I think most people these days consider the unused living room as superfluos, an anachronism from the '50's. However you do need enough space to entertain. One reason I bought the house I am in is the open plan living room/family room. It's 32' x 18' and opens up onto the deck in back. We set up the 5 recliners in relation to the TV and FP and use the rest for a roll top desk and computer desk. But come party time the space is easily rearranged to accommodate a lot of people or a few people and a dance floor (hardwood). In our case it also connects to an open plan dining room and foyer (no walls between all of them just articulated by the ceiling beams). Great for two people and parties but could be bad if you have kids that would intrude on your space while watching TV or surfing p*rn.
Wireless speeds are not constant through mediums, so there is no true "Wireless G" speed other than the spec speed which you're lucky to hit. As an example most 802.11b networks rarely hit their theoretical 11 megaibt/sec limit. In most cases you're lucky to get half that and it gets worse with distance and walls between you. As for the home connection that would exceed any speed, I often transfer files of 1-30 gigs between computers within the house, so on an intranet-basis yes I would need the speed, but going out to the Internet, yes your obvious argument of inbound speeds being capped is valid. As for the waste of money - the home comes already Cat5e-wired. I'm contemplating adding more drops.
Gene, the family room + the kitchen + the dining room in this house is pretty huge. The family room alone is something like 20x20. It's one of the reasons I decided on getting this floorplan from this builder (about 10% the reason anyway) - all the other floorplans I looked at had tiny family rooms.
We bought ourselves a new home that had been in a builder's inventory. The guy who had it built had a falling out with the builder, and so we got a sweet deal on a house that had 137K worth of upgrades. Some of the upgrades were kind of silly....like a central vac system and a "bug" system (the inside of the walls have a network of nozzles and the exterminator just has to hook up to a valve on the outside of the house). Some of the things were pretty cool though. They added five feet to the front of the house, and this made two bedrooms, the dining room, a bathroom, and our study (we use it as a media room) five feet bigger. Most builders make formals and secondary bedrooms awfully small these days, so we really appreciate this extra space. They also put in 2 1/2" thick "sand and finish" ash wood floors. I highly recommend them, but NOT in the kitchen like the moron who had our house built did. Upgrade carpet is nice, but if I had my way, I have tile and wood throughout. Carpet is nasty.....it may not look nasty on top, but it's nasty where you can't see it. The one upgrade I really appreciate though is that in our laundry room (which is right behind the kitchen) we have a space for a second refridgerator. I can't tell you how many times that thing has come in handy. It makes a great beer fridge too.
That's rediculous! Seriously, though. I know Centex homes around here in the Dallas area touts that as something they include "standard" in some if not all their homes. I think they call it tubes-in-the-wall pest defense or something. It's a shame their houses look like giant boxes with chimneys ... at least in the Dallas area, they do. Now this would be awesome in the floorplan I'm looking at, but I don't know if they'd do it and even if they did, they'd probably make it cost-prohibitive for me.
Another thing that I alluded to, but that I didn't come right out and say..... It's WAY cool to get exactly the house that you want, but you'd be amazed at how much builders are willing to come down on inventory homes. You may be able to get the exact home you want for X amount of $$$, but if you're willing to settle in some areas, you may be able to spend the same amount of money and get MUCH more home right now. It may not have the exact upgrades you want, but you'll probably end up with other nice things and a lot more square feet........which will come in handy now.....and when you decide to sell. You'll also be able to lock in today's interest rate. Of course, that may not be in your plans, but you might want to keep an open mind about it. My wife and I were going to build ourselves, and it's ridiculous how much better off we did buying out of the builder's inventory.
Pole, That's something I had definitely looked into, but this builder and 2 others are moving out of the community. They don't have any spec homes left to sell to my knowledge. They're closing up shop and selling their remaining lots to another builder so they're trying to make whatever profits they can on their remaining lots in the next 2-3 weeks they have left. What this means is that I'm getting about $20-$30k off the home's "regular" price and may be able to get something like a cul-de-sac lot thrown in which is usually a $5-$10k premium.
