My house is OK for sun and shade but I don't like where the doorways and windows are placed in the living room. There is a 10 patio door on one end of the living room an entrance door way, three other windows, a huge stone fireplace and there is very few choices in how to arrange the furniture.
Another thing that can be a pain in older houses is where the wall plugs are placed. Usually they place them smack in the middle of where the couch will sit so you have to crawl behind the couch to plug in the lamps that are on the tables on each side of the couch. Or if it is a bedroom, same thing, wall plug is smack in the middle where the bed sits and you can't get at the em without crawling under the bed or climbing on the bed and hanging your arm down where you can just about reach them. Or the dresser will be covering the wall plug so it's hard to get at the wall plug to plug in anything.
When DH redecorated/remodeled EACH room in this house, he pulled off the outside wall drywall, reinsulated, sealed, put in phone lines, redrywalled, and reran the electrical. 5 rooms out of 10 we put in new oak woodwork and oak doors. Some day we might do the rest of the house with the oak.