows and some work we would like to do on the yard outside, but for the most part we are very, very happy with the house. The kids like their rooms a lot (they both have great views and huge walk-in closets). We love the master suite downstairs (a big change — we have always been on the second floor) with its even huger walk-in closets and high ceilings in both the bedroom and bathroom.
There are two rooms that are under utilized. The formal dining room has been empty since we moved in because we are using our dining room table in the breakfast nook in the kitchen so we can use our round plastic Costco table out on the screen porch; we have been having dinner there quite often this spring. The other room is the living room. The problem is that we really have two living rooms. We have our two sofas and coffee table over by the fireplace in the kitchen area because that is really where we do most of our “living”. All we have in the other living room is the piano and the computer. Lorena is pretty happy with the piano, but pretty irritated that we have the computer their in her beautiful living room. It really does not go so well with the decor, but it is way to hot up in the bonus room during the summer. What we need to do, when we can afford it, is to get an elegant computer hutch for the computer (to hide the cables and avoid the wrath of Lorena) and another set of living room furniture. I hope we can afford it before Lorena tries to trade me in for a leather love seat at Costco.