I can confidently say that from a young age, interior design has been a strong interest of mine. As a kid, I was obsessed with my room. I rearranged it frequently, trying out different furniture configurations every few months. I loved going to a new friends’ house and getting the first peek at their bedrooms. Sometimes, I would even volunteer to clean their rooms to make them look nicer. I can clearly recall TV show bedrooms that I would fixate on (Clarissa Explains It All had the coolest room! And she was a programmer.). In middle school, I finally convinced my mom to let me paint my bedroom a bright purple, to match the bedroom on Flash Forward that I was obsessed with at the time.
During my college years I didn’t have much money to put towards decorating my dorm or bedroom, but I would still splurge on things now and again to give my room a cozier feel. I graduated college and got my first job as a web developer in 2007. I was 22, had my first stable income, and I knew I wanted to buy a house ASAP. So instead of renting my first solo apartment, I moved back in with my parents. This meant commuting to my job 1-hour each way, but I was saving at least $1,000 in rent, probably more with utilities. I did this for about a year, but instead of buying a house, I got the itch to level up my career and join a startup. This soion brought me to work at Zappos in Las Vegas in 2009.
I was too nervous to buy a house in a place I wasn’t familiar with, so instead of buying a home right away, I got my first apartment. Because I had saved so much money from living with my parents, I was able to furnish it completely. One trip to IKEA later and I had a new bed, dresser, bookshelves, a couch and coffee table, a media console, and a dining table. I scoured Craigslist for cheap finds, subscribed to DIY magazines, watched HGTV religiously, and eventually had a pretty cool apartment.
After 2 years of working at Zappos, I decided to fully commit to Las Vegas and had finally saved enough money for a down payment on a house. I bought my first home in 2011, at the age of 27. It was a DUMP. The previous owner had foreclosed on the home and promptly destroyed much of the interior before the bank took possession. Because of this, I had an extremely low mortgage but a LOT of work ahead of me. Fortunately, my parents were able to come visit me for two weeks and we did a lot of the major repairs then – new flooring, patching drywall and repainting the entire house, painting and installing new doors (most were gone anyway), new appliances, and new lighting. I would go on to make many more upgrades and improvements over the 8 years that I lived there, including my first kitchen renovation! IKEA had finally come to Las Vegas, and Zach and I had been dating about a year at that point. His dad had a long career as a carpenter, so with his help, we got the kitchen installed in about a week. While I love the design decisions I made at the time, looking back, I would certainly not make them again. Dark, espresso hardwood floors do NOT work when you own dogs; every little hair and spec of dust is visible. This was also my “gray walls, white kitchen” era, it was a very popular look in the 2010’s.
Eventually I decided I wanted to live overseas in Japan for a year, so I said a fond farewell to my house and sold it in January 2019. I applied to a language school, got my student visa, put my stuff in a storage unit, and moved to Tokyo in April 2019. I ended up staying only 3 months, though, as I was very homesick. I missed Zach, I missed my dogs, and I ultimately realized that the “living abroad” period of my life had passed. I was older now, and I wanted different things. I don’t regret going, though, because it’s not something I have to still wonder about. It was a difficult and expensive lesson to learn, but nothing that couldn’t be undone. I moved back to the US and Zach and I rented a home for a year while we browsed Zillow for our next buy.
This time around, I was much more picky about the home I wanted to buy. I was 36 years old and had lived in enough places that I knew what I wanted out of a home (like a huge kitchen). Social media had also become a prominent part of my life, so I was getting loads of design inspiration. We looked for about a year but I couldn’t find anything that satisfied my requirements.
Then, March 2020 happened, the COVID pandemic. Some close family was affected financially and quickly moved in with us. We went from a house of 2 to a house of 7. We had to find a new home, FAST.
There was a house in my mind that I truly loved and that was nearly perfect, but it was on a side of town much further than I wanted to move. It was a new construction home, and I had already toured the model home a year earlier, but had initially ruled it out because it was too large for us. Under our new circumstances, though, it was perfect. The builder had a spec home that was 80% complete and would be ready in just 2 months. I couldn’t even see the house in person because of the COVID lockdown, but I already knew the floor plan and was able to see photos of this particular house. Zach and I drove by the house later than night to look at it from the outside and walk around the neighborhood.
Everything was perfect about the house, but I was still extremely hesitant to buy. For one, the house was much more expensive than my first home. Even though my income had been steadily increasing over the years as I gained more experience in my career, my mind still felt like a penny-pinching college student. I could comfortably afford the home, but it felt way too grand, too opulent, for what I thought I deserved. Secondly, we were right at the start of the pandemic. The housing market hadn’t gone crazy yet, and I was actually very worried about whether it would tank like it did in 2008.
In the end, though, I decided that if I bought the house for the right reasons, I would be comfortable with any outcome. I wasn’t buying the house to flip or make money, I wanted it to be a long-term home for myself and my extended family. I pulled the trigger, bought the house, and closed in May 2020. Looking back, I cannot believe how lucky I got with the timing, as home prices skyrocketed mere months later.
We’ve been in this home 4½ years now. The time has absolutely flown by. I’ve had an absolute blast making upgrades to this home and experimenting with my new design style. Immediately after closing, we ripped out the builder grade carpet and tile and installed engineered hardwood floors in a warm oak color. We were able to utilize Zach’s dad for a lot of the more larger upgrades: new lighting and ceiling fans, solar shades in all the windows, built-in media cabinets in the living room, a built-in pantry, an entirely new laundry room, built-in bookcases in the loft, mudroom cabinets, garage cabinets, and more. He has been such a huge help to us over the years!
We also had a dry bar added to the dining room, a pool/hot tub/fire pit/landscaping added to the yard, upgraded all the light switches and outlets to screwless covers, installed smart home systems (locks, doorbells, cameras), and epoxied the garage floors. I’ve loved every second of making this home ours (except replacing all 50 outlets in the house, that sucked), and I’ve learned so much about balancing style with functionality: learning how a house is actually used and lived in. Every project teaches me something new and has given me a true appreciation and admiration for tradesmen, architects, and interior designers.
The family who moved in with us found their footing again and moved out in summer 2021. While we were glad to have more privacy and space, we were quite sad to see them go… having the whole family together under one roof was such a fun and special time in our lives. We felt like empty nesters for weeks after everyone left.
Despite how much I love this house, I’ve always known that as soon as I can afford it, I want to settle somewhere with a bit of land, somewhere I can have a home built. Homes and interior design have grown from a hobby to a full blown obsession over the last 5 years, to the point where I’ve considered a career change (I decided against it, though). What was once a hobby is now a dream for the future, to take what I’ve learned from my previous and current homes and use it to design and build the house that I’ve been imagining for years.
As I near my 40th birthday and nearly 20 years in my career, I feel like I’m approaching the right time in my life to make this happen. My free time is now spent doodling floor plans on graph paper, learning SketchUp, browsing Zillow, and curating Instagram and Pinterest boards with design inspiration. I will write more about my ideas and dreams for the future home in a follow-up post, as this one is already too long.
Thanks for joining me on this trip down memory lane!
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