Kaitlyn Bristowe on Making a Fresh Start in Her New Nashville Home: ‘It Felt Like a Release’ (Exclusive)

The ‘Bachelorette’ alum gives PEOPLE a look inside her new house, which she decorated with help from Ashley

For Kaitlyn Bristowe, it wasn’t an easy choice to move into her new Nashville home — but it turned out to be the right one.

“Honestly, I thought I would move out of my old house and feel regret like, ‘What am I doing?’” the Bachelorette star and podcast host tells PEOPLE.

“I had made it my dream home, I'd done these renovations, I had made it exactly what I wanted it to be,” she continues. “And then as soon as I moved into this home, it really felt like it was meant to be.”

Until August 2023, Bristowe shared her former Nashville abode with her ex-fiancé Jason Tartick. Tartick moved out after the couple announced the end of their engagement earlier that month.

“I was so ready to move on,” Bristowe says. “It was just, I didn't realize I really hang on to bases and homes and memories and I'm sentimental like that. And so I thought I was going to grieve the house a little more, but really, it felt like a release.”

The reality star, 39, says the process of buying a house on her own was “empowering.”

“It kind of forced me to reflect on the last 10 years and see how far I've come and how hard I've worked, and it was a really nice moment for me to go, ‘Okay.’”

“I could look at it like, ‘I'm this age, I thought I'd be married, I thought I'd have kids, moving into this house with a family,’” she adds. “But I did a spin zone, I like to call it, and turned a negative into a positive and said that I was really proud of myself for doing this process on my own, for moving into a new house and making it my own, and knowing that when the right time comes, that will all fall into place for me.”

Bristowe, who appeared as a contestant on season 19 of The Bachelor in 2015 and then led season 11 of The Bachelorette later that year, also believes the timing was right for a less conventional reason.

“I'm into numerology, and it's 10 years since I really started my journey with Bachelor,” she explains. “And I heard that at 10 years, there's a new beginning, and so I was like, ‘How perfect.’ I moved into that old house after the show and I'd been in it for so many years, and this house represents just a fresh start, a new chapter, a new beginning, and new experiences.”

Bristowe got engaged to Bachelorette frontrunner Shawn Booth at the end of her season, but the pair eventually split in 2018. She began dating Tartick, who'd competed on season 14 of The Bachelorette, in 2019.

Bristowe, who announced in November that she'd put in an offer on the property, says her new house is “amazing.”

“It feels like me,” she says. “I feel like it's my sanctuary.”

Related: Jason Tartick Says It 'Physically and Mentally Sucks' to Move Out of Home He Shared with Ex Kaitlyn Bristowe

The biggest decorating challenge for the Off the Vine host was discovering that she couldn’t recreate her old house in the new space just because the square footage was similar.

“I thought I could just pick up the pieces from the old place and plop them into the new one and that it would work,” she says. “And I realized very quickly that that's not how this works, and that each room was so unique.”

So Bristowe teamed with the furniture brand Ashley to create the “bonus” room, guest room, and outdoor space of her dreams.

“Those are probably three of my favorite rooms in the house,” Bristowe says, adding that she treats the bonus room as a personal movie theater.

“I feel like my bonus room looks really trendy, but it's also cozy and there's pieces that look like designer pieces for a fraction of the cost. And there's just subtle accents throughout that make it feel like a cozy lived-in room,” she says.

Related: Kaitlyn Bristowe Attends Stanley Cup Final with Zac Clark, Ex Jason Tartick Brings New Girlfriend Kat Stickler

However, Bristowe shares that she probably spends the most time on her outdoor patio.

“It's so hot in Nashville right now, and I still just try and sit out there as much as I can, obviously because I have my two dogs and I love spending time out there with them,” she says.

As for her pair of golden retrievers, Ramen and Pinot, their favorite spots are wherever Bristowe is.

“I call them my shadows, and it's wherever I am in the house, that seems to be their favorite spot,” she says. "But the couch that we've got upstairs [in the bonus room], that's probably all of our favorites."

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Bristowe, who describes her own aesthetic as “edgy, cozy, chic, and with some character,” says she was happy to have professional help with the interior design.

“I really loved working with Ashley because I think people think I would have good judgment for what I would need in a house and what I would want in the space, but I actually really like working with people who know what they're doing,” she says.

Bristowe says her personal items are the key to making this house feel like a home.

“Some of my family actually laughs at me because I like a lot of knickknacks around the house and little trinkets and I've got a lot of stuff, but I like when a house feels lived in,” she says.

“I love photos of all my family and friends from back home, my nieces and nephews,” the Canada native adds. “Adding pictures of people, I feel like that really makes it a home.”

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