Decorating Archives - Kristen Anne Glover

The Man Cave

Today is the last post in my house tour series. If you’ve been following along, you know that we sold the house shortly after I started this series. We’ve since packed everything up and moved to El Paso, Texas where my husband began a new ministry as a full-time Army chaplain.

So, some of you may be wondering why am I bothering to finish showing you the house we left behind. After all, in just about a week, all the paperwork will be signed and it won’t belong to us anymore.

It is because God has done amazing things for us in that house, and I want to write it all down and keep a record of it so my kids can look back and see His hand when they can’t remember much about it because they were too little. I want to take a moment to reflect on the work we did over five years, some of it slow and tedious, some of it exciting, but all of it a testimony to God’s provision for us. It’s my way of marking the path, of setting up a stone of remembrance. Because we think we will remember. But we easily forget.

This last portion of the house tour brings us to the part of our home renovation that, collectively, is the biggest reminder to me that God cares about me, even the little things about me that wouldn’t matter to anyone else but my Abba, like what kind of flooring I like and whether or not my bathroom has a sink.

This is the part of the house that reminds me that He is in the little things just as much as the big things.

It is also the main reason we bought it. Sure, we loved the view, but most of the house was cheap and unimpressive. But then we saw this:

Glorious, isn’t it? This looks like an unfinished basement, but in actuality, it was considered a crawlspace. A 500 sq. foot crawlspace with 9 foot ceilings, electrical outlets, and plumbing for a bathroom. Yeah. That.

Because this space was unfinished, the square footage was not figured into the price of the house or our property taxes. The previous owners had used the space for storage and a (rumored) marijuana growing operation in the back corner.

We knew we could finish this space and add all that square footage to the value of our home. Besides, Jeff needed an office/library, and this was perfect.

There was just one problem. The room had no interior access. You had to go around to the back of the house in order to get in. One of our first projects was to build a staircase from the rec room (which we used as a fourth bedroom) into that unused space.

Here are my girls in the rec room before Jeff and a contractor blasted through the foundation with jackhammers and added the staircase.

And this is the staircase after all the dirty work was done.

The picture is taken from the rec room looking down into the last level of the house, which is the space we added. But just a note while we’re here: we needed the rec room to be a bedroom because we have a slew of children. I took you on a tour of this room in this post. Check it out!

But since we’re talking about our office space today, let me get back to business.

We purchased an exterior door for a whopping $40 at the building recycle store so that the room could be locked from the inside in case a future owner ever wanted to use the space as a studio apartment. The small area to the right of the staircase became an extra storage room that we used to house a large, commercial freezer I bought on craigslist for $100.

It’s hiding there behind those bi-fold doors that we also got on the cheap.

After the staircase was in, Jeff and his crew of helpers added two windows and finished the ceiling and walls.

It was a mess, but at least we could get into the room! Slowly, it started to come together.

But we still had to do the floors. We really wanted hardwoods throughout the house, but we couldn’t afford it. Especially when we both fell in love with Tigerwood (Tigerwood, the exotic flooring, not Tiger Woods, the creepy golfer).

Tigerwood was not in our budget. Neither is Tiger Woods, but I don’t really want him in my house anyway.

So, we looked at flooring and calculated flooring costs and went back to thinking about flooring some more. Meanwhile, I had an “I wonder…” moment and typed “Tigerwood flooring” into the craigslist search engine. Sure enough. Some builder had leftover flooring from a home remodel. It was enough to cover our entire downstairs, and he was selling it for a fraction of the cost. Plus, he delivered.

Jeff, who had never installed flooring before, spent quite a bit of time on his knees putting the stuff in. But oh, are those floors gorgeous.

Okay, so they are prettier when they are clean but I was busy moving. Still, they are beautiful, especially when at one point, it looked like this:

This is a picture of the room in progress. Right about this time, we were deciding where to put walls. Most of the studs were in good places, but some were not. For one thing, we wanted to expand the bathroom. We wanted a full bathroom because it increased the usefulness of the room. That way, it could be a master bedroom, a studio apartment, or even a guest room.

But, we were totally out of money for this renovation. To top it all off, the twins had arrived and life was crazy.

See?

But, God knew our needs. The crazy contractor (you know, the one who knocked my wall down?) found a bathtub at a garage sale for $10. It was in perfect condition and was just the size we needed. I surfed craigslist while nursing twins and found a pedestal sink for $25. We even came upon a box full of tile at a building recycle store in Seattle for just pennies a tile.

