Stop Thinking You Have an “Ugly” House
I know the feeling: that nagging thought that you can’t help but think your home is ugly and doesn’t measure up to other people’s home.
Although I’m a DIY blogger who does home improvement and furniture makeovers (check out my Project Gallery), I suffer from this “My house is ugly” syndrome, too.
In fact, whenever people come over to my home, I find myself apologizing about this project that sits unfinished….or that part of my house that has dirty walls because the kids drag their hands all over it when walking past.
Over the years since moving into our old 1973 home, it has taken a lot of time for me to finally get to the point where I feel comfortable with my home.
I’m comfortable with it because it’s finally started to feel warm and cozy (after years of living here). But I still find myself apologizing and making excuses and pointing out its faults before other people can.
In fact, in one of my YouTube videos, I did a house tour for readers and viewers and I apologized and tried to explain away all the little piles of clutter and the unfinished projects and mismatched furniture.
You can watch that video below.
(Keep reading for 3 tips to help you stop thinking your house is ugly).
It’s Not Just You: Lots of People Think Their Home is Ugly
Years ago I happened to get an email from a girl who stumbled upon one of my old posts and she wrote me something so poignant:
I just came across your blog a few weeks ago, while searching for photos of rooms painted in Rainwashed. I wanted to tell you how much I like your blog. It’s so refreshing to see a diy/decorating blog featuring a normal looking house, lol!
Seriously though! I live in a 1,700 square foot house, that was built in 1926. It’s easy to feel inadequate seeing blogs with 5,000+ square foot, brand new mini mansions, that look like something straight out of Better Homes and Gardens. I’d much rather read about someone fixing up an older, average home, on a budget!
Her email hit a nerve.
I decided to respond to her email and share why we shouldn’t be comparing our home to others’ homes.
There is still some part of me that feels like my home isn’t good enough, especially considering that working on my house as a blogger is my full-time job!
But her email ignited something inside of me–a desire for us all to STOP crapping on our houses and simply love it and decorate it for what it is: our place of comfort!
I was inspired to create that short video to inspire all of you beautiful homeowners who sometimes feel inadequate about your house, too. We are just the same: women are want to create a pretty, comfortable, yet affordable home for ourselves and our family.
(P.S. You can see how I’ve been working on turning my house into a home with these projects:
- BEFORE & AFTER: My Pretty Lavender Master Bathroom Makeover
- BEFORE & AFTER: My Colorful Half Bathroom Makeover With a Wall Stencil!
- BEFORE & AFTER: My Kid’s Bathroom Makeover
- BEFORE & AFTER: Boys Blue Accent Wall Bedroom
- BEFORE & AFTER: My Pretty Laundry Room Makeover
You Do NOT Have an “Ugly” House: 3 Tips to Stop Complaining About Your House
Okay…..but maybe you do have an outdated house and you want to do a makeover. Doesn’t that sound better? More positive?
“Outdated” sounds like something easily fixable.
“Ugly” just sounds….hopeless!
And we’re all doing such great jobs on making our houses look fabulous for very little money (and so little time, too!). So let’s stop comparing ourselves and our homes to people in the blogosphere okay?
Keep reading below for some tips we can do to change our attitude our house!
(RESOURCE: Check out this post on how to make an “ugly” home look good with easy decorating tips from the pros).
TIP #1: Be thankful you’ve got housing.
When the wind is whipping and I’m rushing up my walkway to get inside, I’m often struck with the thought, “Thank God I have a house!” More than 500,000 people in the U.S. are homeless, according to this report in 2015. Seriously. Why would we complain when we have money to pay for housing??? Thinking about this alarming fact makes me feel idiotic for even thinking my house is ugly.
TIP #2: Make a plan for decorating your home.
We’re all short on time.
I get it.
But if you plan for the projects and room makeovers you want to do, you’d be surprised how much easier it is to get those projects and makeovers done.
I had put together a free Room Makeover Journal packet that you can download by entering your name and email here:
When you create this DIY journal from scrapbook paper, you’ll have a way to track your progress, list your materials needed, and more.
Soon, your house will feel more put together and not quite as “ugly”!
TIP #3: Take “Before” and “After” pictures of your house along the way.
Homes evolve over time, don’t they?
How your home looked 3 years ago is likely nothing like what it looks like today. Maybe you’ve changed the furniture, had the floors done, changed the paint….
And sometimes we forget the evolution and where we started from!
I can tell you–when we started out in this house, we had wallpaper on nearly every vertical surface…outdated brown paneling…and more.
This is what my family room looked like when we moved in: a dreary 70’s brick fireplace, paneling, and wallpaper over the paneling!
