6 Things I Wish We Did When Building Our Home

I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, hindsight is 20/20. I’ve been thinking of that saying a lot lately as it relates to building a home. I’ve gotten a lot of questions about our home building process with Skogman Homes over the last couple years and I’ve been reflecting on the things I wish we would have done when building. I’ve talked about some of the upgrades we would absolutely make again when building our home, but I haven’t talked much about the: “man I wish we would have done that” moments. Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to worry about things like budgets? 🙂 So here are 6 things I wish we did when building our home.

*Thank you so much to Skogman Homes for sponsoring this post. All opinions are my own.*

1. Invest in the exterior. The kitchen and the bathroom were big ticket items on our upgrade list when we built, so when it came down to the exterior of our home, our thought process went a little something like this: “How much time will we actually spend looking at the outside of our home? Not much. We will, however, be spending a lot of time looking at the interior.” Adding a bit of stone/brick to the exterior would really increase the curb appeal in my opinion. I honestly wish we would have budgeted for that to make our home pop in the neighborhood.
2. Finish the basement. Budget was a big factor here as well and in the interest of keeping our mortgage payment more manageable, we opted not to finish the basement. Silly budgets.
3. Trimming out the kitchen and bedroom windows. This was certainly not a big ticket item, so why we chose to skip this completely is beyond me. I really have no words of wisdom other than this: you live and you learn. This is something we could certainly do now, but still isn’t high on my priority list yet bugs me daily.
4. No carpet. As it turns out, I hate carpet. I wish we would have extended the LVP flooring into the bedrooms and down the stairs. Carpet is definitely a more affordable option but is a pain to keep clean. I also have a thing for rugs and am of the opinion that area rugs look better on hard surfaces as opposed to rugs on carpet.
5. Skip the storm door and invest in a statement front door. I dream of a big beautiful wooden door. The way our home is situated, I’m not sure a storm door is completely necessary but like I said before, you live and you learn.
6. Insulate the laundry room. Our washing machine is kind of noisy during the spin cycle. Insulating the laundry room would certainly not cut the noise completely, but it might help.

I realize many of the items on our list are cosmetic and can be changed over time. They are all items I wish we would have given a bit more thought to, but like I said in the beginning…hindsight is 20/20. I hope this list is helpful as you make decisions throughout the home building process. Five years later – we still love our home and I would 100% build again with Skogman. I hope you enjoyed this recap of 6 things I wish we did when building our home. Happy building!