The Best Decisions We Made With Our House

I read a post this week (which is already nestled in the Saturday Six for tomorrow, so I'll link to it there) that inspired this post! The writer recounted the best (and worst) decisions she and her husband made when building their home, and it made me think about some of the decisions we've made with our house!

When Ryan and I were first married, we had grand dreams of one day building our own house. We picked out floor plans and dreamed up all sorts of ideas of making that place absolutely ours. Ultimately, it wasn't meant to be for us. God kept closing all the doors, so we left that dream behind and decided to purchase an already-built home instead.

My mom teased us that we were the only people she knew who bought a move-in ready house and spent a year redoing most of it. She was kidding-not-kidding.

We've been here almost four years now (WHAT?!) and I still love the decisions we made in updating our house to make it our home. We may stay here forever or we may move one day. Either way, we've made our updating choices to impact our life, not our potential resale value.

Here are my top five favorite changes we've made!

1. Opening up the space between the kitchen and living room.

Not everyone loves an open floor plan, but we do. When we first walked through the house back in 2016, the biggest drawback to it (in our opinion) was the wall between the kitchen and the living room. It didn't go all the way to the cathedral ceiling, so it wasn't load-bearing, but it blocked out all kinds of light and the ability to converse easily. Ryan declared on the spot that if we bought this house, that wall was coming down. And it did - within 24 hours of gaining possession of the house.

We love being able to talk between the rooms, and the amount of light that flows through the house now is amazing in comparison to what it had been! Because of the layout of the kitchen, it really is still a separate room from the living space, but it's so much more efficient the way it is.

Bonus good decision: making this change before moving in. I was so eager to move that I asked Ryan if we could wait a year to remodel anything. He convinced me that this was a messy enough renovation that it would be better to do it before we moved in all our stuff. And he was so right. I would have really hated that obstructed year.

2. Finishing off the garage.

One of the compromises we made with this house was forfeiting a dining room. We have an eat-in kitchen, but no dining space. We thought it would be okay, because our old house did have a dining room and we never used it. But our life in this house and city is much different, and we do more entertaining here. Since we can't fit many people in the kitchen, Ryan came up with the idea of finishing our garage to be able to use it as an extension of the house.

We did a floor-finishing treatment (made for garages), had whole thing insulated and drywalled, and finished out the ceiling, too. We painted the walls, and when we need a large space, we just move the cars, clean the floor, and set up our tables. We've hosted parties, holidays, craft nights, and more out there in the garage. With enough advance preparation, we can balance out the temperature pretty well - even in the summer and winter!

3. Adding a stone feature wall.

It was an idea I saw on Pinterest before we moved, and I wasn't sure Ryan would like it. But he did! After he took down the wall between the kitchen and living room, he worked for several weeks to turn that wall into a beautiful stone feature that gives so much personality to the house! He liked it so much that he carried it into the kitchen, too, using the same materials for our backsplash. We get so many compliments on that stone, and I love the texture it brings to the house!

4. Refinishing the cabinets in espresso.

When we moved in, the house had builder grade oak cabinets with really old-fashioned handles and pulls. We did the quick-fix immediately: change the pulls and handles to something more modern. But a couple of years after we moved in, Ryan found a kit for refinishing existing cabinets at a very affordable cost. (The cabinets themselves were in GREAT shape, so it was silly to tear them down.) We chose espresso for the color, since that seemed to fit our coffee personalities so beautifully.

We love those cabinets. They contrast with the floor now, bring more personality to the kitchen, and look a million times better than they did!

5. Adding a sun room.

This was our most recent addition. and we still love it. Our back patio was really not usable as it was...very poorly designed. It was surrounded by a privacy fence, which sounds nice, but the truth was, we couldn't see anything out the back of our house because of the fence. We were able to save up for a sun porch and transform that area into something we can use and enjoy every single day.

We love being able to sit out there in almost any season. (It does get a little toasty on the hottest days and chilly on the coldest, but for the most part, we can use it.) We love feeling like our house is bigger even when the door is closed - just because we can see another room out there beyond the glass. We love being able to sit on the porch even if it's raining or super buggy.

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So there you have it! Some of our favorite changes and upgrades. How about you! Have you made changes to your house that you are so glad you decided to make?