BEFORE
I ended up painting my brick fireplace so that it still looked like brick (which lightened up the room tremendously!), removed the paneling, sewed a pair of cute lined DIY curtains, and decorated the house with affordable thrift store furniture.
Because I took pictures along the way and reviewed those old pictures from time to time, it helps to remind me of how far we’ve come in this house.
Suddenly, it doesn’t seem like such an ugly house. Instead, it feels like a home in transition and it helps me to see that we really have made progress!
So be sure to take lots of pictures of your home and your projects and store them on an external hard drive or on Google Drive (or email them to yourself) and every now and then, click through them to see your progress over time. You’ll be shocked and will feel much less likely to say “My house is ugly.”
AFTER
Again, I know how easy is to think “My house is ugly!” But the truth is that we’re blessed to have housing…we’re blessed to have affordable options for making it look good without spending a lot of money (check out these thrift store tips), and if we remind ourselves of how far we’ve come, we might even start loving our house. 🙂
So have you ever told yourself “My house is ugly”? How did you learn to start loving your house? Leave a comment and let’s talk about it!
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Real Estate agents sell houses. The buyers make them into homes.
Now if folks could just understand the difference.
Thanks for you words on the subject. And the sensible words of your posters.
It might not be worth plastering photos all over the web, but it keeps warm and dry and
and has a great view. The rest will happen when it happens…….
At times, I think we all think of our houses as UGLY…that is the reality of life. On the other hand though most of us actually “LIVE” in our houses…they are not just a showroom, they are our work spaces, our play spaces, our relaxation spaces. I would much rather see any house being loved by being lived in and looking lived in than to see one sitting with no one in it or no personality to them. Our houses are our homes…they have all of our stories, the good and the bad. We gotta make them the place that we feel safe in and want to come back to every day.
Hi, Beverly! You know what I think? About the day when everything is perfectly in place, meaning: the kids have all grown up, moved away, it’s just me and hubby–old, gray, maybe not interested in doing anything but sitting in the chair wasting away. Yikes!! Will I say then, “Man! Look at this clean house!” Hardly! Thanks for keeping it in perspective! 🙂
Serena,
You hit the nail right on the head. I wince sometimes when I look at my before pictures and think “why didn’t I pick a small project that I could finish and look perfect?”. But, the reality is that after helping three daughters get their degrees, helping two of them have nice weddings, the third is across the country in grad school and I gladly pay her fare when she can fly home, a husband who was on disability for several years (healthy now, thankfully after surgeries and a transplant and able to work), we just never had the money or energy to fix the house up the way we wanted. But, I’m grateful that we have a roof over our heads, a decent income, a furnace that we put in a couple of years ago (the old furnace was cranky and old and didn’t keep us warm enough), and family nearby. I’m grateful that I am able to drive 40 miles one way every week to spend the afternoon with my only grandchild, so that I am a constant in her life. So grateful for what I have is the important thing. The rest? Just things and stuff. We have a home when so many don’t, jobs when many struggle, our health after a long battle, and people who love us the way we are.
You are definitely blessed, Cindi! 🙂 You’ve seen my before pictures, right?? I was in the same boat! LOL. But we’re working on it, making it what we want it to be!
Wow! I REALLY needed to hear this! Thanks for your inspiration. I just found your blog via PINTEREST and am HOOKED! FINALLY, a REAL person blogging about what I love! I don’t like to let anyone know where I live. I’m not super happy about the way my home looks, BUT I have the before and after pictures as well. And while it may not be a dream home to someone else. I sit back with my husband and my kids and we dream and make plans of what we want it to look like. It’s come a LONG way from ugly cactus print wall paper and wood paneling in the kitchen. EVEN had wallpaper on the ceiling! And where it wasn’t wallpapered on the ceiling we had ugly ceiling tiles that reminded me of the chocolate part of an icecream sandwich. Only they were white. And falling! That is all gone along with the green and gold shag carpet. And it’s a bit more modernized but not too much. I like the charm of the old stuff mixed in with new. Lots of vintage items that have been redone . I have to say that one of my favorite things in my home is my 120 year old piano that my husband found for $100 via Craigslist. We don’t have a fireplace so the tall back of the piano is my mantel. And it has the most beautiful sound of any piano I have ever heard. I do LOVE my home. It’s where my husbands family lived and now where every one of my 4 children have come home from the hospital after they were born. Many memories made here and many more to come!
