Emily, my precious daughter-in-law, wanted to do something very special for Tyler for Christmas this year! She's been planning it in her mind for over a month. She wanted to surprise him with his very own man-cave. I was so excited when she asked me to help her!!! They live in a 4 bedroom house, 2 rooms and a bath upstairs, and 2 rooms and a bath downstairs. Last weekend, we moved the master bedroom downstairs and made the small room beside their bedroom an office. (I wish I took pictures of that room yesterday because Emily has done an amazing job in there!). Upstairs is now the guest bedroom and the man-cave!
The theme Emily decided on was "T-Naples". The idea came from a picture I gave them a while back that was in my attic. It was a picture of sailboats sailing across the ocean with blue skies in the background. At the top of the picture it says, "Naples". Sometimes, when they have friends over, Tyler turns their keeping room into what he calls, "T-Naples". He hangs up the Naples picture in the keeping room, then stacks the benches from their dining room table on top of each other and throws a sheet over them, and pretends to be a bartender at a tiki bar in Naples. He say's, "Welcome to T-Naples, what'll ya have?" Then he pours them water from a whiskey bottle. His friends just play along with it. hahaha. Tyler has always had quite the imagination!
We had to get super creative with this project because with both Emily and Tyler in school, they are on a super-tight budget! Not only were we limited with the budget, but since they are renting, we couldn't paint the walls. We went shopping at the thrift store and good will and found 2 tufted leather chairs (one was a recliner!) We also found a nice dartboard (missing darts) and a bunch of beverage glasses. We scavenged through my attic and found a rug, an old suitcase, another sailboat picture, some lamps and some burlap shades. I also gave them a t.v. and a dresser that was in my garage. We put the tall dresser, from my garage, in Ty and Emily's bedroom, and repurposed their long dresser, and used it as a t.v. stand with lamps on either side. Emily painted the two barstools that we had given them for a wedding present a beautiful teal color that we found at home depot. She also painted the mirror that goes with the dresser/t.v. stand with chalkboard paint. We made a cork board with an old picture we found at the goodwill. Emily painted it with chalkboard paint too, then we hot glued corks onto it and drew a picture of a wineglass in the middle. Emily picked up some darts for the dartboard and some cute little nut bowls to put on the bar. We used an old drum they had in their garage for a table between the chairs and put 2 guitars on stands on either side of the t.v. stand. Tyler is into music and Emily wanted this room to reflect his personality!
Yesterday, Emily, her friend Meredith, Ellie, and I spent all day putting the room together. Tyler was at work all day and thankfully had to work late, because we didn't finish it until 6:30. Emily told him that she put his present up stairs, so he couldn't go up there. We've been storing the stuff in my garage and yesterday hauled it over to their house. Moving the furniture up those stairs was a booger! Especially the hutch. It was in the kitchen. We had to take it apart to get it up the stairs. We couldn't paint that either because it belongs to the home owner. We stocked it with the glasses that we got from the goodwill.
The last thing we did was build the bar. We searched their garage for odds and ends. We thought we were going to use the wood in there to build it, but since none of us are carpenters, it was a bit overwhelming. There were some old golf cart windshields in the corner of the garage that Tyler had gotten from work back when he used to work at the golf coarse. We used hemp to hook them together and it turned out to be the perfect size and was amazingly sturdy! The old blinds I brought over from my attic were too small for the double windows, so we used them as a cover for the bar. It turned out so cute!!!
The big reveal will be tonight. Emily face booked their friends and they are all coming over to surprise him for the grand opening of T-Naples. I am so excited for Tyler and so very proud of my sweet and thoughtful daughter-in-law!!!
