I honesty cannot believe I let myself be convinced that ripping out all the upper cabinets for open kitchen shelving dust traps was a brilliant idea, because now every single time I want to use a plate or a bowl, I have to wash it first to get the layer of grease and dog hair off of it... it looks amazing in photos, sure, but living with it is a constant battle against entropy that I am losing. And don't even get me started on the bathroom situation - we installed one of those trendy sliding barn doors for the master bath because it looked rustic and cool, but nobody warned us about the sliding barn door privacy issues, or rather the lack thereof, because there is a one-inch gap around the frame that lets every sound and smell drift right into the bedroom which is just fantastic for romance.
It drives me insane that we spent extra for those matte black faucets because they looked so sleek in the showroom, but we have hard water and now they are permanently stained with white calcium buildup that looks like crusty toothpaste no matter how much I scrub them. We also made the mistake of going cheap on the flooring with some discount luxury vinyl plank scratching hazards that the salesman swore were "indestructible," but my 50-pound lab has already gouged deep scratches into the hallway just by walking to his food bowl - so much for durability.
The worst part is that we blew our contingency fund in the first week because the contractor found "unexpected" electrical issues, and now I'm staring at a half-finished backsplash that I can't afford to tile yet. I really wish I had found a realistic detailed tutorial on budgeting before we started swinging sledgehammers, because maybe then I wouldn't have agreed to move the plumbing for the toilet which cost us an extra three grand for absolutely no functional gain other than "better flow" according to a designer who clearly doesn't have to clean this place.
