What I love best about my home & what I dislike

[youngretiree]

I have a 2/2 concrete courtyard villa. The thing I like best about it is the hugamous open bar between the kitchen and dining room. It is awesome for potlucks & this year I actually served Christmas dinner buffet style using the bar, tho I only had 7 of us. That way we weren't constantly passing stuff around.

The only thing I dislike about my Woodlawn model is the washer and dryer being in the back of the garage, so that I have to squeeze between the AC handler and the outside mirror on my car to go to them. I like an indoor laundry, which most of the other models have.

PS I love the privacy of my lot location and that one side of my house faces a blank wall. Also the sunset from one of my sliding glass doors is to die for! That door lets in a lot of afternoon heat tho so I had to get some lined draperies to add to the verticals.

PSS I love that our villas are right off Canal....makes it so accessable and also easy for people to find.

[jblum8156]

What I love best about my Bougainvillea is its north-south orientation, so I only get full sun in the rear lanai in the late afternoon. Love the inside laundry. Love the two big closets off master bedroom. Love the pushed-out third bedroom (great hobby room). Love the big backyard that backs onto 466A, and between there is a big berm and beautiful trees. Love being close to Canal and Morse Blvd., quick access to anywhere. Love the new library only 3 miles away. Going to love Brownwood and the new shopping plaza.

[l2ridehd]

I love our location in Sunset Pointe. I love the view of the Heron golf course and Lake Miona. Master bedroom size, closets, and bath. Love our kitchen size and island. Our pool and 1200 square foot birdcage.

I don't like that there is no front door closet, that the guest rooms are small, but most of all I hate our garage. It is an oversize garage by someones standards, but it is almost useless. It's a two car garage that will hold one car and a golf cart if you want to have room to walk around them. I bought a second home up the street just to have more garage space. The fact that I had to even consider that is so bad. I love our location and did not want to move, but the garage is really bad. Most homes in TV the garage is way to small. I like to take care of our cars and carts. I like toys, I like work space and hobby space. I have a motorcycle that I want in my garage. My garage needs to be double it's current size and then it would be about right.

If I could build from scratch, I would build my same home in the same location, make the guest wing about 4 feet wider, and the garage 12 feet longer and 15 feet wider. Also would add a wine cellar somehow.

[OpusX1]

We Love our Foxglove Courtyard Villa. Love the view of Churchill Golf Course, Love that the 2 of us can pretty much clean the whold place in an hour, Love the privacy when we want but Love our neighbors, Love that we can let out the dogs without going out with them. Love that we have no grass. The only things we dislike are the angled driveway and the single car garage.

[youngretiree]

Your dogs will pee on the rocks or concrete?

[ladylake1]

I love the front to back of the house expanse view from the foyer. Also love the direct access from kitchen to enclosed lanai. Dislike we didn't get golf cart garage.

[jblum8156]

I once had a dog (standard poodle) that would ONLY pee on rocks.

[OpusX1]

Rocks and mulch.

[redwitch]

I just love that my home is in TV. I'd love a little more space and a decent-sized garage but, heck, as long as I'm in TV, I'm happy.

[pooh]

I love my home floor plan, my good size back yard, my location-not far from the center of town, my neighbors and the oversized garage. What I do wish I had was a golf cart garage, but we've survived this long without one, think it's not absolutely necessary....it's more of a want, not a need.

[Bill-n-Brillo]

I just love that my home is in TV. I'd love a little more space and a decent-sized garage but, heck, as long as I'm in TV, I'm happy.

:agree: Our sentiments exactly!!

Bill :)

[Ohiogirl]

Bonita/Foxglove CYV

Likes: privacy, inside laundry room w/storage possibilities on both walls, large kitchen, wall and fences for landscape background

Dislikes: relatively small lanai, small master bedroom

Everyone else in CYVs seems to dislike the garage. We have a small car and 2 golf carts (one a 4 seater) and enough room for all our other garage stuff. Admittedly, neither of us is a garage "putterer." But - the garage size does not bother us (I think we are in the minority here). It doesn't take as long to sweep out :)

[RichieLion]

I have to agree with Redwitch about just being happy to live in the beautiful Villages.

To comment on my house; I'd have to say that what I love, visually, is the openness of the floor plan, and what I don't like, in practice, is the openness of the floor plan.

That's only when my wonderful wife decides to watch something on daytime TV on a day when I'm home and it's hard to escape the noise of the TV. I'm a guy that just loves to curl up with a book or contribute to online blogs and the noise can be distracting. Oh well; I'm also just glad to have my wife in my life, so I tolerate it with love.

[faithfulfrank]

Richie....nice post.

What I like: Our floorplan. It is strange how we subconsciously seemed to feel so "right" with this house, only later realizing many aspects of the plan were just like our northern house. Funny. I like having the washer/dryer inside, as opposed to the garage. I took out the old side by sides and replaced them with a stackable with side venting, so i then added a lot of shelving storage next to it.