And that is how God gave us a bathroom that went from this:

…to this.

This is why I have to remember. God is so good.

But that’s not all He did.

The “crawlspace” was so large, we even had room to build a storage room off to the right of the bathroom and a small closet to the left.

As you can see, the closet door is on the left, the storage door is on the right, and the bathroom is in the middle. And all three rooms have those gorgeous (cheap) knotty alder doors and inexpensive trim we rustled up in our wanderings.

The storage room is actually large enough to be a bedroom or a kitchenette if someone wanted to put in another window. I wanted to put in another window but my bank account had other ideas. That wall on the left, where the ledge is, is the front of the house. Shoot. We should have put a window there.

But even without a window, this room was a godsend for us. We stored everything in here, including the twins when some relatives came to visit and those boys wouldn’t go to sleep because they could see me in the same room with them and they thought that if they could see me, they must need to be nursing.

Most of the time, however, this room was packed full of all the stuff a house of seven needs.

In fact, prior to the move, we had another shelving unit on the left wall and all those books were in the main part of the room along with a bazillion of their closest friends. Did I mention the movers counted 177 boxes of books? I’m sure they loved us for that.

But we needed all those books because biblical studies are Jeff’s passion, and this was his sanctuary (aka, Man Cave). This is where he would come to prepare lesson plans and grade papers and hide from the five children.

It was perfect for him.

He even had his own little covered landing because it rains a lot in Washington and a man never knows when he might need to step outside and shine his green laser at the night sky.

Here is the Man Cave again, from the outside.

It is amazing to me what God did for us in providing a house with all this extra room. We have been blessed to live and work in this place. It took five years to make it beautiful, but what a beautiful home it came to be.

I was thinking about this during our last week at home. The sky was grey, and I went out on the back deck to sip some tea and reminisce. The tears began to creep into the corners of my eyes, so I looked up to blink them back and saw this:

There was a rainbow in the sky above our house, just for me.

It has been a great five years.

Special thanks to all our our wonderful friends and family, especially Jeff’s parents, John and Lois, who spent countess hours at our house painting and beautifying. I could not begin to list all the people who donated their time or expertise over the years, who charged us much less than they should have or who conveniently “forgot” to charge us anything at all. To all the friends and neighbors who have made our house feel like home, we are so thankful for you!

Painting Tile and Other Ways to Save an Ugly Fireplace

When we moved into our house, I loved the view. I loved the neighborhood. I loved the potential. But most everything else needed a lot of work.

We have been here nearly five years now (gasp!) and in that time, we have knocked down walls, pulled up carpet, blasted a hole in the foundation and put in a staircase…

But.

We have never gotten around to fixing one of the most hideous features in the house: the fireplace.

The way our fireplace looked when we first moved in…and the way it stayed until about a week ago.

Sometime, somewhere, someone thought a fireplace should be tiled in black faux marble with white grout. Sometime, somewhere, someone thought gold trim would be a great accent on said fireplace. Sometime, somewhere, someone realized this was a bad idea and tried to fix it by applying fake board and white trim to the mantel.

That did not help.

We bought the house with the horrible black tile and white grout. I spent many nights nursing twins on our sofa and staring at that fireplace until I developed a tick in my eye. I hated it so much. But, other projects always took priority until one day, I actually showed up in the living room with a crowbar.

Just before I ripped the first glossy veined tile off the wall, a thought occurred to me. Why not paint the tiles? If it doesn’t work, you can always rip them off then. But if it does work, you’ve saved yourself a bunch of time and money.

And that is exactly how I went from the photo above to the photo below for less than $10.

A lot of bang for my buck

Here’s how I did it:

1) The previous owners had attempted to hang something from the fireplace using double-sided sticky tape. Bad idea.

Because of the damage, I had to tape off the surround and spray paint it (in the house) using an oil-rubbed bronze color.

2) I did the same thing with the fireplace screen in order to rid the world of one more piece of fake gold trim.

God trim= endangered home decorating fad

This took many, many coats. In retrospect, I should have coughed up the extra few dollars for the more expensive spray paint. I used Krylon brand and was not impressed. DO NOT USE THAT PAINT. The paint did not want to stick, even though I lightly sanded the trim, just in case. Also, it flaked off with the slightest touch. Not cool.

