Room of Tranquility

Before our 5th anniversary my husband and I had moved into our third house.  Moving that many times alone is enough to stress anyone out.  But each move came with renovation needs - now that is stressful!  It was so much work to make our four walls home, yet we had little time to enjoy the fruits of our labor before having to move again.  When we moved in to our third and current house it was BAD!  It's hard to say which room was the worst, but the Master Bedroom was definitely at the top of my list.  But because our bank account and energy was just so drained we moved into our bedroom as it was.  We worked on what we had to like new insulation, toilets and a ceiling fan but decided to take a breather before doing more to the house. 

One day I finally got tired of looking up at black ceilings, vacuuming up pieces of our nasty tile & duct tape flooring and just feeling depressed each time I entered the room.  So right before my husband left for Air Force training we moved all of the furniture out and I was determined to put a dent in all that needed to be done.  

 

 

 

When my husband returned from training we started discussing what to do with the floor. Meanwhile he ripped up the tile and duct tape and put down some new plywood. Nine months of military pay didn't exactly make us rich, so we weren't sure what we were going to replace it with. 

On a Saturday in October we went to Lowe's to price our options.  We had kinda settled on the wood laminate but the underlayment materials looked so cheap and overpriced compared to what we had purchased for a previous house just a few years before.  What to do???  Then my husband started to check out the cork flooring.  I knew all the benefits of cork, I had even priced it for our room a few months before.  But since we didn't plan to stay in our house long term I knew we couldn't justify the cost.  Jeremy really wanted it, but we left the store empty handed, undecided on what to do next.  I was frustrated, but Jeremy prayed.

On Tuesday evening Jeremy went out with his brother in-law to work on a project with a mutual friend named Larry.  Before parting ways that night Larry said, "hey, if you guys know anyone that is looking for some cork flooring, I've got a boxes and boxes of it that I'm looking to get rid of."  When my husband came home and told me that I just felt like God had given me a big hug.  To my shame I often forget that God cares about me.  This was such a personal reminder of the love my Heavenly Father has for me.  

You may be wondering what the big deal is, it's just flooring.  But in years past we had spent so much time and money on our previous two houses.  I look back on those years as a time that I neglected giving my first born some much needed attention.  Just about every weekend started with a trip to Home Depot.  You can never get time back.

We had lost our first home on October 15, 2005 when a drunk driver crashed into our house in the middle of the night.  All of the work we had done was in vain, so much was destroyed in an instant. But on October 15, 2011 we met Larry at his storage unit to pick up several boxes of cork flooring for FREE!  I'm the type of person that remembers dates and God knows that.  So when we came home from picking up the flooring it was as if God said to me - "I've seen the injustices you've gone through and I care, I love you."

    

 

Not only was our new bedroom floor free, it was less work! Wood laminate requires the installation of underlayment, but cork flooring has underlayment built in! Saving money is great, saving time is even better! 

 

 

“I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten..." Joel 2:25

 

You may have noticed an odd shaped window in our room. That was a fun little  project that I started a few years ago, but just recently put it up on the wall. The old window was a local Ebay find. I think I paid $10 or $15 for it. An Amish man down the road was cleaning out his old barn and had stacks and stacks of old windows he just wanted to get rid of. I didn't know what I was going to do with a triangle shaped window, but it was so unique I just had to buy it!  
 

Fixing it up wasn't hard, it just needed some creativity. The large square windows were a perfect 8x10 for pictures. The small triangle shaped windows are now mirrors to add some light and depth to our room. Today it neatly holds my necklaces that had become a tangled up mess in my little jewelry box.

 

Today, I am so thankful for our little love nest.  As long as I keep the laundry baskets, stacks of mail and extra stuff out of our bedroom it can be a place of tranquility.  Everyone needs a room like that.

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