Instant Home Makeovers Are Fun To Watch!

But for most of us the journey to the "perfect" home lasts a lifetime. And that's okay.

Satie, while my stairs were under construction. I loved how 80s and MC Escher they looked.

I’ve been designing spaces for a long time. Arguably, since childhood. Sure, my bedroom as a seven-year-old was incredibly tacky and over the top, but I did put a lot of thought and effort into making it my own. I think the walls were purple, I had Mickey Mouse curtains and bedding, and a royal blue bean bag chair, which sat in front of the door to the attic. Unfortunately for me, monsters lived in that attic so sleeping in my bedroom was absolutely terrifying.

In college, I was known as the RA with the fancy dorm room. My room was in a turret of a building that looked like a castle. I didn’t have money, but I was an art student so I was good at making things to make my room cute. Sculptures, weird light fixtures, giant collages. Home and making it nice has always been an obsession of mine.

When I bought my house, I imagined I’d renovate it in a year or two and have the home of my dreams. I’d watched a bunch of my content creator friends do it, so I thought, “They did that. Why not me?” Turns out, money is why I can’t. But I’ve never really been all that disappointed by that. At a certain point around year two, I looked around and realized the grand plans I have for Londo Lodge won’t be done for quite some time, if ever. My guess, is my original vision for the house, some of which I’ve completed, would cost over a million dollars. That doesn’t change the goal I have to make the house what I want it to be. But I’m not dumb, I know a renovation that costly will have to be done over years (decades?) and I’m cool with that because even being able to imagine making the change I want to make is a privilege. Most people in the world don’t get to do the kinds of fancy renovations my friends do - because of what I do, I live in a little pocket of people who get to do some pretty amazing things to their homes. Most people don’t.

I’ve imagined myself twenty years in the future, looking back at these early years in my house, doing all these DIY projects and upgrades to improve it. And I think when I look back on these times they will feel like really energetic, seminal moments in my life. Yes, getting multiple injuries from ripping up the carpet and dragging two hundred pound nineties televisions out of my house wasn’t fun. But when we look back on things we tend to forget how hard the work was and remember the ingenuity and creativity it took to get the job done.

I see my house more like a forever project now. One that I will never be done with. Because even if I swap out all the windows and doors for historic versions, add a wraparound deck, and change the style to a more traditional Craftsman meets Cape Cod style, I know I will always want to continually change and upgrade it because that is what I have always done and because I am rarely satisfied with anything less than perfect (for now, I have to be okay with less than perfect because it’s what I can afford).

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times, taking care of your house is a way of showing care for yourself and care for everyone who enters. So I now see adding crown moulding or repainting the baseboard as ways of investing in a more beautiful, considered future, investing in myself.

I’ve settled into the fact that, much like everything else in my life, the journey of making your home what you want it is in and of itself meaningful, even if you never get to the “end” you expected to when you first saw your house. I think that’s why we like makeover shows like the one’s I've created and starred on so much. We get to see the fantasy version of updating a house, without any of the waiting or uncertainty of real life renovations.

I don’t really know why I’m telling you this. Maybe just to share a realization that’s helped me come to peace with many things in life, including my home, being in process. Being in that middle stage of anything - whether it be career, financial insecurity, the beginning of a relationship, or a renovation - can be an uncomfortable place to sit. But this year I’m trying (and actually doing a good job, I think) to live in the middle of a bunch of uncertainty, incompleteness, and ambiguity while still being happy and enjoying it.