There’s just something special about the cooks, recipes, and kitchens you grew up with. Architect Dhara Sanghavi grew up in a now-dated ’80s-style kitchen, which her mother cooked in as-is for about 15 years.“It was a very central place in my household,” Dhara explains. “My mom is a great host and feels happy when inviting our friends and family for meals. The whole family would come together to chop vegetables, and I loved knowing what was cooking.

When Andrea Jensen and her husband were house hunting, they narrowed in on a Southern California area they loved. However, “the neighborhood came with a steep price tag,” Andrea writes, “so we knew whatever we bought in our price range would require a lot of work.”They ended up purchasing a home that was built in 1978 and had not been updated since. “It still had the same dirty wallpaper, linoleum, and popcorn ceiling.

From thrifted finds to built-ins, these gorgeous makeovers are the best of the best.

When you live with four other people in a three-bedroom apartment, you might need to occasionally — or frequently — escape the close quarters. This group of roommates decided to make the most of their small balcony and transform it into another living space. These were the outdoor area’s strengths and weaknesses: “My apartment has a relatively small patio (8′ x 14′) right off the living room.

“When we first bought the house, the bathroom had standard builder finishes and felt fairly generic,” Lita Lee, founder of Stories from a Stylist, says. As an editorial interior stylist, Lita typically works with designers to create a room’s finished look, but in her and her husband’s home she took designing into her own hands. Lita wanted to give the bathroom more character and move away from the “original builder-basic feel.