“Well, what would a person who wants live in this house want?” This is what I’d ask myself as I made decisions for the renovations of our last home by the beach. Every decision felt precious and I put so much pressure on myself. I didn’t want to mess up “Someone else’s house or our investment.” HA! It was a traditional style and I wanted to honor the architect too (second image).
It’s like I wasn’t even living in the home. It was a project, an investment of our hard work to be enjoyed by someone else. I can be too serious and too responsible sometimes, you know? See, when we bought the house it was for us (not a flip or anything). It just never felt that way to me for some reason so subconsciously I was designing it to be someone else’s dream house.
With our current home, I feel free to experiment with what I like. I love a relaxed luxury, cottage style with some granny mixed in. I chose a bunch of finishes within weeks of moving in. It was all fresh from recently choosing everything from our last home.
I learned so much from the last renovation. We went top of the line on everything so I learned where I was ok splurging and saving. Like flooring-the last house had really expensive floors that had the potential to be refinished 3 times over! Even those showed some little wear after a couple years. I thought, I can save big there. I LOVE our floors!! You can read the details here.
I inspected the cabinet boxes when we moved in and saw they were solid wood so we kept them and replaced the door fronts in the kitchen. For the laundry and bathroom, we had the existing doors painted.
“Oh the next owner would NOT like that! Dated cabinet doors! AHHH!” Welp, I’m the one living here with my family and we are cool with it! The best part is that it took a tiny bit of time and decision energy (and money) to do!
The thing I remind myself is that our “forever home” may not really be our forever home. PS I told Chris I see us living in Australia the other night.
I also know that you don’t always get your high end renovation money input back so do it for you, not the next buyer.
Chris ordered a subzero counter depth custom refrigerator for the last house…it was awesome and I LOVE him for it but we got THIS ONE for this home and I LOVE it!
I realized that Home Depot and a ton of amazing finishes that with the right placement and decor selections can look as high end as the bespoke hand made tiles I sourced for our last bathroom.
Our home is a builder grade home while our last home was custom. Truly, this home serves us so much more in so many ways and we’re making it beautiful in our way.
I hope this helps you in making decisions for you in your home and knowing that I am very happy with my half-done or not-at-all redone bathrooms in our home. I thought happiness to me -meant perfection in each wall molding but it’s nice to experience another side!
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