Florida Homes

Now that we were more or less settled in our new place, and started working, we started examining our beatiful house a little more closely. The first thing that struck me was that in many of the homes we looked and had since been invited to, the bedroom was off the living room! We thought that was quite strange in that it offered us no privacy if we were entertaining...do we close the bedroom door? It feels a bit closed in...Do we leave it open? People sitting on our couch were treated to a few of our bed (made of course!) Oh well....the fact that the other two bedrooms (presumably for overnight guests...) were well-advertised as "privacy suites" didn't make me feel any better!
We opted to change up the furniture in our "great room" a bit: we bought a sizeable sectional sofa (it even has a pull-out double bed!), coffee table, and a huge "entertainment center" with new TV which fit in its location perfectly! The other characteristic of our "great room" that was most satisfying was a fireplace with faux-marble hearth...although we couldn't imagine ever using it in Florida, little did we know that wow, it gets cold! And we DID, and do, use it in the winter!
Now, most homes here have what they call a "covered lanai". A lanai is a kind of open area that is outside but is covered by the roof line of the home, open to whatever is in the back of the house. Ours, however does not have a "covered" lanai...it is simply our pool area, with no cover in sight. This is the only flaw we have discovered in our home... We have a larger space in the corner for our table and chairs from our deck in Connecticut, and a chaise with matching chair, which we bought.
We began a home equity line of credit, and the two improvements we made was resurfacing the pool and redecking the area with pavers. It is absolutely beautiful, and I'm glad the economy wasn't the way it was now (recent home equity bill: 3 billion owed, amount available to you: zero!!!) We also made one more: we replaced the Godawful 80s countertops with grey Corian. Had it been today I would have opted for granite, but hey, being 3 billion in the hole, no can do!
Most every home is made of concrete (well, concrete blocks, actually, covered with stucco, or some kind of stucco-like material. I don't want all you builders mad at me!) There are very few homes made of wood here, and most are one-storey, though many of the condos are two-storey, and so on. I like our neighborhood because all the houses are different. It made it easy for us to find our way at first. We'd been to neighborhoods where all the houses were exactly the same! I don't know how these people know which house is theirs. I'd have to put a colorful flag out front or something.
A few years ago we replaced the AC system and the roof. Thank God that was before our home equity line of credit went bust with everything else real-estate related! Some of that was the money we had had from the sale of our home. If you think nurses here make a lot of money, think again!!!!