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Hindsight is 20/20! I would love to share with you 6 of the design regrets I have for our living room space, to help you think through your own design decisions!
When I share my design regrets (like I did for our kitchen space) it is not to say I dislike or am ungrateful for our home! We have just designed and built a pole barn home by ourselves from the ground up. We are extremely proud of ourselves and love our home, but there are certainly lessons we’ve had to learn and things we wished we would have done differently now that we’ve lived with the home for 3+ years.
I hope it is enlightening to you as you may find yourself with the opportunity to make similar design decisions.
WATCH THIS POST
For a little more detail, you might enjoy the video of this post!
DESIGN REGRET #1: OBSTRUCTING OUR MAIN WINDOW
We have the most incredible valley view out our main window! We installed the biggest window we fathomed we could put in the space, but our regret is that we opted for a double opening window and top grids.
That leaves a lot of seams, plastic bars and lines that obstruct our beautiful view.
This is a hard thing to swap out and remedy, since it is structural. We wish all the time we would have just installed a large window without grids or even opening mechanisms. We never open it anyway, and the trade off for a clear view would have been well worth the swap.
DESIGN REGRET #2: MUDROOM POSITIONED THROUGH THE LIVING ROOM
We tried to make the best use of space as we designed it, trying to create an open flow and floor plan.
This positioned the laundry/mudroom through a little walk-way to get through the living room and kitchen, since we had to combine the mudroom locker storage with the laundry room.
For some reason, I didn’t think that would be that big of a problem for my kids to walk a way to put their shoes and coats away.
It was a huge problem! There were shoes and coats always flopped on the floor making the biggest mess in our living space.
Luckily, we have found a way to remedy this and have simply framed in under our large wrap around porch and are now constructing a nice storage room with cabinets, mudroom and an office for me! It’s going to be amazing and I’m excited to share more of that with you.
We regret not doing this in the first place!
DESIGN REGRET #3: UNCOMFORTABLE FURNITURE
As I mentioned in my Living Room Space Reveal, I fell in love with Sixpenny furniture because of their 100% linen slipcovers. I saved my pennies and waited a long time to get them.
They are beyond beautiful, but they are unfortunately pretty uncomfortable.
I regret not choosing furniture that I had the chance to sit in first or could find enough reviews to where I felt confident they would be beautiful AND comfortable for my family.
DESIGN REGRET #4: SCRATCHY RUG
Our main rug is quite the beauty . . . but I regret I made another choice that wasn’t quite practical enough for our family.
I adore the colors and design in this 100% wool rug, but my kids always complain about how scratchy it is. If the time comes I will make the effort to ensure it is comfy, beautiful and I would prefer a 9 x 12 instead of an 8 x 10 for this space. A little more forethought goes a long way!
DESIGN REGRET #5: TOO OPEN FLOOR PLAN
Our living room, kitchen and hallway are all very open! I felt when I designed it that we would embrace the pole barn vibe and keep it very open.
One great thing is that I always know where the kiddos are and we are VERY close knit. However, because of the tall 12 foot ceilings and open floor plan (and 4 kids), it can be pretty loud!
I find myself craving a more cozy, room to room separation where spaces can be more defined.I’ll definitely keep that in mind, should we ever have the opportunity to build or find another home.
DESIGN REGRET #6: FAUX FIREPLACE
We were rushed and making last minute decisions when it came time to decide whether our fireplace should be faux, gas or a real wood burning stove.
For the sake of ease and time (for 2 very stressed parents building a home), we opted to close it up, and just put in the electric possibilities. Now we regret we didn’t take a little more time to make it possible to use the fireplace as an alternative heat source.
I hope by sharing these design regrets, you have felt more enlightened to make similar decisions!
Let me know if this was helpful – but no need to tell me I’m ungrateful for my home. (wink)
I am most grateful and love our home and am excited about the hands on design education I got while embarking on this adventure!
Thanks for reading! You might also enjoy these design posts:
No house is 100% correct. And we gain if we do not rush into the entire construction speedily. A little delay here or there is an opportunity to buy time to check and recheck all options.
Cami, thank you so much for this post! I really admire your sincerity! You’ve shared your talent, your hard work, and what you’ve learned, and I’ll be eternally grateful! I’ve learned some valuable lessons that I’ll apply in the future when making design decisions! Thank you very much!
We have been remodeling. And it is super funny to me to see everyone ask if we will take out a main wall between the living room and kitchen. We keep saying no, and lots of people just don’t get it. I really don’t want everyone who comes to my front door to know I didn’t do my dishes yet, so that’s my reason for keeping the wall. Plus it is a structural wall, so the expense to remove it is too much. I have a feeling that all these walls that are getting removed will come back some day.
Thanks for sharing about your furniture. I will be getting a new couch set once we finish the remodel. And top on my list is comfort. The reminder to sit on the furniture is very high on the wish list now!
I feel your pain in regrets from building an open floor plan. We built an open floor plan (not pole barn but very open) and I do regret not having more walls. We built the house and sold within 5 years. We plan on building the same house again but with a little more separation between some rooms. And the furniture regret…been there also. We purchased a slipcover couch online. It looked great online but it so uncomfortable. Would never do that again!
Thanks for sharing your regrets. I love your home and the view. We built a “farmhouse” style home on our farm 10 years ago with an awesome view and while I do love the outside look of the farmhouse, there are also a few regrets for the inside…also was a first time build experience. We built on a very tight budget and only changed what was absolutely necessary and/or cost effective. My regrets:
* open floor plan – den, kitchen and dining area are all one big room. I don’t love it.
* long counter instead of bar – were told that enlarging attached spaces wouldn’t make the bar possible but that was false. I hate the long counter
* shiplap on a few walls – will slowly do some of that as money and time allows
* wish we had put hardwood on the stairs & added a pretty runner but we carpeted it along with the upstairs bedrooms and hallway to keep noise down.
Overall, I love the home, but like you if I ever build again, I will know where to put extra money.
khob
This was a very helpful read!
No thoughts of “ingratitude” from me, I totally understand looking back and doing a review. If you don’t specifically note successes AND problems, good stuff AND flops, you’ll keep making dumb mistakes! (Isn’t that the point of studying history?! 🙂) No house is perfect, but I’d like to avoid mistakes/learn from someone else when possible!
I’m seeing a theme: needing to get things done/make decisions quickly leads to iffy choices. 😬 Eek. That’s happens more often than not! 😳
Great points here, and very helpful! Thank you!
We all always have things we wish we could change ☺️ That’s how we grow and learn. My husband thinks I’m never satisfied 😆. We just always see how things can be improved. Thanks for sharing. Someone else can always learn from our mistakes, although these weren’t mistakes. And I know how grateful you are for what you have just as I am. But boy I’d change some things tomorrow if I could 🤣.
Sometimes we don’t know until we’ve experienced it. I bet we all have things we wish we would have done differently in our homes. We didn’t build ours but have been making our older home ours. When we redid our bathroom, we opted to not put in a bathtub. While I like our big shower, I miss having a tub for the occasional soak. We also decided to just use a shower curtain…that is now going to be remedied after eight years…getting glass this week!
Anyway, all that to say, sometimes we do things thinking it will work, but the reality is not what we thought it would be. So it’s good to share our insights and let others learn from our experiences…thank you for being open! I think it would be hard to build something from the ground up and get it 100% right. Y’all have done an amazing job!
😊Cecilia
Thank you so much for this post, Cami! I so admire your authenticity! You have shared your skill, your hard work and what you’ve learned, and I will always appreciate that! I have gained some important lessons that I will using going forward when I make design choices! Many thanks!