You have no idea the chaos you have unleashed by asking.

So the simple answer is that I bought my ideal home with my husband around two and a half years ago. It just has yet to look like my ideal home. It has flooring now, though! It does have that.

When we moved in it didn’t have that. At least not everywhere. While the two owners that came before the bitter divorced dad we bought it from had clearly treated it with love, this man had done his best to bitter it up and ruin it. I do not say that lightly.

During our walk-thru with an inspector he spend his time sitting determinedly on the couch, bitching on the phone about this or that with his ex wife, resurfacing between calls to tell us about all the improvements he’d made. The triple arch, for instance. He’d wanted to “clean it up,” but he’d only been able to really stop it from literally being a heart-shaped arch into the dining. The last owner had been “some kind of pansy.”

You have no idea how bitter I am that he destroyed a heart shaped arch in my home.

We discovered why he’d sat so determinedly on that enormous couch when we moved in and it was gone, and we were greeted by a nearly exact couch-shaped lack of flooring in the living room.

He’d painted the walls all a cool shade of grey. This was fixable, and I went hard at that, picking out colors that sang at the Sherwin Williams. I chose something called “earthen jug” for virtually every wall in the house, and the painter called me more than once asking if I was sure about this.

I was, and I am, and I still might someday change it. Only if we can do the remodel, though.

See, soon as we were living there, we discovered more secret problems even than the flooring. There’s the simple things, and I say “simple” with heavy air quotes. Electricity is absolutely wrecked–decades of DIY-ers taking that into their own hands. The plumbing was half-assed, and while there’s been two previous owners, I absolutely refuse to blame the original dude who crafted a shed with the title “ye olde deer shed” emblazoned on the handmade sign at the top in our yard, and I absolutely entirely refuse to blame the heart-arch pansy.

Fucking divorced dad energy strikes again.

The outside has scalloped terraces that are more than just aesthetic–virtually every new window leaks. The brickwork has begun to deteriorate, and someone globbed huge amounts of mortar over the surface rather than actually pointing the bricks.

Finally, there’s the layout.

Downstairs is ok, but upstairs is utterly fucked.

I have no blueprints of the original. But let’s just say it’s not currently the following:

This. This is my plan for the house.

The downstairs is largely unchanged. One of our favorite parts about the house is the entryway, which divorced dad energy hadn’t been able to truly destroy. Great real-stone floors, a window that just kills with its hugeness. Beadboard ceiling and wood paneling galore and sure, it’s painted cream now, I can’t help that, but it is still lovely.

I’m there now. Blessed to have it as an office, atm.

Unfortunately for the entryway (or fortunately? cuz it’s gonna slap) the stairs are currently smack dab in the middle of the home, utterly screwing the upstairs of all potential, so in my vision, they move to this space.

Coming in, you will be struck by the floors, sure. They’re big ol’ river rock floors and I love them and refuse to ever touch them. The window remains. The difference is that it’s two-stories, now, and no floor above, just two fucking glorious stories of empty space, wall-papered aggressively with just the most eye-popping abomination of rioting color and design that you have ever seen.

I plan to set my husband loose in this room, in terms of wallpaper. I want it to fuck you up.

Up the stairs is a small open balcony where we will shove all our ugliest furniture, a television, and every single one of my kids toys that they refuse to keep in their rooms. They will have the absolute blessed gift of childhood that I had on visits to my grandparents house, with all its prime barbie-dangling real estate. You’re welcome, boogers.

Back to downstairs, though:

Going forth past the entryway, with its grand-as-I-can-salvage staircase with my little office now shoved into a secret door under said stairs, we move on into the livingroom. After the expanse and chaos of the entry, I want it to feel like entering a fucking cave. The fireplace is now exposed, and that’s amazing. No wallpaper here, though, unless maybe grass cloth on the ceiling. Everything is a deep, rich shade of emerald green, so dark your eyes must adjust. The lighting is soft and not-can-lights, and the back wall behind the couch is lined with built-in bookshelves. Every open-concept-attempt has been softened. The heart arch has returned, but this free program doesn’t offer a heart arch, so please use your imagination.

With the stairs gone, we are able to bump out the wall of them and create a husband office. This must be bigger than mine because of an abomination known as Warhammer, and I’m honestly, actually, not bitter. I’ve always preferred a smaller, more secret space. It’s not huge either way, because we also have to cram a half-bath with laundry in there, and while I devotedly believe this won’t take up too much space, it will take up about half of the real-estate moving the stairs creates.

We sacrifice most of a dining room to this concoction and the sliders out onto our new screened-in porch. Two level preferred, but I want to make sure we can get enough porch rather than more porches. So now, moving into the kitchen, it’s largely the same on the one wall:

Like, this is fine. I’m a fan of this. Kind of. Now that I’ve fixed the colors.

Turn around, though, and our absolute monster of a useless, space-consuming island is gone. Instead, there’s a pantry beside the window and low storage-containing seating below this, a narrow banquette making it an eat-in kitchen, and twice the storage in this new version than we get at all with, again, our absolute monster of a useless, space-consuming island.

I’ve never been a fan of kitchen islands.

MOVING UPSTAIRS~

After our barbie torture kids balcony, we move into a hallway. Keep in mind, the ceilings are now vaulted, because–of course–we also need a new roof, anyway. Why not?

The hallway is plenty wide, because without the stairs, our kids’ dinky little rooms can now expand, anyway. They become shotgun homes in their own right, each with a nice big window, each with a little lofted area above their closets. Again, forgive the limitations of this free program.

Past the kids rooms, at the end of this hall, is our room. Located now where our son’s room lives. As you can see, it essentially only fits our bed. Insane as it is, it’s still bigger in this scenario than it is now. Either way, only-a-bed might be good for us, when it comes to our room. We have a closet, a tv, a bed, and not much else.

(unless we do get a two story porch, and then we have private entrance onto a little part of that, where my second desk lives)

Turning right past our room, there’s a small hall closet at the end, and our bathroom is re-organized to actually make sense for human use. Gone is the cramming of everything in the wrong place, no–we have a tub and shower on the back wall, as it should be. A toilet and a small vanity, vaulted ceilings create largeness that isn’t there, skylights instead of window means more wall space, and the vanity has a neon-backlit oddly shaped mirror and BOOM.

That’s it, y’all, that’s my dream house.

Now I just have to fund it.

And, of course–

Remember that technically, I’m already living in it.