My most expensive design mistake 🫢

I got a recent DM that asked, "What's your most expensive design mistake and what you do after one is made?" And I immediately knew the pit-in-the-stomach feeling she must be going through.

We've had times where we've painted a room and then repainted it, but paint colors really aren't too hard or expensive to change. There have been projects that I think we may have spent too much on but I didn't regret the outcome, so I don't consider them design mistakes necessarily. However! The most expensive mistake that we made has to be our outdoor kitchen a couple years ago. If you followed the process on stories, you may remember, before we paneled it, we actually put stone around it. And it was a big ordeal! I mean, we went to a stone yard, we picked out the stone we liked, and our contractor's team installed it all. It was all a very conscious effort.

In my mind, it was going to work, and it absolutely did not work. As soon as I saw it, I immediately felt sick! It was just too much stone in front of our home's red brick and next to the blue pavers on the ground. I kept trying to squint my eyes to make it work. I even rationalized that maybe when we have ivy on the brick it wouldn't feel so disjointed. Or maybe when we put up the wood pergola it would balance it out. But within 48 hours I came to terms with the fact that it would be easier to undo now than wait out (before the stones were fully set in place). So we paid the contractor's team to remove it. It probably took only 20 minutes to undo (and the crew was really confused I'm sure). All in all, with the stone and installation, that mistake was probably close to $4,000.

That was our budget. Gone. So to make it right, we decided we would panel the outdoor kitchen ourselves. We had already spent the budget that we had on stone materials and labor, and so in my mind the solution that I could swallow was to DIY the do-over. And I'm really happy we did! I love the dark paneled kitchen!! And even though it was very inexpensive to do, I ask myself if the outcome was worth $4,000 — and it absolutely was.

The sunk cost fallacy is the tendency for people to continue something because they've already invested their time, energy, or money, even when abandoning it would be more beneficial. And I think when it comes to your home — your everyday surroundings that should bring comfort and happiness to you and your family — it's almost always worth it to figure out if the mistake is something you can live with or if it IS going to be something that bothers you day in and day out, it's time to get creative!

Design mistakes can happen to anyone; it's about finding a way to move forward that works with your time, energy and resources.