Future Forever Home

There are a lot of different housing options to fit the needs of people from all different walks of life. From multi-story single family homes and ranch homes to swanky high rise loft apartments, condominiums, and duplexes, there’s a place for everyone to call home.  

I’ve always dreamed of building a house from the ground up. I was a teenager when I originally got the idea, and I thought I wanted a super big, two story home with lots of bedrooms to fill with beautiful furniture and artwork. As I’ve grown older, I’ve quickly realized that two story homes aren’t all that they are cracked up to be. 

My vision changes from time to time since I see new ideas to incorporate in the plans. I make sure to write down my ideas so when it’s time to flesh out the design and features, I won’t have to try and remember things from years past. As time passes and Kris and I identify the things that work and don’t work in our current house, we can feel confident choosing a basic structure that will work for our family in the future. 

If money isn’t an object, I would love to build a ranch style home with a four car garage. I’d prefer four bedrooms along with four and a half bathrooms. We could get away with three and a half bathrooms if we decide to have a joining Jack-and-Jill set up for two of the bedrooms. While four and a half bathrooms seems a little excessive even in writing, the half bath is vital in my eyes now. I didn’t understand the benefit of a half bath before moving into our current home. Right now we have four bathrooms attached to four bedrooms, one of which being downstairs.  The major problem I’ve found is that if we have guests staying downstairs, there really isn’t a usable bathroom. Even though it’s not a major issue now, it might become a bigger issue once we have kids. 

I definitely have to keep a mudroom right off the garage with ample space to put outdoor shoes, dog bowls and supplies, and a little bit of storage for jackets, keys, and other stuff. Ideally, I’d like a no outside shoes in the house rule to keep down on the dirt and germs being tracked in. The mudroom would need organization solutions to ensure it stays tidy since it would essentially be a grab and go station. 

Another slight inconvenience that I would fix in the new house is building the pantry and closets with solid shelves instead of the cumbersome wire shelves that don’t hold things neat and tidy. For someone who spends a good portion of time cooking, keeping a neat pantry is one of the things that helps me the most. At any given time, I know where everything is and where everything should go since it’s organized based on categories. The spices, sauces, snacks, baking ingredients, oils, pastas, breads, paper goods, and breakfast foods all have their own special sections and nothing intertwines. 

I like the setup of my current kitchen for the most part. I have beautiful white cabinets with plenty of storage space and stainless steel appliances. There’s an island and a separate section for coffee off to the side that I love. If anything, I would change the sink to a nice, deep farmer’s sink and maybe a different colored countertop. 

As for flooring, I would truly love to avoid carpet throughout the entire house, but I just don’t think it’s feasible with my dogs and future kids. Carpets tend to give our smaller family members more traction when playing and going from room to room. It wouldn’t be fair to remove it solely for aesthetics. I would imagine we’d have to do a combination of carpet, tile, and hardwood like in our current home. I’ve always been a fan of super dark flooring, but I think I’m starting to lean more towards medium or light stained hardwood since it brightens up a space so beautifully. 

One of the random home improvement tasks that I’ve always wanted to do is paint a room. I’ve heard it’s a lot of work and messy, but that hasn’t deterred me yet. Having different colors in different parts of your house helps give it a cozy and unique feel, as long as it’s tastefully done. We might keep it simple and do a plain white wall or a pastel neutral throughout, or we might be a little bold and have different colors. Right now, our walls are an off white eggshell and while it’s definitely beautiful and matches everything, the finish is collecting random knicks and marks. 

Since we won’t have an upstairs, the living room area would have to be the major place for video games, at home workout videos, and movies. I imagine an open concept with a sectional couch big enough for everyone to stretch out comfortably. There would be an electric fireplace below the mantel that we might actually use on cold winter nights. We have a wood fireplace now, but that’s too much of a fire risk for either of us to try it out. 

Instead of having a supply closet like I do now, I would build out the laundry room so it can contain all cleaning tools like vacuums, mops, lysol wipes, bleach, extra toilet paper and paper towels, duster wands, etc. to keep everything in one central location. I would also have a drying rack for clothing that needs to air dry along with ample folding space. The number one feature that I want in the laundry room more than anything else is a mop sink. It would be soooooo beneficial especially with filling up dog water bowls, hand washing clothing items, filling up mop buckets, and so much more. 

Now, the primary bathroom is one of the spaces in my current home that I would completely gut and replace in the new home. Let’s start with my biggest gripe - the shower. The builder of our current home clearly went with cheaper materials since it’s so incredibly difficult to keep clean with all the water that doesn’t dry properly. It’s also a smidge too small for our liking. I would replace it with a larger standing shower with a glass door instead of a flimsy plastic one. I wouldn’t change anything about the adequate toilet closet, but I would either upgrade the tub so it’s deeper or completely take it out. 

As for outside, ideally I would have a super flat lot so it’s easy to cut the grass and no one would get hurt running on a high grade slope. I would also have a raised garden to grow fruits and veggies like pomegranates, lemons, limes, grapes, cantaloupes, cucumbers, lettuce, ginger, broccoli, and more. There would be a built in watering system so nothing got scorched or burned from the hot Georgia summers. There would be just enough bushes so the yard didn’t look bare, but not too much where it started looking junky. 

We have plenty of time to complete research over renovating an existing home over purchasing land to build, how financing works, where to acquire a general contractor and project manager, and places to buy supplies. We are in no rush since it’s such a big, bold idea. While it definitely will be hard to bring to life, the journey of building our finished future forever home we designed from the ground up will be well worth all the effort and stress. 

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Signed, 

Jessica Marie