Living in Limbo; Remodeling for Strangers

If you've been following our story for long, you know that Hubster and I are wanting out of our house ASAP.  We bought this house as two young, naive and unprepared newlyweds in 2006 - right before the market crashed. And since the house value is over $75,000 less than what we paid for it, we're stuck with this ugly little house we call home. Learn more about our situation and outlook in my very first post ever, from almost one year ago.

While we're making some amazing progress on our little-house-that-could (and I love that y'all are coming along for the ride!!) we still have quite ways to go. You've all seen my never ending to-do list for the house. I've got a looong list of updates that need to happen before I'll be happy enough to either stick around for a couple of years or to put it up on the market and get the heck out.

No matter our immediate decision, we want to sell the house and move to a different neighborhood eventually. And because of that, I feel as if I'm living in limbo, remodeling and updating the house with a stranger in mind.

When planning all of our remodeling decisions and decor ideas, I'm constantly weighing between what a potential buyer would like vs. what I would like. I've already been making decisions that are more muted than I'd originally like - or that could be easily updated before putting the house up on the market - like paint color, art or light fixtures for example.

So while I'd love to add a master bathroom that looks like the image on the left, I'll instead be choosing a less risky looks like the right in hopes the resale will be higher.

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And my dream master bedroom has a lot of color and a little edge like the image on the left, but I'll be decorating the room a little closer to the image on the right so it appeals to a larger audience.

Don't get me wrong, the 'buyers style' rooms are beautiful and I'll enjoy living in them, but they're much more muted than I would chose for my 'forever' home.

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While it's not a terrible situation to be in, it's weird. It's like I'm designing and living in a house that's not meant for me. Even though we've owned the house for 7 years, it doesn't really feel like it's 100% mine.  It's more like 50% mine.

One way I'm making it work is trying to be smart about my furniture choices so they'll work in a more "mass appeal" room to hopefully appeal to a buyer and sell the house, but will also work in a new home stylized completely inline with my decor style. For example, a dark grey headboard would work in both my buyer's style bedroom AND my dream bedroom.

Are any of you going through the same thing? Any tips on how to make your house your own while updating it to sell?

P.S. Don't forget to enter my giveaway to win two pillow cases from Skoope Home! Enter through this post.