World of WarCrafts: Thanks for chatting with us, Paul! Can you tell us a little about yourselves?

Paul: I am a teacher by profession. In fact, I teach adult education in a maximum security state prison. I am also a 24-year kidney transplant recipient. My wife and I have gained experience in home remodeling due to the fact that we bought the house I grew up in -- the house is over 100 years old, and it needs a lot of work; as such, we've learned a lot from our experiences with our own home.

Gloria has always had an artistic eye; she loves to draw, and she is blessed with fabulous creativity. We have shared many ideas for projects and seen them come to fruition just as we envisioned them. That's pretty gratifying -- to see your visions actually take shape and form.

How did you two meet?

Well, it was 1987, and I still remember it like it was yesterday. I was playing Diablo (in the Midwest, where we now live), and I noticed a game named Woman with an Axe. Intrigued, I entered the game, and my future wife challenged me to duel. She had a King's Axe of Haste and was playing a warrior. I had a rogue, and I used rogue tactics -- hitting and running throughout the floor plan. As we played, we shared some humorous comments.

The more we chatted, the more we discovered we had in common. We gamed together for several weeks, and eventually we exchanged phone numbers. The more we talked, the more we grew to like each other. We finally decided to meet, and the rest, as they say, is history. We got married a year later, and we're continuing to venture through our world like we do in World of Warcraft.

Have you done any remodeling before this?

We remodeled the kitchen -- you can view it on Rate My Space. As I said above, we discussed what we wanted to achieve, we planned it out, and we made the kitchen match our vision. We actually work very well together; I'm better at planning and measurement, while she is better with the power tools -- she cuts a much straighter line than I do.

I'm pretty sure everyone is dying to know -- of all the rooms in the house to give a Horde twist ... why the bathroom?

To be quite honest, we had intended to remodel our upstairs bathroom for some time. We were joking about making a Horde bathroom, and all of a sudden, the jokes became plans ... We already had the dragon lights (we'd picked them up several years ago, knowing they'd go someplace in our home), and as we schemed and planned our project, we got more and more inspired to pay a tribute to World of Warcraft.

Can you tell us a little about the various parts of the room? It looks like it was incredibly complicated to do!

Gloria gets all the credit for the ceilings; she is meticulous in researching things. She logged in on numerous occasions just to look at the decor in the various Horde dwellings. She liked the hide ceilings, so she decided to incorporate them into our project. She achieved the look by using crumpled plastic shopping bags to blot the paint onto the ceiling. Then, she used a foam brush to lay in the seams and hide stitches -- she made the holes for the stitching using a Q-tip. Finally, as we were nearing completion, she noted that the ceiling looked "too clean." She fixed that by adding some weathering with a wash along the seams and walls to simulate a bit of leakage. Not very high tech, but quite effective!

I came up with the idea of the door motif. I envisioned something with a massive, stout appearance. It's actually the same door that is in the "before" pictures, but we covered it with 4"x1/8" strips of stained oak. Once those we in place, we added some fake straps to supplement the regular hinges and give the door a more solid feel. Finally, we added the iron straps across the top and bottom and the large upholstery nails to complete the look. It was great fun to see it take shape.

As for the distressed cabinet, Gloria is a genius at faux finishes. She used a base coat of a lighter color, followed by the crackle finish, followed by the top color. As the crackle finish dries completely, it cracks, thus giving the distressed finish that you see in the photos.

Now that you've finished the bathroom, do you have any plans to give any other rooms in your house the Horde facelift?

Actually, we're tossing around some ideas of doing our guest bedroom in a Silvermoon City motif. We'll start looking around -- both in the game and in the real world -- to see what we can use to achieve what we want.

Anything else you'd like to add?

First, I'd like to thank all those who commented on our project. It's great when your fellow gamers share their comments, criticisms, and wit in their posts. Both Gloria and I have tremendously enjoyed reading the posts. We'd also like to add that we did this for fun, not due to some compelling obsession with World of Warcraft. We do love World of Warcraft, and we have lots of fun there. In fact, we've done as the tip mentions: We've had fun with our friends in the game, and we've gone to meet friends from WoW in the real world as well. In fact, we've gone a couple of times to renaissance festivals with our WoW gaming friends. Blizzard has created a world that is engaging, fun, and filled with adventure and wit; we enjoy it very much! Keep up the good work, Blizzard.

Thank you for your time, Paul -- and when you finish that guest room, be sure to let us know about it! For more on this fabulous project, you can check out the bathroom remodeling from start to finish on Photobucket.

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World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including arts and crafts, fan art, WoW-themed recipes, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself by emailing anne@wowinsider.com with your not-for-profit, WoW-inspired creations.

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