Heated bathroom floors in Minnesota seem like a no brainer if you are having any perks at all!
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We bought a waterfront second home 7 years ago. The original owner added onto the existing cabin and extensively remodeled a few years prior. All of the main living and sleeping windows are oriented to the water. Only the two kitchen windows look onto the entry side.
He used a lot of wood, clear finished fir and pine, throughout. Floors and ceilings are wide planks.
I think what makes a difference are the high ceilings throughout. Fortunately, we like wood.
When the stovetop goes, we’ll replace it with induction and do quartz counters. Repairs this year on fridge, oven, and laundry appliances have me thinking it’s only a matter of time.
(Photos from when we purchased)
I couldn’t do without:
- the radiant heat in the floor of the bathroom
- The half bath in the garage. H can mess with tools and gardens and boats and not come into the main house
- the whole-house generator. Power outages happen all the time and this saves us from dealing with frozen pipes, spoiled food, a non-working security system.
- a separate section of the counter for my Nespresso and accessories
If we ever redo our bath, I’ll get rid of the lovely, but seldom used, wooden bathtub and have a walk-in shower.
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our security system and sound system wiring in throughout the house. Sound system is a must have for me.
Our current system was put in 14 years ago and uses our landline. If anyone wants to chime in about newer options, I would be interested. We do not have video or ring style now and think something like that would be great. Do we even need a landline at the new home? We have kept it so long because if the security system but really only get calls on our cell phones.
Depends on how good your cell service is there. At our family’s lake cottage (we aren’t owners but have visited), there is zero cell service. But they did (finally) get Internet there so that helps. Did it during the pandemic WFH times because folks went there and wanted to get some work done. If you have internet, you can use VOIP and don’t need a hard wired land line.
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If your house is on a lake in Minnesota, I’d say heated bathroom floors are mandatory!
We live on the water in a mid Atlantic state and a heated bathroom floor is fabulous and worth every penny.
Edit: I see that several other posters strongly advised heated floors before I posted. I don’t mean to pile on 
.
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Found a local waterfront cabin listing with a floor plan:
https://www.redfin.com/WA/La-Conner/9381-Reef-Point-Ln-98257/home/15636242
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Coming from a jaded Californian, gosh that is “cheap.” 
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I really like those photos for inspiration. Thank you! I’ve been watching a lot of HGTV lately.
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What a beautiful place. Depending on the sun situation, I might not be happy living there without window coverings. Ah, but I’d do a vacation rental in it!
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Determine where the sun hits on a daily basis. You don’t want the sun pouring directly into your home if you can help it. We actually repositioned our home when we built to keep this from happening and so glad we did.
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Bunsen - that is just stunning! Love all the windows and that view! Kitchen is a little big for me, but great for entertaining I’d imagine!
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We sort of did this. We live in a colder climate (like MN is). Our house is positioned so that deciduous trees block the afternoon sun in the summer, but once the leaves fall off, we have great passive solar with sun streaming through the windows all afternoon long in the fall, winter and early spring. And it’s nice and bright too.
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@BunsenBurner, love that Snohomish house! Thanks for sharing.
I’m still listening if anyone has more to contribute to the discussion. We meet with the builder next week!
I would think of things that might be unique/tailored to your family to bring up.
For instance, are there likely to be lots of kids as guests - or mainly adults? Are you a family that likes different dining spaces - or is a one space dining area enough? Will you be doing lots of swimming or boating that something like an outdoor shower be appropriate?
Think about what is perhaps unique to your family.
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One thing I realized after I designed my parents’ retirement home was that while guest rooms can be small, they should be big enough for a traveling crib. You couldn’t open the closet door with the one’s I designed! Oops.
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Houzz has a lot of articles (or Ideabooks, as they usual refer to them) with lots of ideas and rationales (and photos!) of various topics. I’ve learned a lot about the implementation of universal design there, for instance, and there are surely Ideabooks on lake houses, houses in the woods, empty-nesters, etc, etc, etc.
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If I was designing a house I’d invest in sound proofing (somehow). Just to take into account those who like loud TV (and those who’d like to avoid that while not hiding out in a single room). It would also (maybe?) help if there were noisy young babies/toddlers or teens visiting! Seems like a good investment in harmony. 
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Yes, and make sure all doors (including pocket doors if applicable) are solid. We wish our builder - we were young and naive when we built our house 20+ years ago- had told us of this difference and option bc we would have insisted on solid core doors throughout the house. (Now, many years later when younger teen is streaming video content and LOUD, it’s definitely on our “things to do” list.)
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We have solid doors! Yes to that.
The room we should have sound insulated was the hall bathroom which also has our washer and dryer in it. Between the kids banging drawers, and such…and the washer and dryer…I do wish that one had sound insulation. We never thought of that!
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