Cindy on March 4th, 2010
Tables of paper wood, windows of light/ And everything emptying into White.” — Cat Stevens, “Into White”
The thing I love best about redecorating is that it inspires us to look at our old rooms in new ways. A “re-do” doesn’t necessarily require that we buy more furniture or knick-knacks — though paint, hardware, and elbow grease are typically involved. And while shelter magazines offer creative ideas (and jazzy new things to purchase), it still boils down to re-imagining what we already own.
In January, Doug and I finally decided to freshen up the master bedroom. We’d been living for several years with murky, sponge-painted walls and a dark rug in a busy Southwestern pattern. The room looked cluttered and weary — and it felt claustrophobic.
We needed to lighten things up. So we cleared out the space and hired a carpenter-friend to rebuild the old closet. Doug applied two different shades of white paint for the walls and trim. And while we prefer hardwood floors and area rugs in our home, the floor was in such bad shape — and cold during Michigan winters — that we made an exception and had pale taupe carpeting installed.
Taking advantage of the winter sales, I bought white linens in a variety of textures, and a simple, quilted white coverlet. We didn’t have to purchase any new furniture (our old pieces look nice against the white walls), but we added a new shabby-chic style chandelier from Lowe’s — a bargain at a little over $100. The project took longer than we’d hoped, due to a mix-up with carpeting measurements and an aggravating delay in the re-ordering process. But all said and done, Doug and I are pleased with the result.
Having spent the past year immersed in my widowed mother’s ongoing health crises — and trying to help her make sense of things — I didn’t realize how many key areas I’d neglected in my own home. Until recently, I was too tired (and uninspired) to make time to sort through it all. I’m slowly catching up now, one room at a time.
How good it feels to get my own life back in order now that spring is almost here. Our freshly decorated bedroom is a peaceful oasis in the midst of so many questions marks. – Cindy La Ferle
Cindy on May 30th, 2008
Maybe it’s a midlife thing — because a younger friend insists that I’m way too sentimental when it comes to houses. I can’t argue with her. The word âshelterâ tops my gratitude list, and whenever I’m incurably nostalgic, I stalk my former neighborhoods and revisit memories of the homes I once lived in. Author George Eliot wrote that the âimage we carry of our first home is never marred,â and that âone’s exaggerations are always on the good side.â
In other words, memory is a crafty interior designer. As we age, our former bedrooms and backyard haunts loom larger than life in the mind’s eye.
I know exactly what Eliot meant. The first house of my early childhood â a modest 1950s bungalow in a neighboring county â looks so much smaller today than it did when I was seven. While I haven’t mustered the courage to knock on my old front door to ask for a tour of the rooms where I stashed my Barbie Dream House furniture, I’ve often parked my car and made solitary pilgrimages through the old neighborhood. Hiking through the nearby park where I used to climb trees, I can channel the carefree kid I used to be.
My husband and I didn’t stray far from the homes in which we grew up. The first house we bought here in Royal Oak was a tiny brick-and-stone cottage that would have fit snugly in a Cotswold village fairy tale. Our newlywed budget was equally snug, so we could only afford to purchase it on a land contract. Mrs. Morris, the elderly woman who held that contract, had raised two daughters there, and was reluctant to let go of her house keys and the memories they had secured. But once she agreed to sell, I couldn’t have been more thrilled. It was the biggest dollhouse I’d ever had the chance to redecorate.
My husband had just begun his architecture career (in the middle of a recession), and I had just begun an entry-level job for a publisher who assumed that the privilege of working for him cancelled my need for a decent paycheck. So I spent my lunch hours poring over decorating magazines and wondering how in the world I could satisfy my Saks Fifth Avenue taste on a thrift-shop budget. In retrospect, it occurs to me that decorating my first house was a lesson in creative discipline and self-discovery â and one of the happiest times in my life.
It was also an important lesson in stewardship. For two years I sent monthly âhouse reportsâ along with our payments to Mrs. Morris in the nursing home. I’d tell her about the Laura Ashley wallpaper I’d found to match the pink and blue tiles in the bathroom, or the bright fuchsia sweet peas I untangled one Saturday in her garden. Mrs. Morris rarely wrote back. But the week before our first Christmas in the house, she sent a card saying how pleased she was that we were taking good care of âherâ place.
Soon after, I became pregnant with our son and it was time to move on. Like most young couples, we always seemed to need more â more bathrooms, more bedrooms, more counter space, more debt. Or, as Dominique Browning writes in her beautiful memoir, Around the House and in the Garden (Scribner): âWe yearn for domestic bliss. Yet, even when we have found it, we are restless about wanting things to be better.â
Today, my husband and I live in a larger 1920s Tudor, just a few blocks away from our starter cottage. Our son just graduated college and will leave Michigan soon, making us empty nesters with much roomier closets and an empty bedroom. It’s irrational, I suppose, for a middle-aged couple to stay in a house like this.
But in our experience, decisions involving houses and homemaking are never totally rational. We’ve grown to love every inch of this old house, from its drafty leaded-glass windows to its noisy, leaky radiators. We plan to stay here as long as we can climb stairs and our hearts race happily at the mere thought of another home-improvement project.
And yes, as long as I have a driver’s license, I will cruise past every home I’ve ever lived in. I’ll try to imagine how each is decorated, and whose memories are invested in it now. Like the treasure hunters who haunt thrift stores and garage sales for vintage mementos, I find comfort in the landmarks of my past.
Cindy La Ferle writes about home, family, and the writing life at Cindy Home Office: www.laferle.com
In January, Doug and I finally decided to freshen up the master bedroom. We’d been living for several years with murky, sponge-painted walls and a dark rug in a busy Southwestern pattern. The room looked cluttered and weary — and it felt claustrophobic.
Taking advantage of the winter sales, I bought white linens in a variety of textures, and a simple, quilted white coverlet. We didn’t have to purchase any new furniture (our old pieces look nice against the white walls), but we added a new shabby-chic style chandelier from Lowe’s — a bargain at a little over $100. The project took longer than we’d hoped, due to a mix-up with carpeting measurements and an aggravating delay in the re-ordering process. But all said and done, Doug and I are pleased with the result.