Hey, Angie! So awesome to see this comment! I’m in the same boat as you. Although we were lucky in that we escaped wallpaper ceilings! HA! We do have it in the walk-in closet, though! 🙂 That’s the last of it that hasn’t been removed yet. But I still have insecurities about it, like we all do. During those times, we have to keep in mind that it’s a work in progress. Not everyone has the $$$ to renovate everything at once, or to buy the latest and greatest pieces (then again, we love making stuff over, so for us DIY’ers, that’s not even an issue! LOL). But I am often embarrassed when people come over (which isn’t often) and I feel like my house should be waaaay more impressive than it is (especially since HOME is what I blog about!). But then I remind myself that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither will my home :).
So glad you stopped and left a comment! Please keep in touch! And if you’d like, feel free to join one of our room makeover challenges! (You can sign up here: https://thriftdiving.com/challengeyourself)
Take care!
My house was built in 1926 and it’s 1700 square feet, LOL!!
(That email/comment wasn’t from me!)
I LOVE my house. Imperfections and all.
I love you for this post and video, too!
LOVE this post! You are truly empowering and you are so down to earth and I adore that quality in you. When you talk about many things in your posts, I can completely relate and feel like we are on the same page….So nice to be able to relate to someone who’s blog makes you feel good when your done reading. Thanks so much for doin what you do!
Heather, what an amazing comment!!! Awww….I think I’m slightly tearing up inside :). I’m soooo glad that you’re comfortable reading my blog. Because I’m just like you and many other people–I don’t have any amazingly pretty house (notice I didn’t say “ugly!” lol). It’s not one of those newer homes that looks like it was built in a gated community. And I’ve got Legos in every corner of the house, with socks, and (lately) orange peels from my kids. LOL. It drives me CRAZY, but little by little, I can transform it. And if I can inspire other people to do the same, and give them some ideas on how to do it, then my goal is met! 🙂 Thanks again for such a great comment! I hope you don’t mind me sharing it with my readers…? Thank you!!
Serena
Miss Serena,
You are wise before your years. I absolutely loved your blog on this subject. I am a product of the 60’s and see so many young couples purchasing these mini-mansions and wondering why life it not great when they do nothing but try to measure up to others and end up filling their, now huge homes, with nothing but junk.
I grew up on the SW side of Chicago, five family members and one bathroom. Although we had four bedrooms the main living space was 962 square feet. All I know is the house was an older bungalow, but it was easy to clean and we had a blast growing up. I think it had to do with being so close to eachother. lol
The houses today are so huge and, as you say, “staged” that it makes it impossible for people to think their lives are great and their homes are wonderful.
My opinion….your home is perfect. It looks very cozy and it says “you” all over it and I don’t even know you, but your home speaks out in volumes of the person I have already based my opinion on. Bright, cheery and very resourceful!
Thank you so much for your blog.
Terry
Terry, wow, what an amazing, thoughtful comment, and so true! I once asked my boys (ages 8, 5, and 3) if they “see all this mess” that they leave scattered around and if they noticed that the house is now “clean” after spending a couple hours on it. And you know what they said, ” Oh. We can’t tell.” Honestly, kids pay no attention to these things. Because it’s not important. Just like you said, you had a small space, and you enjoyed the closeness! Our house is getting cozier with each of the 30-day room challenges I have been doing here on the blog–decorating and refinishing one room in 30-day. I’ve come to love my house in all its woes! Thank you for the awesome comments! I hope to see yo around the blog more often, Terry!! 🙂 I appreciate this!
It was so blessed to run across your blog today that i have to give the Glory to God!! I just purchased a house that I know was a gift from God. I have been on search for my very first home since fall of 2012 to end up with what I consider not my ideal home. This home has great potential with 1200 sf, I have great things to come for this little abode of mine. Especially since your blog and video. I was saddened that being the age (55) and my siblings and other family member having larger homes, I was ashamed to mentioned, You change that, you are one of God’s angels to do God’s work. Inspiring people like me that thought I should compare what i have to others. Be Blessed and keep up the Great work.
Diane, this is amazing, thank you! Congrats on the purchase of your home! Yeah, definitely don’t compare your home to theirs. Be thankful that you have a home, and then work with what you’ve got, the best you can. And you’ll create that little oasis that you love! And you know what?? Because it’s smaller than their homes, it will take you LESS TIME! 😉 Thanks for commenting, and I hope to see you around in the comments sections on more posts! 🙂
Just wanted to say congratulations Diane on your purchase of your home! Now it is up to you to make that home yours. Serena has wonderful ideas and brings hope to us that do not have the perfect house! ! Serena you are down to earth and I think that people think of you as a friend not just someone on the internet! My house does have potential and I do see possibilities!. I for one am glad that I do not have a mansion but a simple home. There are things I wish I could change and there are things that I can change. ( I wish I could get rid of the split foyer!! Too many steps for us 55 plus people that live here!! LOL) Keep it up Serena!!