Trying to Be One With the House for a Minute

In between visitors at our recent Open House in Jetton Cove, I decided I would become “one” with our listing on 20032 Northport Drive. It’s my way of noticing the little things that make a difference when you are living in a house versus just seeing it during a showing.

I start thinking about how a normal day would go. Where would everybody drop their shoes when they came in? Would carrying groceries in from the garage get old? Is the front porch actually somewhere I would sit with coffee and a book, or is it mostly just there to look pretty in photos?

Those are the things I kept thinking about while I was at 20032 Northport Drive in Jetton Cove.

It is a beautiful home and it is exceptionally well cared for. Honestly, it is the kind of clean that outshines (no pun intended) model homes in new neighborhoods. But beyond that, I kept noticing how many parts of it just make everyday life easier. It has the big things people want, but I want to share the little things someone might not realize how much they would appreciate until after they moved in.

The front porch is actually usable

The first thing I did (to connect to the house) was sit on the covered front porch for a minute, because I always want to know if a porch is somewhere you would really use or if it is just there because it looks nice from the street.

This one is a full front porch and actually big enough to use. The front porch itself is over 26 feet long, so it really does have room to be part of how you live in the house. There is room for four chairs without feeling crowded but what I really noticed was that the landscaping gives the porch a surprising amount of privacy. You could sit out there with coffee, a book, or just a few minutes of quiet and not feel like you are sitting directly in front of the whole neighborhood.

At the same time, it does not feel closed in. If someone wanted a more open view of the street and wanted to wave at neighbors walking by, there is flexibility in the landscaping. I just liked that it already has that tucked-away feeling.

The home sits up nicely from the street, which gives it a pretty presence and yet the driveway is still manageable, and there are not a huge number of steps to get into the house.

I’m always thinking about the logistics of groceries. I think about carrying in a case of water. I think about coming home tired with bags, backpacks, and whatever else has accumulated in the car that day. From the garage, there are only a few steps into the home, and that is something you would appreciate over and over again.

I thought about conversation

When you walk in, there is a front room that is labeled as a dining room on the floor plan, but the sellers have it set up as a sitting room and I really liked that.

The night before the open house, we had been at a friend’s house for dinner. Their living room was arranged in a way that was more about people sitting together and talking than everyone facing a television. It felt different, in a good way. We all sat there and talked, and it made me think about how much the way we arrange our homes affects how we spend time together.

Especially now, when it is so easy for everyone to be in a different room, looking at a different screen, I found myself thinking there is something nice about having a room that is just for sitting down and connecting.

For years, people have said formal living rooms are unnecessary and should always become offices. And sometimes that is true. An office is useful. But standing in this room, I thought maybe a room without a television is not outdated after all.

Maybe it is a place for coffee with friends or a place where people sit after dinner instead of immediately dispersing. Maybe it is a reading room, a place for cards or a puzzle, a piano room, or just a quiet space to have a conversation. Just having a place that isn’t centered around work or technology should be honored as something special in our world today.

Obviously, somebody else might walk in and immediately turn it back into a dining room. Depending on how they use the first floor bedroom, this space could also become an office. But I liked that it made me stop and think about using a room in a different way.

A first-floor room with options

Across the foyer is a first-floor bedroom with French doors and a closet. It is a true bedroom, but it could be useful in so many different ways depending on what someone needs.

It could easily be a sitting room (if you wanted that formal dining room) or an office, but I also liked having an actual bedroom and full bath downstairs.

There’s a subtle nuance to the adjacent full bath that I didn’t fully grasp the first time I was in the home. Sometimes a first-floor full bath can feel very personal, especially when it is right near the front of the house. You walk in and immediately feel like you are seeing someone’s shower products and private bathroom routine.

This one does not feel that way because the sellers did a nice job with the tile and the zero-entry shower. It feels more like a designer guest bath than somebody’s personal bathroom. I know that sounds oddly specific, but I noticed it.

I thought about shoes (it’s always about the shoes for me)

I kept coming back to the storage in this house because shoes are honestly driving me crazy at my own house right now.

We have a coat closet, and it sounds like there should be enough room. But then you put in coats, then shoes start getting tossed in, then somebody adds a bag, then there are sports things, and suddenly you cannot find anything and the door barely wants to close.

This home has a large storage closet near the entry with shoe racks, hanging space, and pull-out storage. It has enough room for shoes, coats, bags and the other stuff that tends to pile up near an entry. It has enough room that real life can happen without the house immediately looking messy.

Then, when you come in from the garage, there is another practical landing space: a mudroom with a built-in bench and a large walk-in storage closet.

I really wish we had that kind of setup at our house. We walk in through the laundry room, and there is not really a natural place for shoes to go, so they seem to migrate into every other part of the house. Here, you have a place to take off shoes if you enter from the front, and you have a place to take off shoes if you come in from the garage.

And the walk-in closet by the mudroom is big enough for all the random stuff nobody wants sitting out—the vacuum, dog food, Costco paper towels, coolers, sports stuff, all of it.

The kitchen is where I started mentally moving in

The kitchen is another place where I started doing my little “how would we actually live here?” exercise.

There is so much countertop space, which is great when people are over because you can put out food, have people sitting at the island, and still not feel like you have lost every inch of workspace. But honestly, the thing I thought about as a mom was this: you could have kids sitting at one end of the island doing homework, coloring, or working on something without them taking over the area where you are trying to cook dinner.

That is not always the case with an island. Sometimes there is seating, but the seating is right where you need to spread out ingredients, set down a hot pan, or do all of the prep work. Here, there is enough room to have life happening at the island while someone is still able to cook.

