Thrifty Entry Bench

Here's the details on the entry bench you saw in the before and after post. It didn't always look so crisp and clean. 

Marcos and I stopped by my favorite thrift store near my house not even looking for this guy. I had a vision of what I wanted for the entryway for a long time and had looked on and off for a while, but that particular day we were after something else (I can't even remember what now). Anyway, all we had done was pull in the parking lot when the clouds parted and the sun shone down on this beautiful little storage bench! Well it wasn't exactly beautiful at the time but I knew it would work perfectly for what I wanted. 

It had a few dings and scrapes and lots of dirt and scuff marks but it was solid wood so I knew that would be easy to fix and structurally it was in great shape. 

So we took him home and cleaned him off and then I started working. First, I sanded the whole thing down to give myself a fresh start on the wood. Then I primed and painted the whole thing (3 coats!) and finished it with a polyurethane protective finish. (Sorry no pictures!) Between our normal schedule, weather constraints, and trying to work during naptimes, that whole process took me several weeks. But when I was finally done and the paint and poly had cured, we flipped it over and took the casters off and brought it in the house. This is what our entryway looked like before we brought in the bench. We had that table in there which looked great but wasn't what I had envisioned. Plus, it was really good at accumulating junk!

You can sort of see the bench in all it's freshly painted glory in the picture below but I forgot to take a picture of it by itself before we started working on the cushion. 

Now I realize our method for making a cushion for the bench was a little unorthodox, but remember that the title of this post is thrifty entry bench. I was attempting to work on a tight budget so we used what we had + free stuff. So, yes, what you just saw was a giant foam mattress topper complete with the eggshell texture and all. We had recently helped a friend move and she was trying to get rid of it. Coincidentally, I had just gone to look at craft foam and that stuff is EXPENSIVE! So of course the obvious solution was to cut up the mattress topper to use as the foam for our bench. Duh! So that is exactly what we did. Here it is all cut to size. We figured out after the fact that if you cut through foam with an electric knife it work a whole lot better than trying to use a box knife (which is what we did). Well (hopefully) you can't really tell that our line isn't quite straight.

 I found this fabric at Hobby Lobby and I love love it! 

The next step was to cut a board (we just used scrap plywood from the garage) the same size as our foam and the top of the bench. Then we just laid the foam on top of the plywood, wrapped the fabric around the foam and stapled it to the back of the plywood. It was definitely a 2-person job to make sure the fabric was staying straight and tight and stapling all at the same time. Here it is all finished and put together! Ta-da!  

It really makes the entryway feel a lot more crisp and clean plus it's a great place to plop down when you need to take shoes on and off. Since both the garage door and the front door are off of this room, this is where all the traffic comes in and out so we really needed this to be a functional room. I'm still wanting some baskets for it but for now it's working to hold our bags (purse, diaper bag and library bag) in between trips. 

Yay for a thrift store makeover! Love this guy! 

Getting Uncomfortable

I just want to share a little bit of what God has been teaching us over the past few days. This is pretty much a giant online journal brain-dump! So bear with my rambling and hopefully the Lord can take these words and make them mean something to someone else too. 

As some of you may know, we have been in contact with Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) since last September. We have some college Bible credits that we need to get out of the way before we can officially begin the application process, but it has been something that has been kind of "in the works" and something we have been praying about. 
This past Friday, the recruiter that we have been working with came to our home for a visit and to work through an estimated timetable of when and how everything would happen if we were to pursue this full-steam. It was great to get an estimate but it was also a little shocking and overwhelming that in less than a year, Marcos could quit his job and we could be full-time "missionaries" with MAF. Of course, it would be another year and a half before we actually left the States but, still, it becomes a lot more of a reality when you start putting dates on it. 

However, over the past few months and especially as we talked to the recruiter on Friday, I have begun to have serious doubts about my "calling" to the mission field. There are a lot of things that I am very passionate about that are not location specific. Raising a family, supporting my husband, being involved in some sort of ministry to underprivileged/orphan kids, maybe even sports ministry, can all be accomplished here in the States just as well as in a foreign country. I have never had a 100% sure belief that God was calling me to foreign missions. Ministry, yes. Missions, maybe? 

So, I tried to go back to the basics. What I know to be true. 

