Week 15: A Year of Watching HGTV

Kitchen cabinets...been waiting for them for a long time! :)

My bathroom! So excited not to have to share with my brother anymore. (No offense, Dave. But I'm sure you'll be even happier to have me out of your way. :))

I was never the one who liked to watch HGTV.  But last summer, I decided that I needed to start doing some research on house layouts and décor, so I set the TIVO to record 4 or 5 shows on HGTV. Fourteen months later of watching HGTV, I can tell you that my favorites are “Property Brothers” and “Flip Or Flop.”   

I admire people who know how to make a space beautiful.  These people seem to enjoy the process of changing paint colors and rearranging furniture and are you kidding me, they even enjoy the Pinterest DIY projects of refurbishing dressers and the like.  God bless these people.  If this is you, know that you have a gift from the Lord, so keep using it.

But let me tell you—I never get on Pinterest except when looking for ideas for VBS snacks and children’s ministry crafts and recently when I needed some major direction in choosing color schemes for paint for my house.  So I’m a bit out of my element.

As I navigate being a newbie at home ownership, I fight the tension of wanting to have a beautiful, comfortable home and the stress that comes with the trial and error, the energy and money invested in trying to make that happen. I desperately want help, but I also don’t want people to tell me what to do. I want to work hard and make it my own and be proud of it.

I really value an emphasis on being a calm, positive person, but all of the house projects push against that. (So the question is… What is God trying to teach me?!)  As I continued to watch HGTV over the past year, a funny thing happened:  I started identifying with the stress that the homeowners felt when extra expenses came up and when they were disappointed because they weren’t able to get something they had hoped for. My parents probably thought it was a little creepy at how much I enjoyed seeing the homeowners get stressed out during the shows.

Let us consider my most recent example of a situation that pushes against the calm positivity that I try to exude.  Here’s how I would describe the process of picking out paint for your house.

How To Pick Out Paint in 10 Steps

1. When you’re talking on the phone with your sister from Kansas, get on Pinterest so you can both look at color schemes together. 

2. Email the color schemes you chose to another sister to get her opinion. (Thank God for an abundance of sisters.)

3. Make the list:

            Living Room: Gray

            Kitchen: Beige

            Dining Room: Blue

            Hall Bath: Gray

            Laundry Room: Yellow

            My Bedroom & Bathroom: Purple (Go big or go home!)

4. Go to store #1 and get zero customer service, so leave and go to store #2 across the street. 

5. Grab the paint swatches, take them home, and show your mom.  She’ll say, “Well, you’ve been watching HGTV, so I guess you know what you’re doing.”

6. Next week, go to the paint store after work to buy 3 paint samples.

7. You paint the samples on the walls as you blare your music.  You decide that you were 2 for 3.  You like the blue, like the gray, but feel that the purple is too much of a Crayola shade.

8. Go back to the store the next day after work and make your decisions.  You tell the guy which colors, which is like hard enough, and then he asks you what kind of paint you want—semi-gloss? satin? matte? premium?  This shouldn’t be a big deal, but you’ve never bought paint before (besides for Vacation Bible School sets), and you’re so over making decisions.  You tell the paint guy, “Sure, satin.” Then you sigh and blurt out to the guy behind you in line, “I don’t know!” He’s surprised you’re trying to get sympathy from him, but he’s polite and says, “It’s a lot of decisions, isn’t it?” And you smile because maybe you’re overreacting. 

9. The paint guy loads the cans into the back of your car, and you drive away thinking that this should be fun and exciting, but you just dropped $430 on paint so instead, you think, “Dang.”

10. The next day your mom, your dad, your aunt, and your sister come ready to help you paint the whole house.  They are troopers because it’s hot, and it’s a long day of them looking to you for decisions about which room and which color.  They are really supportive, but still you obviously need help in thinking this through, so they ask, “Do you want the same color for the closet? Are you sure you want that there?” And actually, you’re not sure.  At the end of the day, you’re left staring, staring, staring at the walls and wondering which paint colors you really like in your rooms and which you don’t.  It’s all the same agony of deciding whether or not you like your new hairstyle.

What is left at the end of the day--just waiting for us to do the 2nd coat.

