Our Orlando Home

Shortly after we bought our first Florida home, the area around Davenport started to flourish. In 2019, after the traffic kept getting worse and worse and there were no signs of road improvements, Madeline’s commute had changed from 21 minutes to up to an hour. Not only work, but almost everything else that we did was farther away than we liked: shopping, church, doctors, and the airport. We started looking in the Hunters Creek and Celebration areas, but then Mel came upon a community in Kissimmee that was building new. It was a Lennar community called Storey Lake Reflections, and so we inquired. We found a floor plan that we really liked and a lot that (for the time being) had a beautiful conservation area behind it. We committed in February, signed a contract on May 1, and moved into the home on November 13.

We committed early enough that we were able to really decide on what part of the street we wanted to be on and which side we preferred the garage. Nothing was for sure, but we definitely wanted to be looking at the open field from our Family Room and Master Bedroom. Lennar built up the conservation area by building a retaining wall around the homes, and Lot 7 ended up with about an 11’ high wall.

02/24/19

03/10/19

04/1419

06/23/19

06/29/19

07/10/19

08/11/19

It seemed to take forever to get going with our house after the pad was built, but that’s because they started on the first five homes first. Once the underground plumbing and electric got installed, though, and they poured the slab, the block started fast and the framing even faster. We loved our oval window in the Guest Bedroom. Our back lanai was small, but we had plans for growing it. The front was really taking shape by August, and we still loved our view from the Master Bedroom and Master Bath.

08/11/19

08/25/19

08/27/19

09/01/19

10/06/19

10/12/19

10/12/19

10/18/19

11/13/19

We went out to the site every Sunday after church, and I measured where every stud was located. Once the framing was in and they ran the plumbing and electric, things moved fast. When the driveway was laid and the kitchen looked like a kitchen, we were excited. We really loved our handrail at the Loft. It was exciting to do a walkthrough on 11/11 and close on 11/13.

The day we closed, we pulled the carpet out of the downstairs bedroom in preparation of installing tile for Madeline’s Office. A couple days later, we had accent walls painted in most of the rooms. At the end of the month, we had California Closets come in and put in custom closets in most of the bedrooms, along with shelving in the Pantry and the Laundry Room. We still loved our view out of the Master Bedroom windows.

11/15/19

11/27/19

We moved the day after Thanksgiving. In about two week’s time, we had several rooms completed, like the Dining Room and Madeline’s Office. We bought glass doors for both offices, and by the end of the year, it really felt like home.

At the first of the New Year in 2020, we built out our lanai, enclosing the new and existing areas with a birdcage. The cats loved it!