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A lot of great things came out of the 1990s — and there are plenty of design trends making a comeback that we love to see. But some of the decade’s looks could use a refresher, like the super-brown kitchen in designer Sheryl Sanders’s home.After living in the home for only two months, she knew she needed to do something to modernize the cooking space.Since the old cabinet boxes were solid wood and in great condition, she decided she could get away with just replacing the doors.

Many of us find living room makeover ideas on social media. But Christina Beck and her husband Colin literally found a house on Instagram.“One of our followers knew his mom needed to sell the house she had spent time in growing up for her dad,” explains Christina, who owns the renovation company Vero Home in Cincinnati with Colin.“It hadn’t been updated in at least 35 years and had a lot of deferred maintenance.

Small kitchens certainly aren’t unusable. In fact, there are plenty of space-savvy kitchen finds that can make tiny studio or galley kitchens work successfully.But sometimes, a small kitchen begs for a total renovation, which was the case for Bri Williams and her husband, Denver, and their 200-square-foot kitchen.

When I first discovered the town of Hudson, New York, I felt like a kid in a candy store. There was so much that I wanted to explore. It’s the type of town that seems to have it all: picturesque streets filled with historical homes, rows of antique shops and boutiques, and scenic drives that lead you to local farm stands, wildflower fields, and nature trails. What more could you ask for?

When interior decorator Katie Woodman and her husband, Joseph, first found their split-level house in Ft. Collins, Colorado, they fell hard for its unique features, including a treehouse-like upper deck, a huge wood-burning fireplace, vaulted ceilings, and a large solarium perfect for plant babies.

”The office didn’t exist before,” Alana Resnick says. When she and her boyfriend, Miles Ronbeck, found their Upper East Side apartment, it had a very long living space. And while they originally were looking for an apartment with two bedrooms (to convert one into a dedicated office), they fell in love with the natural light and the ample square footage.

Meredith Rose’s wedding registry included something not all registries do: power tools, which she was eager to use post-wedding to turn her townhouse into a space that actually reflected her design aesthetic.“My style is pretty classic in all areas of my life, so I wanted my home to feel the same way,” says Rose, who is based in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Sometimes you’ve gotta go big when it comes to a renovation, and that doesn’t always mean in terms of scale. Often, it’s about the scope of the work and taking a chance on layout tweaks and storage changes to find what works for you. That was the case for designer Anita Yokota and her late ’90s cook space, which she shares with her husband, Travis, and three daughters.

Multipurpose rooms, because of the nature of what they are (essentially combining two separate spaces, with their own goals and needs, into one), can easily become overwhelming and a headache. For June Cruz, that room was her dual laundry room and mudroom. It had no storage or organization, which made it a dysfunctional area. “It was essentially a drop zone for our coats, shoes, and bags, as well as our weekly laundry,” June describes.