All Out Kentucky Blue!

University of Kentucky fans take note! One lucky man (my one and only) returned from two years in Afghanistan to a customized man den. Now this guy doesn't ask for much - time to play World of Warcraft, a good home cooked meal, and a place to sit and watch every single Kentucky basketball game played. While he was in Afghanistan, the man would get up at ungodly hours to watch any UK game carried on the television station there, then go to work! So someone with that dedication deserved something special. In this photo he had been home for just a few hours after surprising our daughters at work on December 14th.  He was actually due home five days later on December 19th. After taking a nap while he waited for the kids to come home from their workplaces, he finally got to see the man den. Notice the huge smile. Since then, a trip was made to Kentucky where I selected a few more small items to add to his walls.

The small flags hanging near the ceiling are duplicates of the much larger ones that hang near the roof of Rupp Arena. In the top photo on the left is a poster put out each year by a company near Fort Knox, Kentucky. These posters show the current year's team members and the game schedule for the year. This poster just happens to show last years NCAA champs.

Below is a picture of custom made "cornhole" games (I hope you know what that is). A neighbor who is incredibly talented makes all sorts of custom items from wood. He added the claw marks which are especially cool and which rachets up the "coolness factor"!

But that's not all. We didn't forget the rugs or stairs.

Yep. Darn straight. The man has his own basketball court. When my married daughter has a baby, we are decking him or her out in a Kentucky basketball suit, handing the kid a ball, putting little basketball nets at each end, and teaching him/her to shoot! Start em young, we say. And if you've ever been in Kentucky you'll see every kid in the driveway taking free throws til the parents drag him inside!

In the top right photo is the far wall. We put a center poster up with the Kentucky Wildcat mascot, and surrounded it with photo copies of Sport Illustrated covers issued after NCAA finals are done when Kentucky won. I'm now on the hunt for early win years publications.

In the top left photo are the custom stair decals. After hours of detailed painting (by me), the guy who made the cornholes applied decals as seen above. My youngest daughter, a good conceptual artist, designed the stairs. On the top tread of this level, which is painted Kentucky Blue, you look down the stairs. That top stair contains the words "Welcome to Wildcat Country" written in white on the blue tread. It's not until you go to the bottom of the stairs and turn around do you see the rest of the design. Yeah, it's that cool!

The furniture was purchased at the nearby IKEA and put together by my daughters and a friend. In the center photo you see the Fathead decals we put on the furniture. In addition, my son-in-law hooked up a new gaming computer to the new 42" HD/3D tv so my husband can play World of Warcraft on a 42" screen versus a 10" MacBook Pro screen! Then he hooked up a new XBox 360 with Kinect and a dvd player that is blue ray and 3D enhanced. Above the furniture is the 4' x 8' mural of Rupp Arena at the University of Kentucky.  A close up is below.

When my man is sitting in the Lazy-Boy to watch the game, he feels like he is sitting in a top-tier seat in the arena.

But it didn't stop there! No way.

I found basketball lamps (2) with Kentucky Blue lampshades. One is here on this table and the other is at his desk. I also took a table, painted it Kentucky Blue and White, and added a decal! Add a University of Kentucky trash can (under the table) and a UK throw made for him years ago by his sister-in-law and he's got a man-cave he can live in (and now does).

GO BLUE...GO WHITE...GO WILDCATS!

Product Notes:
Lowe's Home Improvement stores - If you go to the paint section, give them the name of your favorite major university or pro team and they have the paint colors ready to mix at a touch of the button.
Hagopian Rug stores - This store is Michigan specific. The largest is in Novi, Michigan by Twelve Oaks Mall. Phone number is 248-449-RUGS (7847).  I wandered in to look at rugs for my wood floors and just happened to see a small rug that you put by the front door. It had the University of Michigan logo (Go Blue! Go Maize!). It so happens that they had a catalog of rugs you could buy with team logos  in various sizes and the University of Kentucky rug was in it. The catalog also had rugs with football fields. Now if this was a University of Michigan den...! The rug is 7.5' x 10.5'.
Fathead Murals - www.fathead.com. It has a variety of vinyl murals that can be applied to walls and flat surfaces. They come in a variety of sizes and content. If you can't afford a large wall mural, the smaller team decals are quite affordable and we attached our to furniture and lamp shades without a problem.
IKEA furniture - www.ikea.com. The center unit is the Besta Burs tv unit, high gloss white (301.160.80). It has three center shelves for dvds and cable boxes. There are also two drawers with sections for dvds and video game containers. The two side units are also from the Besta Burs tv unit grouping (302.184.51).