“By wisdom, a house is built, and through understanding, it is established; through knowledge, its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures.”-Proverbs 24: 3-4
Kennesha Buycks’ Restoration House is a gentle invitation for homeowners and homemakers to invite the power of God’s restoration into their homes. Restoration House is a faith-based book that not only provides spiritual insight about how to make a house a home, but it also provides content that offers practical tips on how to aesthetically enhance the interior design elements in any home, basic tips on decorating for renters and step-by-step guides on how to restore ‘old’ finds and make them ‘new’ again. Restoration House is an inspirational, how-to guide that is sure to leave readers inspired, motivated to take a more Spirit-led approach to décor with an overall sense of peace and ease about welcoming God as well as positive family and friends into their own personal home space.
Allowing God’s Restoration To Be A Tool For Interior Design
The author, Kennesha Buycks, creator of the popular interior design blog RestorationHouseBlog.com is very transparent about her own past misconceptions about what makes a house a home. In her early years like most young idealistic wives, she wanted it all; a fancy house, expensive things, and a home that looked perfect. Experience, self-evaluation and coming to terms with her upbringing as a child, helped to guide Buycks on a quest to finding restoration in each and every one of the homes that she’s lived in as an adult. One might ask why this is relevant? In the first 10 years of Buycks’ marriage, she and her husband moved 10 times due to her husband’s military job.
Buycks states, “As I restored furniture and transformed rooms in my home, I have experienced God’s restoration in every area of my life.” Within the book, Buycks discusses how initially when she settled into a new home, she had no idea how to tap into the peace, connection and “a place to be me” that she yearned for. She confesses that after years of trying to define herself by making things ‘pretty’, that she slowly came to realize that “No matter how much I filled my space with all the good and pretty things, the hole in my heart was one that only God could fill.” In Restoration House, Buycks transparently shares that with each move, she frantically tried to make order out of disorder. However, it did not work on her own accord. Operating in her own ability, she realized that something was always missing. She admits that it was the grace of God that orchestrated how to invite His presence into each home of this self-taught interior designer.
Making A House A ‘Home’ Outside of The Context of Material Things
The central theme in Restoration House is that the space where women should feel secure, connected, revived and renewed is their home. However, through the messages in this book it is clear that in order to establish a house of beauty and peace, the presence of God must be invited in. A restored home has less to do with the literal furnishings of a place, and more to do with having a place where your soul can be restored. Compartmentalized into three parts, each chapter lightly nudges readers to ask themselves questions like, “What does your home have to say about you?” “What message does it give to the world?” and “If people could get a peek into what it looked like on a daily basis, would it express a consistent message.” Without being too preachy, Restoration House encourages readers to truly examine the value that one places on things. The book also helps readers to understand how old family patterns and traditions can affect how those who live within that space self-identify and why?
A Beckoning Call to Embrace Homemaking From A Spiritual Perspective
Restoration House is very timely, because culturally and socially American culture is becoming more and more superficial. Societal norms are shifting away from traditional norms like homemaking and leaning more towards quick fixes, superficial aesthetics and focusing more on the external beauty and value of a person, place or thing as opposed to valuing matters of the heart such as peaceful homes, authentic relationships, and social intimacy.
Restoration House is a beckoning call for others to take a more introspective look at how we perceive our homes and the spiritual climate and tone that we set not just with our choice of interior décor, but with the familial traditions and attitudes that we allow to encompass and penetrate our living spaces in our present lives. Buycks states, “In every one of us is an inherent, deeply felt need to feel at home; yet never before in history has our culture been more disconnected. We get lost in a sea of emails and text messages, meetings, social media, appointments, and obligations, and we wonder why we never feel at peace in our own homes. What we all desperately need is a place to reflect, restore and re-engage with the community God has given to each of us.”
Practical Tips For Beautifying A Space
Unlike many faith-based and inspirational books, Restoration House does not just talk about faith. The content within the pages of this book gives real, succinct ways to immediately shift the atmosphere in your home life. The book provides tips on how to refurbish old or vintage furniture like home to properly use a chemical stripper to remove an old finish. Fun tools of the trade like how to properly use drop cloths, tricks for re-upholstery, encouragement not to be afraid of taking risks when it comes to decorating with textiles and gentle reminders on not hoarding home décor items. I personally loved Buycks’ suggestions for how to maximize small spaces like using pops of color strategically on a focal wall and purchasing multi-functional furniture pieces.
Restoration House is a smooth, easy read. With well-organized chapters that provide ready to use takeaways make it easy for the reader to flow from one chapter to the next. Clear, well-lit photos accompany the pages within the book and provide great inspiration for anyone seeking interior design inspiration, motivation to renew the atmosphere of their home or practical advice and tips on how to make a house a home. Buycks makes it crystal clear that there is a huge difference between those two notions. While there are many interior design books on the market, Restoration House stands out because it adds an inspiring, faith-based perspective to the art of interior design and homemaking. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and I immediately began to implement the strategies provided within the book in my own home space.
Published by Zondervan, Restoration House can be pre-ordered here. This forthcoming book is set to be published on April 30th, 2019.
