11 Nice-to-Have Upgrades for Your New Home (11 photos)

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This series focuses on deciding on which upgrades to do, and which to wait on, when building a new home.
When designing a new build with optional builder’s upgrades, it’s easy to go way over budget. There’s so much available, and many of those tempting upgrades may also be expensive….

Designer Helps a Couple Adjust to Loft Living (13 photos)

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Moving from a four-bedroom suburban house in Seattle to a five-room loft in Milwaukee is a major change. These homeowners were ready for the new lifestyle in a walkable downtown neighborhood, but designing the loft space wasn’t something they were equipped for. And while they were ready for the change,…

Shop Houzz: A Warm, Rustic Kitchen (154 photos)

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Some things really do get better with age. Consider the charm of crackled paint, a decades-old patina and the imperfections of hewn wood — all ideal for disguising everyday wear and tear too. The finds here are new, but they can bring a lived-in feeling to your kitchen.

Houzz Tour: Casual Lakeside Retreat for Modern Living (11 photos)

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While taking a car ride to calm her young son, this homeowner found the perfect lakefront lot for a new home. She’d grown up on a lake in northern Minnesota and wanted the same experience for her kids. The couple, a teacher and a dentist, are self-described modernists. Therefore, they called on architect…

Houzz Tour: Classic Lake Cottage Style for a Vacation House (13 photos)

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There’s a fantastic reason a pig flies atop this charming Wisconsin vacation home’s cupola. “Years ago one of the homeowners told the other, ‘You’ll have a lake cottage in Door County when pigs fly,’ ” home designer Mitch Wise says. The soaring swine on the weathervane is a reminder that the dream came…