Decorating and Renovation Shows
My wife and I enjoy watching "This Old House" and "Ask This Old House" together. Both were especially good this evening. On the first show, they have purchased what was once a farm house with attached barn, and is now in an urban or suburban area. Last week they started making plans to maximize the re-sale value, preserve as much of the historical character of the property as possible, and comply with municipal ordinances.
This week they jacked up the barn by two feet so that they can completely rebuild the ground floor and the half-basement underneath, which will become parking. The upper barn is going to be a combination of guest rooms and showplace living/recreational space. They also tore down the old "L" between the barn and the house--it wasn't sound, and the rooms were very awkward. They will rebuild something much more functional, that looks remarkably like the original. They will add on slightly to what was the original house--building a new master bedroom suite, and converting old bedrooms to kids rooms.
On the "Ask" show, they built a fence and fixed a shower. Great stuff. I love the way they go into an ordinary homes and carry out ordinary repairs. One homeowner had tried to clear a drain with chemicals, but the plumber (Richard) took the drain apart, and put in new pieces. Of course he has the right tools, but he also shows when a lot of strength is needed, and when to back off. A long time ago Tom the carpenter got a homeowner jack-hammering in his basement to put up new support beams.
The shows my wife watches and I don't are the decorating shows. The House Doctor, Ann Maurice, goes in to homes in England that are not selling. She tells the owner/seller that they have to remove all the personal memorabilia--the place is too cluttered, get rid of carpeting, and paint the place beige. Like ... a suite at the Holiday Inn. The Brits eat this up. They see a video confirming that their fellow Brits, when they are shown through, share Ann's taste: "Too cluttered, too many chairs, too much stuff, too much carpeting--it makes me think they'r hiding something." So even the Brits want their homes to look like rooms at the Holiday Inn, at least while they are selling.
Then Candace Barnes of Divine Design comes along. She's actually not opposed at all to rich, deep, and sometimes dark colours, rich fabrics like brocade, even in window treatments, carpets, and various objects that fill a space and the walls. So one evening (before I was asked to leave) I suggested that every home being sold needs two decorating jobs: Ann to turn the place beige, and utterly lacking in distinctive charactacter; Candace to give it the buyer's new and improved character. Two commissions, in addition to the realtor's.
Almost the first lines of Waugh, A Handful of Dust: "The fire never reached the bedrooms, I am afraid. Still, they are bound to need doing up, everything black with smoke and drenched in water and luckily they had that old-fashioned sort of extinguisher that ruins everything. One really cannot complain. The chief rooms were completely gutted and everything was insured."
The interior decorator. She also welcomes divorces because they often lead to two jobs. They are always promising a home--indeed your true home, closer to your heart than what you've had before; yet it is their interest to encourage dissatisfaction with what you've got, even if it has lasted only a short time. Their ideal clients are chronically or constantly homeless--and like it that way. Decoration, always looking forward to the next job, is destructive at least as much as constructive.
Excessively gloomy thoughts, I'm sure.
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