Sadly, I ended up ditching the purple paint. I also changed the hall bath to be blue and the master bath to be gray.  And then I took a nap and decided to focus on other problems in the world.  Because, as you know, there are more important things to think about other than paint.

My niece Raegan is 9 years old, and she has been a natural fashionista since she was a toddler.  Anytime Raegan gives me a compliment, I hold it in high regard.  When Raegan was 6, she walked in the house and said hi to me, slowly looked over my shirt, pants, shoes, jewelry for a few moments, then nodded and very seriously—determinedly—said, “I like your outfit.” I felt like I had been knighted by the queen. 

Raegan with me earlier this summer

A few weeks ago, she came over with her family to check out the progress of my house.  While the others rushed inside, she paused on the porch, and then decidedly told her mom, “I like Aunt Mary’s stone wall.  I wish she had more of it.” Yes, dear.  The stone is my favorite too, and I would have gotten more of it had it been in the budget. This girl has an eye for style and design. J

It shouldn’t be a surprise then to know that Raegan likes to watch HGTV with me.  She lies down on the couch when I turn on the show “Property Brothers”; she watches intently and then sometimes comments on which design elements she prefers. 

One day as we were watching together, I began to have some 2^nd thoughts that come only when we include children in our activities, and for the first time, we consider the impact it might have on them. I began to fear that watching HGTV might produce some envy in Raegan for houses that were more luxurious.  I began to consider how the show might cause Raegan to value the materialism and the restlessness of striving to have nicer things.  After all, I was the one who turned this TV show on for her, so I should be intentional in explaining to her that having a perfectly trendy home is not actually attainable.  Our focus should not be on materialism, but rather on honoring God and loving people.  

During my year of not only watching HGTV, but also of spending so many hours designing my house and now seeing everything pop up in 3D, I have had to remind myself of the same thing: Having a perfectly trendy home is not actually attainable.  Our focus should not be on materialism, but rather on honoring God and loving people. 

In her article, “Give Me Gratitude or Give Me Debt,” Glennon Doyle Melton writes about how after she posted a photo of her kitchen, she received several well-meaning emails about how she needs to update her kitchen.  She read their comments and began to feel dissatisfied with her cabinets and floor and mismatched appliances. But then she considered what she was grateful for in her kitchen—food in her fridge to feed her family, clean water from her faucet, medicine in her cabinet to help her family members when they get sick.  Glennon considered what was important to her and then explained,

I will not be a slave to the Tyranny of Trend any longer. I am almost 40 years old and no catalog is the Boss of Me anymore. I am free. I am not bound to spend my precious days on Earth trying to keep up with the Joneses- because the Joneses are really just a bunch of folks in conference rooms changing “trends” rapidly to create fake monthly emergencies for us. OH NO! NOW IT’S A SUBWAY TILE BACKSPLASH WE NEED!  No, thank you. Life offers plenty of REAL emergencies to handle.[1]

I appreciate that Glennon chooses gratitude over envy, enjoying her family members over enjoying materialism.  

This causes me to ask…What good is it for us to gain fancy cabinets but forget to thank God for what He has already given us? What good is it for us to have an open floor concept, but not have a house that shares love and peace and joy?

I still watch HGTV.  It’s perfect for a mindless, fun show to watch during lunch on a lazy Saturday. Raegan and I will probably still watch it together from time to time. And as Raegan grows up, I want to encourage her to develop and use her sense of style because that is a gift that God has given her.  Maybe we’ll learn together how to keep a wise perspective on valuing beauty in the home while not becoming discontent with what we have.

I confess that writing this post today has been therapeutic for me—a chance for me to preach at myself.  The journey of making my house a home is far from over; there will be more painting and more shopping and more decisions about furniture and décor…more wrestling with how much to spend on stuff and more focus on what I’m grateful for and what is really important. My house is a work in progress, just like me.

Hall Bath

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[1] Melton, Glennon Doyle.  (2014).  “Give Me Gratitude or Give Me Debt.” 

Retrieved on September 13, 2014 from Momastery: Truth-Tellers + Hope-Spreaders. http://momastery.com/blog/2014/08/11/give-liberty-give-debt/.