BELLE VERNON, Pa.
From the outside, it’s just your average ranch house. But step inside and you see there is nothing typical about the Belle Vernon home Christopher and Galiyas share with their 3-year-old son, Arrow, and their dog, Sherwin.
What you notice right away are the arrows. The motif is not just their son’s name; it represents hope for the family.
“I had difficulty getting pregnant. It took years,” Stacy Galiyas said.
When she told a friend she was giving up, she received a piece of paper with an arrow painted in the middle and this written around the edge: “When you feel like giving up, hope whispers in your ear and you keep going.”
“It turned out I was pregnant, and I kept it on the refrigerator,” she said.
The couple have lived in their house for five years.
“We fell in love with the property,” said Christopher Galiyas. “It is hard to find a home with this kind of space.”
“We bought the house because of the barn. Chris needed a studio,” his wife added.
The barn now called the “Love Shack” is his art studio and the home of several chickens. On its side he painted a large mural of farm animals.
He paints murals for residential and commercial properties and teaches art in the West Mifflin School District, where his wife is a physical education instructor.
“I’m really into fitness, and he’s really into art, so we kind of do our own thing. But we commute to work together,” she said.
Next to the barn is a greenhouse.
“My wife loves to garden, and she wanted a she shed. So I thought how cool to make it a greenhouse where she can have wine with her friends.”
The couple have a collaborative approach to design.
“Our ideas bounce and change all the time,” Christopher Galiyas said. “She suggests one thing and then I suggest one, and we kind of meet in the middle.”
“We take it slow, and we do things as we can afford them and as ideas come to us,” she said. “I don’t buy things just to buy them because I want them to be meaningful.”
Their first project was turning a small coat closet into a wine bar.
“Chris came up with the idea, and I was like, ‘Dude, that is the best idea!” she said, laughing.
Next was the living room and hall floor done with large planks in a herringbone pattern. One wall of the living room is covered with a flocked black wallpaper and custom shelves with a dripped paint finish.
“I usually don’t like wallpaper, but I love this black wallpaper,” he said.
The dining room has a custom chandelier made from thick rope, hanging lights and a short ladder. Pink French doors pop against a sage green wall.
“It was Chris’ idea to paint it pink, and I was like, great,” Stacy Galiyas said.
Don’t be surprised if one day you see this couple’s eclectic eye for design on television. They got the idea while preparing for Arrow’s birth. While working on the nursery, the Galiyases decided to reveal the baby’s gender with a custom color from the paint store.
“We had so much fun doing the nursery,” she said. “I said I wish we could do 10 of them!”
Working with Apple Box Studios, they filmed a TV pilot for a show called “Room 2 Grow” (www.room2growtv.com). The pilot features a gender-revealing nursery the couple created for Jessica and Michael Keefer of Clinton.
“We have a team in California doing the pitching for us to networks like HGTV and TLC,” Stacy Galiyas said.
“We did a lot of work here, but there is still a lot to do,” he said. “It is unfolding the way we want it to, I think.”
“We are a good team,” she added.
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