I LOVE our huge yard and the fact no one can build next to me, as it is the public grass area for the big pond. Floridians seem to call it a lake, but as a NY'er close to all the finger lakes and two Great lakes, it is a year round spring fed pond.

I love all of my citrus and palm trees. Can't wait to plant more, including a new type of Florida apple as well as some others. I also love my two RapidReel hosereels I added...worth every penny.

I love our lanai looking over the pond. I love even owning something called a lanai.

Above all, I love not needing a snowblower down there.

I dislike: My garage. not big enough. I have one of the biggest lots here, but the original owner who had our place built STUPIDLY failed to upgrade to the two car garage, when the lot is one of the few that had tons of room for it. I just got approval and blueprints to add a 15x20 ft additional garage. Can't wait! There does not seem to be a basement under my house...I've looked everywhere for it.

Dislike how it seems to take longer for hot water to reach our kitchen sink. I "fixed" that by adding a small instant point of use water heater under the sink....but that was something I was not used to...plumbing under a slab.

As much as I love our Florida home, I love to build and remodel. I'm enjoying upgrading everything.

Frank

[ceejay]

I love that our lanai is off our kitchen...no coffee spills on the carpet in the morning for me:mornincoffee:!

We get the morning sun so it's absolutely lovely out there on a beautiful day!

I also love living with the most wonderful man:icon_wink: on earth...he makes our house a home!

I truly cannot think of one thing that I dislike about our home. I agree with Richie and Red about living in the most beautiful place on earth...I wouldn't live anywhere else!:smiley:

[pklein9747]

I love our TV home because it is in Florida where it is warm and it never snows!!!

I hate it because we're not there yet :sad:

[jebartle]

I could be the poster person for The Villages....I know I've died and gone straight to heaven....golf heaven!

Neighbors - The BEST!....I know, all of u have the best also

House - Love our mother-in-law suite, all guests fight over it!...
Love the privacy of our courtyard - We actually bought
house in the courtyard b4 we toured the house....
Wish garage was bigger, ole' boy likes to putter

The Villages - What's NOT to like....Can not believe that one family is
responsible for making us all kids again in Village-world...

And last but not least, sharing all of this with my guy, who spoils me
rotten....

[starflyte1]

I like the location of our home. It is just minutes from SS, shopping, bank, hospital, doctors and the veterinarian, by golf cart. More important to us as we get older. The back is on the golf course and the front is on a dead end street that has a golf cart trail at the end, so we have lots of carts going by, but not many cars.

I don't like the exterior appearance of our home, and haven't figured out how to make it better. Too blah.

But, it is all ok because of the location. We do love it in TV!

[barb1191]

I have to agree with Redwitch about just being happy to live in the beautiful Villages.

To comment on my house; I'd have to say that what I love, visually, is the openness of the floor plan, and what I don't like, in practice, is the openness of the floor plan.

That's only when my wonderful wife decides to watch something on daytime TV on a day when I'm home and it's hard to escape the noise of the TV. I'm a guy that just loves to curl up with a book or contribute to online blogs and the noise can be distracting. Oh well; I'm also just glad to have my wife in my life, so I tolerate it with love.

We resolved that problem by purchasing wireless earphones for the television and there's nary a sound throught the home when Bill is watching his sports "stuff." And, when I want to watch my soap, he can enjoy the silence. It really helps.

[Barefoot]

I don't like the exterior appearance of our home, and haven't figured out how to make it better. Too blah.

Have you considered awnings? Also, we added a spiffy new glass door. And a front lawn island with a double Sylvester palm that we love. Now we like the exterior of our house much, much better.

Things we love about our house:

Location .. near everything we use often ... the library, dog park, Publix, Bealls, Bonefish Grill, Crispers, the adult pool.

We back on a golf course and have a hilly view with a bit of water, so there are birds fishing during the day and frogs singing at night.

We have a double garage with an extension. So there is lots of room for bikes, golf cart, SUV, motorcycle, etc. Our previous home was a Courtyard Villa which I loved, but the garage was just too small.

We have a split plan with master bedroom on one side of the house and the guest bedrooms on the other side. This gives us lots of privacy when we have guests.

Things I don't like about our house:

The split plan means there are no side windows in the living room (But a triple, stackable glass door at the end leading to the lanai.) I found the living room dark when we moved in, so we put in four sun tunnels plus a glass front door. It is much brighter now.

[starflyte1]

Thanks, Barefoot, for the suggestion, but we have added awnings. :( I think we need to work on the trim.

As for the noise from the TV, my husband has used a headset for years.

[ssmith]

bump

[Debfrommaine]

We love our Whispering Pine - it has great space open and great neighbors. The three bedrooms are a real plus and I am so glad we put in plantation shutters - will do that again. The downside is we'll probably sell in the spring because we just adopted a more mature doggie (that doesn't shed) but we'd like a courtyard villa now (for the doggie!!). Hate to leave this house but it is all about the dog!:doggie: