Can We Talk 2

Decorating

         I have worked in several furniture stores and learned a little while there. The first, while a professional decorator is nice if you can afford one, the average home owner is capable of doing his or her own decorating. There are exceptions, like some men who think good decorating means having your tools on the coffee table and placing your papers on any flat surface as though no one else lives in the house.

         Most people are capable of dressing themselves. They combine their colors successfully. The same rules for color and prints apply in furniture and accessories. You see more fleur-de-lis in upholstery, but generally women's fashions are one year, or at least one season ahead of furnishings. Whatever the hot color is this year for women's fashions, those colors and prints will be in the department stores next year for bedding, curtains, other linens and accessories. Then it will move to the upholstery fabrics and the wall paints.

         I've been of an old mind frame for a long time, like there would be one final perfect look for my home, and it only gets refined with time. I still have accessories from decades ago. However, we no longer live in an age when we are going to hand down our precious belongings to the next generations. We're living longer, for one thing, so they're older when we leave it all. They don't need it. Our lives are filled with more expendable items. We don't attach the same sentimental value to things that people may have in our youth. Our grandparents may have held onto things for a lifetime because they just couldn't afford to replace them on a whim.

         You can choose to buy all new furniture, use second hand furniture, or go to bargain shops and do mismatched sets. These bargains can be painted or decorated to coordinate. I would wax the drawer runners, so that they open and close easily. Some older pieces were really well-made and can be tenderly updated. I use an old sewing machine cabinet as a bedside table, for instance. The foot treadle looks cool to me. For some people that would just be too shabby. Tying it all together with curtains and wall treatments and accessories makes it work. Money, or the lack of it, has me have eclectic tastes, rather than one style choice.

         Modern furniture, unless you pay big bucks, is not designed to last forever. A sofa, for instance is designed to last seven years, with moderate use. And it has to be vacuumed on a regular basis, just like the end tables. Some more expensive designs may have a 20 year warranty on the springs. But you have to keep the paperwork handy, and hope the company is still around all those years from now. The fabric is seldom under warranty unless you pay extra for a stain proofing application. Generally, the less you pay, the sooner you can expect to replace it.

         The point I started out to make is that you have really nice things that aren't coordinated very well. Or you can have simpler things that fit together nicely and reflect your lifestyle. The pictures in the magazines don't really seem to be homes that people occupy. I want to see pictures of rooms and spaces that serve people of all ages and don't look like museums.