Brian is more of the cook in our family, so he immediately noticed a gas range. The kitchen has a newer Samsung gas range with convection and air-fry settings, and I know he would love cooking with gas. And because we are big air-fryer people and use ours almost every day, it would be really nice not to have another appliance permanently taking up counter space.

The breakfast area is larger than many kitchen eating spaces. In a lot of houses, it feels like the kitchen just extends a little bit and then a table gets squeezed into whatever area is left. You can technically eat there, but it feels crowded and this one does not.

You could put a real table there and not feel like you shoved it into the leftover space beside the kitchen. It’s a place where people could sit down for breakfast, do a puzzle, play a game, have a family dinner, or spread out homework without feeling like they are sitting in the middle of kitchen traffic.

There is also a butler’s pantry between the kitchen and dining room, with extra serving and storage space plus a beverage refrigerator. That would be really useful when people are over. You could keep drinks, coffee things, serving pieces, or extra food that does not fit on the island there, instead of having the main kitchen feel crowded while you are trying to cook.

The family room is open to the kitchen and breakfast area, with a gas fireplace, plenty of recessed lighting, and three good-sized windows across the back of the house. There is a natural space on each side of the fireplace for bookshelves or built-ins someday.

Upstairs, I noticed the bathroom layout

Upstairs, two secondary bedrooms connect through a Jack-and-Jill bath. Both have charming corner windows, which I love because they bring in light from two different directions. One of the bedrooms also has a walk-in closet with extra shelves and drawers.

The bathroom layout is what really stood out to me – and I noticed it the first time we saw the house.

The vanity is very long, with a window in the middle, sinks, cabinets, drawers, and a lot of counter space. I love a window in a bathroom anyway. There is just something about natural light and fresh air that makes it feel better. But from a practical standpoint, there is room for two people to get ready without everyone’s things ending up on top of one another.

There is enough counter and storage space around the two sinks for two people to actually keep their toothbrushes, hair products, makeup and everything else that tends to take over a bathroom counter. The toilet and shower area can also be closed off with a pocket door, which means one person can be showering while somebody else is brushing teeth, drying hair, or getting ready.

The primary bath made me think about plants

The primary bedroom is a very generous size, with bamboo flooring and a tray ceiling. It feels spacious but still comfortable.

In the primary bathroom, I immediately noticed the large window over the tub and the ledges on either side of it. Maybe that is just me, but I love a place for plants.

I am always looking for a little bit of extra natural light and a place to put greenery, candles, a book, or something that makes a bathroom feel more peaceful. Those ledges are perfect for that. That little bit of extra space makes the bathroom feel more personal and less purely functional.

The bath also has separate vanities, and both are generously sized with plenty of drawers and cabinets. That is another thing I notice in a house: whether two people can actually keep their things in a bathroom without one person getting the good side and the other person trying to fit everything into one drawer.

The primary closet is also large and the closet light comes on automatically, which is a nice extra.

The laundry room and bonus room

The laundry room is upstairs, which makes sense because that is where most of the bedrooms are. It has updated tile, cabinets, room for larger cleaning supplies, a place to hang items to dry, and a folding surface over the washer and dryer.

And there is actually somewhere to fold laundry, instead of doing what I do and eventually ending up with it all over a bed.

The bonus room/5th bedroom is also huge and has a lot of flexibility. It has a large walk-in closet, two under-eave storage areas, recessed lighting, a dormer area large enough for a desk, and its own half bath.

It would be perfect as a media room, playroom, home office, workout room, hobby room, or a place for people to spread out when everyone is home. Because it has a closet, it can also be used as a 5th bedroom.

The backyard is the kind people want

The backyard is where I probably went the furthest into imagining life here.

Brian has been trying to garden, so I have started noticing how hard it is to find a yard that is private, flat, sunny, and still has enough open space to enjoy. Usually, you get one or two of those things. You may have privacy but too much shade. You may have a big yard, but it slopes. You may have sun, but not much privacy.

What struck me about this yard is that you really do get the combination. It is flat enough to use, gets plenty of sun, still feels private, and has enough open space that you’re not having to choose between a garden and a yard.

There are raised garden beds and fruit trees already, which makes it easy to picture someone continuing the garden or starting their own without having to build everything from scratch. There is a covered patio right off the house and a deck beyond it, so you have more than one outdoor area to use depending on the weather and what you are doing.

I’d probably sit under the covered patio on a rainy morning with coffee, garden in the afternoon and then use the deck later in the day for dinner.

The backyard is fenced and landscaped with arborvitae for privacy, but it still has usable lawn. At our house, we have a good bit of tree cover, which is pretty, but the combination of shade and uneven ground makes grass and gardening more difficult.

During the open house, a little boy looked out and said it would be a great backyard for soccer. Having kids who play soccer, I thought he was totally right.

What I kept coming back to

Some homes have the right number of bedrooms and bathrooms and still feel harder to live in than you expect. This one felt easy.

The open kitchen and family room, updated finishes, large bonus room, primary suite, covered patio, deck and flat backyard are easy to see. What stayed with me were the everyday things: room for shoes at both entrances, storage for the random household stuff, enough counter space to cook while other things are happening, a breakfast area with room to actually use, a bathroom layout that makes mornings easier, and a backyard with space to garden, play, relax, or have people over.

When we got home, I noticed our laundry on top of the dryer and the shoes on the floor and thought at least those two things would have a better place at 20032 Northport Drive.

Click here to see the full listing and schedule a tour for 20032 Northport Drive