We recently moved back to Texas to build a new home overlooking the Texas Hill Country in Canyon Lake; one of the fastest growing areas in Texas. I always look to Houzz to provide the inspiration for our new construction; carefully adding my own unique touches to already great designs showcased from homes featured by Houzz. By following trends and mixing in Texas heritage, we have created our own version of one-of-a-kind custom homes to include aging in place to child friendly spaces, telecommuting enhanced offices, low maintenance yards/splash pools and even spaces for four-legged for “spoiled pet” family members. We’re on our fourth new construction/remodeled home we call “livable/sellable” investment homes. We live in them and sell them roughly every five years for a profit; money we can’t make in the current stock market. None of our homes have remained on the market more than a week and all have made 20-30% profit (since we general contract the projects ourselves). Thanks to following the trends and research on Houzz; we’ve created a great source of income, a challenging yet rewarding hobby/career and we get to live in a well designed and comfortable stylish home we’re proud of.

I enjoy looking through Houzz to get ideas from the photos or solutions to problems on the different forums, however...1) The search function is average at best. If you search for something like “basement laundry” you’ll see photos of that plus lots of unrelated pics. It seems the more specific your search, the more “off” the results are. 2) Lately and with increasing frequency, the attached information under “learn more” is for a different property, and probably one you looked at previously. Its like the previously viewed information won’t clear out. 3) Considering there are supposedly millions of photos posted, I keep seeing the same ones over and over. 4) I don’t know that I would ever dare to post a question on a board, as the people answering (pros and lay people alike) can be particularly snarky or unnecessarily harsh. A woman asked about thoughts on paint color for her kitchen, and was told by respondents that she had too much stuff on her counters, her word signs were awful, and her back splash didn’t properly coordinate with her counters. And it kept going even after she very graciously included a little background information about some of her design choices. It was a very nice kitchen by anyone’s standards, but the people replying (which included pros) were just rude. There seems to be no monitoring of the site at all.

I have shared this app with friends, family snd even strangers I notice browsing home improvement magazines at the store. Everyone thanks me profusely. I have a house that was built in 1932 that has charm and strong bones. However, as it is approaching 100 years old, there are many features that need to be updated. I don’t want to simply replace but improve. Working a full-time and demanding job leaves little time to explore all the possibilities that I could do with my space. Perusing through Houzz always gives me many ideas, solutions, as well as contractors who can actually do the work. Time saved means less stress to getting home projects done.My sister uses it similarly, but also confided that she often looks through the pages as a way to calm herself before entering a doctor or dentist visit. LOL!