What’s the one thing in your home that’s essential? The nonnegotiable? The thing that will make your house yours? And what would you sacrifice to get it? Our annual Money Issue is all about the compromises we make to get it right. Whether you’re building, renovating, or just redecorating, the choice to save or splurge on flooring or countertops, windows or siding, is all a part of the balancing act that is staying within your budget.

Everyone in this issue prioritized what’s most important to them. Some focused on a single space. In Seattle, a restaurateur and member of the city’s “First Family of Pho’” went big on a kitchen—in the signature pink of their restaurants—that’s perfect for the owner’s frequent entertaining. Others were intent on solving a specific problem. In Spain, a couple were determined to bring light and air into a moldering townhouse, investing in the structural work needed to pull it off while adding some very handsome terra-cotta lattices and a small but breezy courtyard.

A few emphasized authenticity. One couple took on the daunting restoration of a hulking, beautifully brutalist home near Turin, preserving its weirdly playful heft and only updating a few areas of the living spaces and clearing no small amount of brush from the grounds. Another rolled up their sleeves and did much of the work on a Victorian house in Providence on their own—with the help of their artist, designer, and artisan friends—adding a “movement room” and a proper contemporary kitchen while keeping the overall feel of the home intact.

That’s just a few of the stories of creative compromise in the issue. As I write every year, the costs reported here are provided by the story subjects, and each person includes different components of a project in their line items, so we’re not getting a complete accounting or comparing apples to apples by any means. But the numbers all tell a story about what mattered most, the investments that allowed the people who live in a home to make it uniquely their own. I hope the issue gives you a few ideas about what to prioritize in your next project.

Top photo by Levi Mandel

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