I am called to be a missionary. Matthew 28:19-20. Pretty basic.

So, the next question is where? 

Anywhere I am. Everywhere I go. Every day.

I think the reason I am hesitant to go to the mission field is because I don't see my community here in Oklahoma City as a mission field. Oh, I say that I do, but in reality, in the deceitfulness of my heart, I don't. I don't feel "ready" to go out of my comfort zone, to be accountable to be in the Word and in prayer daily, to live a life that is not "normal" by my own definition.

In my head, these are my options. 1: Go be a missionary in some remote country and have a hard life that is completely surrendered to the Lord. 2: Stay here and have a comfortable life and do whatever I want. 

But if I look to the Bible, those are not my options. If I boil it down, my real struggle is not whether I want to be a foreign missionary or not, my struggle is do I want to surrender and serve God or not?
Comfortable Christianity is so common in our culture. We can be Christians and have a comfortable little god but still run our lives the way that WE want to. Of course we've all heard this but I think we tend to think that is someone else, maybe a new Christian or someone who is not really serious about their walk with God. But the more I have looked at this in scripture and the more God is revealing in our hearts, I am beginning to realize that this is ME!

We need Jesus to change our mindset that is is only "missionaries" that have to be challenged out of their comfort zone and give up some of the conveniences of life. Even if we never end up on a foreign mission field, I hope that God continues to work in our lives so that our lives are a constant mission. Missions is not a job that you go to from 8-5 and then you get to be "off". There is no time off. We are called to live on mission.  

BUT THAT IS SCARY!!!!

So we don't do it. We convince ourselves that a little Bible-reading, going to church, and living a moral life is all there is to Christianity. 

We let lesser things distract us from total, radical surrender to what God is calling us to. Galatians 5:20 "selfish ambitions" is named as one of the works of the flesh. "...the one who sows to his flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, but the one who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from the Spirit." Galatians 6:8

But how often does selfish ambition define my life? What do I worship most days? Selfish ambitions. I sow to the flesh rather than sowing to the Spirit. 

I need to see Jesus as the most glorious thing. I need to stand in awe of His gospel. If I saw Him for who He truly is, in all of His glory, I could not help but respond in complete surrender and submission to His plans for my life.

So, will we be "real" missionaries someday? I have no idea. But whether we are somewhere halfway around the world or right here in OKC I want our lives to be uncomfortable. Am I ready for that step? NO! I am scared to death running in the other direction most of the time. But the cry of our hearts is for God to make that our desire. Somehow. 

4th of July weekend recap

Happy super late 4th of July!! We had a wonderful, relaxing weekend at home. We missed being with family but were glad for the chance to just spend time together at home. 

On the 4th, we went to the zoo as a family which was the first time Marcos has ever been able to go with us and we had a blast! 

 

E loved petting the goats, playing in the river, and watching the monkeys who were putting on a show for us. 

The evening of the 4th we went to dinner at some of Marcos' work friends house. They live close to where the OKC fireworks show is held so we walked across the street from their house and watched fireworks when it got dark. E was scared at first but by the time it was over he was clapping and asking for "mo". 

Friday we got to sleep in late and then spent the day just doing some things around the house and relaxing.

Saturday we took on another house project and finally finished the inside of our front door. We ended up going with a stain instead of paint. Marcos went to Lowe's while I stayed home with E. He took pictures of different stain colors and sent them to me. We went with the color Dark Walnut in this picture. 

But when we got it up on the door it ended up looking like this. 

Not exactly the color we intended but not bad either. We are still getting used to it but I think we will keep it. 

After we finished the door that afternoon E and I played on the slip n' slide. He's just too cute not to share pictures :) He figured out he can drink the water which is what he's attempting in the first two pics. 

Then Sunday was church and naps and then we went to the splash park for some final fun before the week started again. It was the first time we've gone this summer and E loved it! 

Plus he got his first snowcone :) 

It was a wonderful, relaxing weekend with lots of fun but we were still able to get some work accomplished. Hope everyone had as much fun as we did!   

House Tour - Before and After: Entry and Hall

I finally got around to shooting some more pictures for the before and afters of our house. I wanted to do this series of posts mostly for my own benefit, so that I would be sure and have photo documentation of what we did with this crazy house! So here goes the next installment: the entry and front halls, including the coffee bar area. 

