Decorating Brings Down the House
As soon as all the Christmas frippery goes back into the attic and the red candles have guttered their last and made their last permanent stain on the coffee table, our house suddenly looks like the middle of a truck stop.
The same rooms that Patsy and I and our staff, Peaches and Mrs. Goldfarb, thought were gracious and charming in early December now look like photographs taken to accompany an article headed, “Can This House Be Saved?”
My friend Barbara Treiman says there is hope. She is an interior designer and a dandy woman. She came by last week for a cup of tea and sympathy, the latter hers for me.
What is great about Barbara, besides being a funny and steady friend, is that she doesn’t look at my house and just say, “Bulldoze it.”
And she tells me funny and heart-warming stories about people for whom she has done houses, apartments, condominiums, flats in London and on Repulse Bay and a place above the Mandarin Hotel in Hong Kong.
One woman who almost drove Barbara mad is one I can understand. Not condone, just understand. Barbara began to worry that her beautiful furnishings and fabrics selected with great care months before, furniture made by Black Forest elves, tapestry wall coverings from French castles, would go for naught.
Or they would go in six months. That was when the woman was planning a great, big, smash-bang shoot-’em-up wedding for her only daughter--750 guests expected for the reception and sit-down dinner.
The house, however, needed a good cleaning. Every time Marilyn went over to show the woman a newly arrived handsome fabric, she saw the same dust on all the furniture. There were enough dusty surfaces to transcribe the Articles of Confederation.
Days-old newspapers and years-old magazines carpeted the floors. Barbara had almost decided to suggest, one day before the wedding, that the reception be in the church hall.
The day of the wedding, she drove into the woman’s driveway expecting to find that the house had been condemned. There was a large cleaning crew there, rushing from room to room with vacuum cleaners, polishers, furniture polish, silver polish. In the midst of the madness stood the mother of the bride, fully gowned in her wedding dress and smiling placidly. The house was gorgeous and shining for the reception and so were the guests.
“I really liked that woman although she almost drove me out of my mind,” Barbara said. “I like all my clients and many of them become close friends. Otherwise, it’s impossible to work with them. When I find myself in that situation, I remove myself as quickly as possible.”
“One young yuppie woman who lived with her husband and small baby wanted her entire house designed from top to bottom. I worked on it for six months, waiting for just the right fabrics and furniture. I went to see her near the end of the job and arrived with the last big piece, the couch. I walked in the door as she was leaving, holding her baby and kicking a suitcase in front of her. She said, ‘I can’t stand him one more minute. I hate him. I’m leaving.’
Barbara says that she heard later that she came back, but she does not see them as a couple for whom she will be doing a freshen-up job for their 25th anniversary.
She has one red-haired client who wanted her house done in purple and turquoise. Maybe I’ll do our house in those colors if Patsy and the rest will let me.
Barbara always likes my teddy bears in the bedroom, the mother and daughter bears flossed up in lace scarfs and pearls. I can’t wait to tell Patsy. She thinks I should be beyond teddy bears. I don’t know why. Patsy’s teddy bear, Casey, sits in a small rocking chair in the living room and wears a sombrero.