Room Planner - Jerome's Furniture. I have not used this site, but there are many room planning sites like this to see your limitation with room size and furniture

Hi,
Here's my 2 cents worth.........we have a gardenia, and we stretched the lanai by 4'6", and it is still only 12' acual usuable space and still not nearly as large as I would like. 12' sounds like a lot, but when you have to move chairs to get out, etc, it is pretty crowded. If you plan on spending a lot of time on your lanai, I think you might be disappointed. I would change lots if I were you and find one where you can stretch the lanai.

keep the lot you love and shorten up the DR

:thumbup: Good to know! Figures, I got the wrong scoop from our realtor....ugh,! We are in the same boat you are, wanting to put a birdcage or patio off the side on our corner lot. To me it just doesn't make since that you have such a large side yard, yet the setback is so close to the house. :22yikes:

When we stayed in TV during our lifestyle visit we found the linai widths pretty narrow and confining so when we built our house we extended our linai to a 12 foot width and the length to 45 feet and have never regretted it.

It is so much easier to get around tables and furniture.

I prefer to be on the linai if possible so I think if you had to give up interior expansion for a linai expansion that would be a good tradeoff.

Maddie101, Thanks so much for the link to the room planner. What a great tool! This will really help us plan throughout the house, not just the Lanai!

Good news from the design team!! When our sales rep told them that we wanted to stretch the Lanai by 2 ft by taking 2 ft out of the LR/DR, they offered instead to give us a 1 ft stretch to the rear, this would be across the entire rear, making the Master 1 ft deeper as well as the Lanai. AND they would move the LR/DR wall back in 1 ft to give us a 10 ft lanai. Actually per the floor plan it is 10'8" because it is frame. I can live with that!!!

We will also keep the 2 ft stretch to the guest/LR side, so the LR space will actually be a bit larger than the original plan.

They had originally said no front to rear stretch, so I was shocked that they came up with that offer. They sent us a copy of the plans with the stretches drawn in and the price quoted was $2100. We are thrilled! It's not the 12 ft Lanai that I would love but we will have 2 sliders, a 6 ft and a 12 ft going out so it will be very open and we can enjoy the view when inside with that much glass. This is all coming together..... Hurrah!!

Thank you all for your input! Because we are in Utah, I am having to really use my imagination and your input to help us make some tricky decisions. This is the last house we want to build and we want to LOVE it! It seems to be shaping up nicely!!

This forum is such a great resource! Thank you all!!

A happy ending.......

Sounds excellent!!!

:BigApplause:

What a great resource to enable you to plan your furniture layout.

I also heard that Southern Living (which I think is the furniture at Lake Sumter Landing) has an online computerized room planning layout as well.

They are supposed to actually have all of the various room dimensions of the models built in The Villages.....so that also would be a plus.

Thanks for the hyperlink.

Are you near Moab? Florida humidity will be quite a difference from the dryness out west. We are feeling the humidity today in Vermont after several days of monsoon like rains with our flash flood emergency beeper going off in the middle of the night.........

Humidity or not, I'm looking forward to the Florida sunshine.......which naturally would be more than what we experience.

I can just feel the "joy" you are experiencing in planning your home......
Best wishes..........and thanks for sharing....

We moved after eight months in our original home because the eight foot Lanai was too narrow for anything.

We looked at all sort of options and decided that any of them was a waste of money in the long run.

My advice, bite the bullet and find a home with room to expand. We did and are very happy that we did.

"Senior Citizen", we are in the Salt Lake Valley. Moab is about 4 hrs away.
both my husband and I grew up in Clearwater so we KNOW what we are getting into with the heat and humidity. We have always said we would NEVER go back to Fla. And yet, here we are, as excited as newlyweds to come to TV!! Haha! (Never say "Never"!!)

We just couldn't find anyplace that offers so much for retirement living. We have worked hard, with me commuting to Ca to work for over 8 yrs now. Tired of being apart, tired of the winters and ready to begin anew!

Sidenote: we moved to Utah at 35 to raise our family and to Ski. We loved the 4 seasons and the snow and the fabulous family centered lifestyle. Skiing was a big part of our lives when we first moved out to Utah. But I blew out both knees a few years later and hubby quit skiing when I did. Not so much fun to live in Snow country when you don't ski. 8-/ We moved from the beautiful ski town of Park City into the Salt Lake Valley and probably would have stayed and "retired in place", but our 4 kids and 11 grandkids are spread out from Ca, Ut to NC and Fl. So we decided to go where WE will be happiest. And that is with you great folks at TV! We fell in love with the place and the people the first day there. Have fast forwarded our retirement plans and are as excited as kids going to Disney for the first time!!

We really appreciate all the help, advice, comments and insight received on this forum! You guys are the best!

can't wait for our design appt!!!!

Our Begonia is under construction as we write YAY! Same floor plan as Sunflower. We added a slider from MBR to lanai. We also did the 2ft side stretch on the BRs/LR /guest bath. And, 4 ft wide on garage. (we were lucky and able to do 2' on the back also.)
We walked thru many models with an 8 ft lanai and it was fine. We (certainly) wanted a2' or even4' back stretch but would have taken the 8'. Arrange it in sections, it won't look like q bowling alley -unless you add pins and a ball return.

We had a narrow screen porch when we were in Ohio and a narrow lanai in our first home. Does the Gardenia come standard with an 8' lanai? We had the standard Gardenia lanai.

Anyway we have a wider one now and it is a huge enjoyment. A long time ago a poster named Village Kahuna posted that you spend so much time outdoors in this climate that he had spent extra money to enlarge his outdoor screened space.

I think he was right.