The Nesting Place: It Doesn’t Have to Be Perfect to Be Beautiful by Myquillyn Smith

Author:Myquillyn Smith [Smith, Myquillyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2014-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

GALLERY WALL, a renter’s best friend for instant personality

But I Can’t Change That

One of the first things I noticed about our current Home Because It’s Where We Are rental was the fireplace surround: it was yellow. I don’t mean a soft, how-cheery-and-charming yellow, but yellow-teeth yellow. I wanted to change our fireplace, but we were renting. I just showed you my but. Did you miss it? What could I possibly do that was temporary but clever enough to look better and hold up to a fire burning in the fireplace? Forget it!

I spent a few weeks (okay, months — it was months before I came up with the solution) with the surround at the forefront of my brain. I don’t mean that I thought about it all the time, but my mind was always paying attention to anything that could be a solution.

Then one day I came across vinyl stick-on sheets of chalkboard paper. Just like the old contact paper we used to use to cover our textbooks, only thicker with chalkboardish material on the front. I ordered some, cut it up, and tried it out. I knew it could be a huge waste, but the outcome, if good, outweighed the risk. I didn’t need to announce to the world I was using chalkboard contact paper on our fireplace surround — unless it worked.

And it did! Attention, world, come look at this fun solution that I never would have looked for had it not been a problem in the first place. Our firebox is large enough and our gas fireplace is gentle enough that the chalkboard surround has lasted for years. And I can easily remove it at any time.

One more thing: sure, I could have left my chalkboard material plain, but it was a chalkboard after all. So I drew imperfect bricks on it with white chalk markers. Suddenly, the one thing in our family room that I hated the most became the very thing I wanted to show off.

I know what you’re thinking: Wait, you can’t DO that. You can’t put chalkboard vinyl stick-on sheets around your fireplace! I thought that too at first. But I decided to ignore that voice, and I’m glad I did. Shock of all shocks, shelter magazines liked the chalkboard fireplace too. It’s been photographed and published three times. The fireplace I hated has become a showpiece, but more important, it’s one of my favorite things in the room. I’m so glad I had a less-than-acceptable-to-me fireplace — a but if you will — otherwise I never would have cared to change it up.

I find that people are interested in the creative process of creating a beautiful room, but often they don’t like what they hear. We are looking for a magic formula, a step-by-step, foolproof way to decorate, and it just doesn’t exist. The best rooms are usually the result of good old-fashioned trial and error, risk, meaningful beauty, a bunch of unwanted Lovely Limitations, random buts we have to overcome, and some tears thrown in for good measure.

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