Around the House: The Man Cave

First of all, let's meet Mr. Great Indoors.  Ain't he cute?

On our trip up the Blue Ridge Parkway last summer

Mr. GI has lots of manly hobbies that required his own space, just like my girly hobbies required my own space (which is up next in the house tour!).  Our realtor sold our house as "three bedrooms," but this space -- from the minute we bought it -- was the Man Cave.  Or perhaps I should say The Man Cave.  The MC is the tiniest room in the house, probably only bested by the master bathroom. As such, it's really tough to take a picture of the entire space.

At first we really did try to make this space into a literal third bedroom.  I had a great loft from freshman year in college, and it was perfect for little ones who stayed the night.  However, we only had one little one stay one night in the length of time we had the loft up.

 Excuse the terrible photo -- and the deflated pool float on top of the loft.  And I swear it's actually a pool float.... don't get any ideas.

So the loft came down and got stuffed into the attic (we'll see if it's ever coming out of the attic).  Now Mr. GI has free reign of this room, and he's done such a great job outfitting it (I can't say decorating it... it IS the Man Cave, after all).

Here's the view from the door.  Notice the Man Cave sign, which Mr. GI found at Hobby Lobby of all places.

He actually repainted the bike and the guitar that you can see on the left, and both look very professional-- I married a spray paintin' fool. The guitar hooks are also homemade.  The chairs and side table came from a furniture warehouse close by for $100.  I still can't believe what a great deal we got on those.  The small ottomans came in a set from BB&B and they stack into the bigger ones in our living room. 

If you turn to the left, you can see the desk Mr. GI built himself. [It sure is nice to have a handy guy in the house.  :-)]  He built it so that the desk part can fold up if he ever needs more room and added that detail on the back for support and interest-- see how it looks kind of like a tree?  And yes, that's a snow board above the door.  He bought it when he was still living in Virginia and has used it a few times around here, but we never get enough snow to do much.  The antlers(/storage) are from a buck that he brought home fall before last.  We ate venison for about six months after that.  Seriously-- is my guy handy or what?

Straight across from the man chairs is our tiny little TV set-up.

It's nothing much, but we watch our online Hulu shows here; it's a ghetto process, believe me.  He has all of his tools stored in the closet to the right of the TV.  Unfortunately, we're too cheap to run that tiny fridge (it eats up so much energy!), so for now the "beer fridge" is just for looks.  The fan on top of the bookshelf is also for looks, but it definitely adds some manly class. 

So I'm sure you noticed just how many things in this tiny space were personally made or tweaked by Mr. Great Indoors.  The moral of this story is that all of my hopes and dreams for this house won't happen without him, and I'm so lucky that he makes things happen around our little ranch.  Actually, I'm just lucky.  [Insert yacking sounds here.]


Source list:
Man Cave sign, Hobby Lobby; storage ottomans, Bed Bath & Beyond; curtain and rod, IKEA; bookshelf with brackets, IKEA