Here are a few things that we have done:
Landscaping in front with dry creek bed —- very happy with overall design... notes below
Our builder hauled in yellow-orange muck as fill... we scraped and removed as best as possible... and hauled in good topsoil. Warning!!! We have had several young trees die when the roots hit the compaction layer — a result of cement trucks, construction trucks etc... best bet is to limit when vehicles can drive.
Grass selections — we used a combination of buffalo grass and blue grama. We had our local feed store order two varieties of buffalo grass... also ordered some Sundance online. Really love this grass mixture.
Septic — so we wish the tanks were in a different location.
Propane line for grill — wish it was on east side of porch — not the west
Shop — wish the elevation of the slab was higher.
Attic — our attic access has a major flaw... there is less than one foot of landing space at top of stairs.
Entertainment center and speakers — we ran our own speaker wires...we should not have listened to the audio experts and should have run an Ethernet cable to all TVs in the house and the media center receiver. They talked my husband into a high dollar HDMI cable — the construction crew put a staple through the wire (the media folks should have ziptied cables so the would be out of the way for the builders. They got to replace cable for free!
Master closet — installed motion sensor light... I love it... I feel like a princess when I walk in and lights come on.
