Charmed, she’s sure

When Stephanie Love and her fiancé Adam Godwin walked into the 1930s midtown Coeur d’Alene home last fall, she knew she’d found the house she was looking for.

“As soon as we had a walkthrough, my head was spinning,” she said. “I was decorating it before we even bought it.”

The public will get the chance to see her efforts Sunday when her Garden District home is among those featured on the annual Shabby Chic Home Tour, sponsored by the Shabby to Chic Shoppe.

Love-Godwin — she and Godwin married this past March — said she’s been a decorator since childhood, into organizing and sprucing up her personal spaces as long as she can remember. She got into the shabby chic look while in school at the University of Idaho. She’d buy secondhand furniture and fix it up at home.

“I love collecting old stuff and giving it a facelift,” she said.

In shabby chic decorating, the emphasis is on using older items that are visibly worn. If the look isn’t achieved naturally, it can be created, usually with paint, strategic sanding and other tricks.

Love-Godwin leans toward white in part because she finds white calming. “And I don’t like committing to a single color,” she said.

Pale colors serve as accents in most of the home. Green glass knobs add a splash of color to a vanity in the master bedroom. Vintage plates of various designs serve as wall decorations, as do a number of painted windows that Love-Godwin has collected over the years.

One guest room upstairs, however, pops with red, thanks to a chair that belonged to Love-Godwin’s great-great grandmother. Her husband’s office, off the living room, is decorated with masculine black and red accents. Otherwise, pale blues and greens give some depth to the mostly white furnishings.

The charming, two-story 1,600-square-foot home makes a great first impression. The spacious front porch sports an assortment of wire baskets, wicker furniture and fun details that make it stand out. The entryway, with a “shabbied” desk, mosaic pots and frames and wire plant holders, immediately sets the tone. Even her dining room chairs have been given a shabby chic look — Love-Godwin wove new seat covers out of vintage neckties.

The look is clean, bright and airy. She works hard to make sure her surroundings aren’t too busy or overstuffed.

“For the shabby chic style, my house is simple,” she said. “I like clean and simple.”

The home has come together in relatively short time partly out of luck. The previous owners did a lot of work of cleaning up the former rental. All the new owners had really had to do was rip up the carpet upstairs and install Pergo flooring. Eventually, the kitchen will need a facelift, and the couple looks forward to doing some landscaping work in the backyard.

Most of the items in the home have come from garage sales and thrift stores.

But some pieces, like the red chair, have been handed down in the family. A daybed in an upstairs bedroom was Love-Godwin’s first bed. Her father built it out of oak.

“He almost fainted when I painted it white,” she said with a laugh.