Home Design
What To Include In Your New-Build Home
When you think about the cost, stress, and footwork that goes into buying a house in the current real estate market, it is wholly unsurprising that there are more than a few people around who simply prefer to build their own home. Yes, it does involve more work and a greater degree of personal involvement – but to name two pivotal advantages, it will also mean your home is more attuned to your tastes, and it will likely cost less than buying.
If you have the opportunity and the time, then, to build from scratch, it is worth thinking about what to include in the house. For anyone who has been looking at potential houses to buy, this is an opportunity to take the best of all worlds. If you’ve been saying things like “I love the kitchen in House A, but House B has a perfect garden”, then building your own home gives you the chance to have the kitchen and the garden you want – and, below, we’ll look at some of the things you should be actively considering as inclusions in your dream, new-build home.
Mudroom
It may not sound like the kind of thing that sells a house, but then you’re not looking to sell right now – so a mudroom might be one of the decisions you look back on with sheer delight when you’re all moved in. If you live somewhere that is rainy, or even snowy, then there will be times you move from the outside in and you don’t want to bring mud with you. A mudroom allows you to shed jackets, shoes and other items and keep them somewhere out of reach of the elements, but also far away from your clean floors. This will simplify every trip out of, and back into, your house – and future buyers will recognize the advantages of it, too.
A central vacuum
If there is one thing more irritating than carrying around a large vacuum cleaner to do the chores, it’s emptying out the bag or drum once it gets full – and you’re invariably nowhere near a waste disposal. The brilliance of a central vacuum, which can exist on its own or as part of a HVAC system, is that it simplifies the effort involved in vacuuming a home. Because the dust and dander collected goes to a central location, it also means you’ll notice an improvement in atmosphere, especially if you have allergies to airborne dust.
A smart system
We all remember the films of the past that showed how homes might look in some far-off future, and the one we all got a kick out of was being able to order a robot to carry out tasks. That dream has become reality, mostly, and a lot of us can now order food, switch the lights on, have one room hoovered or play music in the kitchen just by asking a smart hub to do the honors. It’s something worth asking for when you seek to build new, and something that custom home builders are used to accommodating. Because smart home tech is such a modular concept, you can continue adding to the functionality as you go.
More sockets than you think you need
The newer a home is, the more environmentally sustainable it should ideally be – and this is something that you can insist upon, but you also need to make sure that you are able to get all the power you need, when you need it. This is why it is important to have sockets installed everywhere you can imagine them being used. If you consider sockets unsightly, they can always be hidden from view, including behind skirtings and under counters. The reason to install as many sockets as possible is really quite simple: do them now, and you’ll always have enough of them for even special occasions which demand a lot of appliances – and crucially, it would cost a lot more to install new ones one at a time.
(A) heated floor(s)
There are many irritations in life, petty and large, and the existence of the bigger ones doesn’t make the minor ones any less irritating. For one example, getting out of bed in the heart of winter to do anything is unpleasant when you know you’re going to have to step on to a cold floor. Even if you adjust fairly swiftly, the feeling of discomfort that comes with this movement can set your day off on the wrong foot. It makes it all the more sensible to look at building your new home with underfloor heating included; getting out of bed, or leaving the shower, no longer needs to be an exercise in bravery.
As much storage space as you can spare
Nobody knows how the next few years are going to go, but if they’re anything like the last few, the chances are that you’ll be spending more time at home than you used to. It’s also more than possible that you’ll find you have to respond swiftly to changes, as we all have this year. This can mean having more equipment and supplies that you can count on – but having all of those inside the house can be completely unnecessary and extremely restrictive. The more storage space you have, the better, and all the better if it is external space so that you don’t have to compromise on the size of rooms.
Again, storage space is something that potential future buyers will definitely appreciate, so don’t hesitate to add more where you can. We’ve all become much more aware of the advantages of storage over the last short while.
Building a new home has plenty of advantages over buying one, and although it presents its own challenges those are more than made up for by the freedoms it allows. Including enough of the above items – and any that you can think of for yourself – will ensure that your new build home is one you love, and should you ever come to sell it on, potential buyers will fall in love with it too.
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