Welcome to our home!

But first, I guess we should go back to the before. We came home from our honeymoon as brand-new newlyweds and opened the front door to see this...

Ewwwwwwwwww.

Thankfully, we were crazy in love and didn't care what our house looked like just that it was our first home and we loved it!

Seriously, that was what you saw walking in the front door. There were giant glass sliding doors on all three sides of the courtyard. So, when you came in the front door you looked through sliding glass doors into the courtyard and then saw through the farther set of doors into the master bedroom. Yep. Not ok. 

In addition to just being weird, all those glass doors were also horribly inefficient for heating/cooling purposes so one of the first major projects we took on that summer was removing all 3 sets of sliding doors and framing in normal walls/windows. (I'll show more of the master bedroom details in its own post). In the entry,  we opted for a long window and I envisioned a window seat/bench below it from the very beginning. So I am pretty ecstatic that from that same point of view our entry now looks like this!

The door you can see on the right of that top picture leads to the garage. To the left of the entry are two hallways: one that makes a walkway behind the living room and is where the coat closet and coffee bar live, the other leading back to the bedrooms. Here is the view looking in from the living room.

As well as reframing that wall from a door to a window, we also re-textured and painted the walls, painted all the trim, added crown moulding, replaced the door to the garage, installed the wood floors and refinished the front door. The bench was a thrift store find that I refinished and added a cushion to. I'll post more details about that project soon. The light fixture was original with the house and we decided it wasn't bad enough to be worth replacing. If we live here long enough maybe somewhere down the line we will but for now we like it enough to live with it. I also hung curtains and added our little mail in/out box. We use that basket in the corner to store flip-flops and everyday shoes that get left by the door. 

I've been on the hunt for baskets to add to the bench but haven't been able to find what I'm looking for. For now it is a handy place to stash my purse, the diaper bag, the library books and our pool bag.

And this just makes me happy. :)

There is still some work to do in the entryway, however. Some things that still need to be done are:

• Paint/stain the inside of the front door
• Paint the door leading to the garage
• Install threshold/seal under the garage door
• Get bigger/better rug for front door and garage door
• Finish touch-up paint on the crown moulding
• Possibly replace light fixture
• Get baskets for bench
• Possibly hang some hooks for guest's coats

Turning directly 90 degrees left from the entry you see this.

This little "hall" is open to the living room on the front side and leads around to the kitchen/dining room (see the highchair in the distance). 

It used to look like this...

This picture was taken from standing in the living room looking back, with the entry off to the right (look at those blue-green walls!) This was obviously originally intended to be used as a wet bar, a pretty staple feature of many homes built in the 70s. Since we didn't have any use for that we turned it into a place to store all of my coffee-loving husband's paraphernalia. 

It looked like this for a bit while we were enduring our kitchen renovation.

But now it looks like this.

(Why I didn't take those 4 extra k-cups off the top BEFORE I took the picture I will never know)

In here we painted walls and trim, tiled the countertop and backsplash, and painted the cabinets. Marcos made the k-cup holder out of a scrap pallet we had. I framed a souvenir bag we had brought home from El Salvador which has a special place in our hearts. And of course the "cafe do Brasil" coffee bean bag was kind of our starting point for this space. We would still like to potentially add some more shelving to get some of the stuff up off the counter but for now its a pretty happy little coffee spot. 

Ok, moving on to the other hallway. This leads to the back part of the house where all the bedrooms are. When we first moved in the outside "wall" of this hallway was actually the big glass sliding doors so you could look out and see the courtyard. (thank goodness it doesn't look like that anymore!)

You can get a better view of the glass hallway from this picture - it is the doors you can see out the window to the left. Now, after framing in that wall and adding a normal exterior door instead, the view down the hall looks a little more hallway-ish.

The major accomplishments in here were texture, paint, and laying the flooring. I also used this space for a photo gallery wall which I LOVE. I even included a little spot to hang some of Elias' "artwork". It just uses a little mini-clothespin so I can swap it out whenever he creates something new. At just17 months he's not exactly churning out masterpieces, but he uses stickers and those dot paints and I am a proud momma who loves them. :)

So there ya have it. The new and improved versions of those small yet important spaces in our home. 

More rooms to come soon!