#8 Make Home Decor from an Army/Navy Surplus Store Item

When you go through marriage counseling prior to the wedding, they have you talk about your feelings on a lot of things. Kelly and I discussed how we each like to handle finances, our feelings about children, our thoughts on God, etc. What they don't have you talk about is shoes. They should.

See, I like to kick off my shoes as soon as I get home. If there's one thing I hate having on my feet more than socks, it's shoes. I usually kick my shoes off around the foot of the bed. It's sort of my go to spot. Taking off my tie, button up, belt, etc. and changing into basketball shorts and a tshirt usually follows closely thereafter, but shoes always come first. Now the rest of the items usually get hung up or go into the dirty clothes. Not because I'm conscientious, but because I hate ironing. Either washing or hanging stuff up avoids wrinkles (sometimes if I don't hang something up that's still clean and leave it crumpled up on the bed until wrinkled, it'll go into the dirty clothes anyway). But, the shoes stay right at the end of the bed.

While a perfectly reasonable routine for a single person, the kicking off of shoes proved contentious in a marriage setting. Most folks sleep at night, but not Kelly. Kelly, it turns out, likes to take 3 a.m. adventures to the bathroom or to get a glass of water or whatever. Because she likes to take these trips without turning on any lights or even really opening her eyes, she inevitably gets to the foot of the bed and trips over my shoes. Which wouldn't be that big of an issue, except that she likes to wake me up to complain that she tripped over my shoes. She'll then kick the shoes underneath the bed (adding insult to injury for the stubbed toe). I didn't realize this whole little dance was happening at the start. For the first month or two of our marriage, when I'd wake up the next morning with little to no recollection of our 3 a.m. conversation, I would spend a good 20 minutes searching and wondering where my shoes had absconded to since last they were on my feet.

Consequently, when it came time to mark this resolution off my fun things to try in 2012, it made sense to make a home for my shoes. Inspiration came in the form of a $9 trunk at the Goodwill in Franklin, Tennessee. As you can see, paying $9 was a bit generous of me, but whatev. The whole Army Navy surplus thing hadn't worked out after I realized the only one in Nashville basically sold brand new stuff that didn't need any fixing up, so I needed something and this was it.

My first step was to remove all the old fabric and foam that the trunk had been upholstered in sometime around 1970 or so. Once removed, the wood and hardware were in pretty good shape. That sentence skipped about 2 hours of me removing staples with needle-nose pliers. Whoever built the trunk to start really didn't want the fabric and foam removed, so they used more staples than any reasonable person should.  But I digress.

Next, I had to pick out new fabric and foam, which led to me spending a Saturday afternoon in a fabric store with 30  or so odd women. The folks running the place loved me once they figured out I hadn't unintentionally walked into the wrong store. Mostly because I clearly had no idea what I was doing. With their help, I selected several patterns that spoke to me. Granted, none of them actually spoke, but Tim Gunn uses that line a lot, and I was channeling my inner Project Runway. I decided prints and color were the ways to go, as a trunk is your chance to add character to a room. Having learned not to cross Kelly if I hoped to sleep at night, I presented my findings to her. She selected two (what I was calling in my own head Lilly Pulitzer coral and Nautical black) and away I went.

Now, my dad is a handy person, and he spends a lot of time building stuff. I'd like to think he's proud of my finished product, but he's a bit of a perfectionist, whereas I'm a bit of a lazy-ist. Plus, I'm not sure his feelings on primarily using fabric scissors during construction as opposed to table saws or mortar. There was a hammer involved, though, so maybe that will win me a few points. In the end, it turned out relatively well. And, the trunk's fun. Sort of Caribbeanish with the color scheme and prints. Like it'd be at home with jerk chicken and steel drum band. In addition to the coral and black prints, I spray painted the inside a lagoon color (this time Home Depot's name, not mine). Not a lot of lagoon, coral, and black in other styles of furniture. That American Empire style is a real bore. Probably drinks tea with its pinky extended. Best of all, my shoes have finally found a home, and Kelly has only tripped over our new trunk twice since I put it together last week.

Until next time...