I’ve used Rust-Oleum for lots of projects (including drawer pulls) and have never had that problem. So, I’ll very likely have to re-do this portion of the project because I was cheap. In the end, it was not worth a $2 savings.

3) While waiting for coats of spray paint to dry, I sanded the tile lightly then painted it with one coat of oil-based primer. I had some in the garage so this did not cost anything. If you have to buy it, go with Kilz brand. Don’t settle for anything less. It is not worth a bad result.

*P.S. I’m not getting paid to say good things about these products. They just work!

The surround after primer. It already looks the best it has in 5 years.

4) The next day, after the primer had dried completely, I painted over it with white enamel paint. I wasn’t sure what color to paint the tile at first, but I was hoping that painting it white would create a built-in look.

Besides, I had leftovers of the white paint.

However, enamel would have been a good choice anyway. This surround is not going to have to stand up to a lot of wear and tear, but I wanted to mimic a tile feel, and enamel paint is pretty close.

This took three coats of paint. If the tile had been a lighter color, two coats would have been sufficient. But that lovely black tile died hard.

5) We picked up some trim pieces at a local building supply liquidation store. The wide 4″ trim piece cost less than $3. It was just a little too narrow, so I purchased a coordinating trim piece for another $3. The handsome hubby helped to cut it and I nailed it up.

I painted the trim with the same enamel paint for a cohesive look. I did sand between the coats of paint on the top layer of the mantel because of some damage done to the top of the mantel (perhaps that’s why the previous owners stuck that fake wood on it!) but sanding is not always necessary. If you want a smoother look, sand. But I found sanding wasn’t really necessary for most of this project.

6) The end result is so beautiful, I wish I had done it years ago.

What do you think? Are you going to go paint some tile, or would you rather know how to make that wreath?

Twisted Branch Christmas Card Holder

Twisted branch Christmas card holder

Every Christmas, we are inundated with Christmas cards from friends and family. Each one is a special reminder of the people we care about the most, but too often, the cards and pictures end up in a pile because I don’t know where to put them.

My mother-in-law had a great solution. Years ago, she had purchased a Christmas card holder which resembled a branch. It was decorated with bright red birds and greenery. Ribbons hung down off the branch so she could attach and display all her cards in a cute and very organized way.

It was perfect, but I had never seen one like it in the stores. Thankfully, it seemed like a very easy craft to replicate, so I decided to make my own.

With the help of some coupons for Michael’s and some creative recycling, the entire project cost less than $5 and took about half-an-hour (minus time rummaging through my craft supplies) to complete.

Here’s how to do it:

Gather:

*One interesting and sturdy branch, 20-24” long, preferably with at least one fork in it

*One wire coat hanger (try to find one with paint chipping off–it’s a great look)

*About 13” of ½” ribbon (not wired).

*1 or 2 decorative birds in coordinating colors

*Artificial holiday berries or greenery picks (recycle an old wreath or use leftovers from another project!)

*Hot glue gun

*wire clippers (helpful, but not completely necessary)

Optional: paper clips and assorted buttons

Before the Christmas cards arrive, display antique postcards or pictures for interest

You probably don’t even need directions once you see the pictures, but here you go, just in case:

Step 1: Using a wire cutter, clip off the hook end of the hanger. Wrap the remanding wire around the ends of the branch to create a hanger for your branch. Bend the wire in the middle until the branch hangs straight.

Step 2: Cut 5 pieces of ribbon of varying lengths, no shorter than 2’ each. Space the ribbon along the branch, wrapping it over the back of the branch and securing with a dot of hot glue.

Step 3: Carefully melt the long ends of the ribbon with a flame to prevent fraying.

Step 4: Decorate! Secure the bird(s), nest, berries, pine cones, greenery, etc. to the branch with hot glue. Be creative! You can use the traditional reds and greens of the season, or go with metallic ribbons or jewel-tones—whatever you like.

Put a bird on it

Optional: If desired, glue assorted buttons to paper clips for a fun way to secure cards to the ribbon. Package these in a cute tin (recycle and decorate a breath mint) and they’re gift-ready!

Vintage buttons make for very cute paperclips. Make a bunch for a fun teacher gift!

Hang your Christmas card holder and use the paper clips to display your Christmas cards as they arrive.