Do you have photos of the home you have purchased? It would help to visualize your ideas going into a new space.

Yes, you need to share pictures of the house. We have no way of knowing if ideas from your inspiration photos will work with the space.

Here's a handful but as I mentioned, we are redoing most of it - hardwood floors, wood interior doors, paint, etc.

Some of the big things we plan on doing are adding a dormer to the loft (planning on our 2 boys sharing the space). Since we're making that a bedroom we are going to likely enclose the stairs and add a sliding door at the bottom (husband thinks that's the only way we can get a door on the space without majorly reworking things). Similar to this pic.

I totally agree - from pictures the home looks to be in good condition. We were ready to pay full price before walking in the door. Unfortunately, the pictures are very deceiving. The floors are coming apart at the seams, the backsplash is some kind of textured spray paint over tile and the paint is peeling off in chunks from the cabinets. The exterior door jambs are rotted, all the windows need to be replaced and the lighting fixtures have rust. That all said, we are planning to live in our current home (it will become rental property) while renovating the new home so that's why these decisions will need to be made now. So the big things - flooring, cabinetry, fireplace stone, windows and doors - will need to be made before moving in. Thank you for the input - you pretty much verified what I'm thinking. I need to try and re-evaluate what I truly love and what I want for the long term. As an aside, it is on a 3 acre wooded lot so I feel that my rustic tendencies have more to do with the exterior vs. the interior.