A Case of Decorating Paralysis

Welcome to my house. Have a seat on the sofa. Lean back all the way. Notice the horsehair-and-springs construction? Feel the itchy warp of the antique kilim upholstery on the back of your neck?

Sink into the old-money, English-country, dog-hair-covered vibe. Breathe deep the Moroccan-influenced intellectual Bohemian flavor. Understand that the woman to whom this sofa belongs is ahead of the curve, beyond trends.

She is, well, me. A woman in love with her sofa. So in love that I paid to have it sent from New York and stared, smitten, at its image on a printout from a Web page until it finally arrived. So in love that the contemplation of buying another stick of furniture to go with this lonely item has caused a case of decorating paralysis.

Let me explain. A year ago this month, we finished remodeling our 1940 traditional “Leave It to Beaver” house. I’d fallen in love with the house not because it was grand or unique but because, with a few exceptions, it had remained untouched by someone else’s idea of “improvements” for 45 years. Crown molding was intact throughout, as were hardwood floors and original bathroom tiles. The house had no pretenses, unless you count a silly mirrored bar hidden behind a closet door.

When we’d saved the money to remodel, we wanted our changes to look as if they’d always been there. The meager cement slab of a sun porch doubled in size and gained a white-painted wooden floor and sinuous columns. An ugly laundry room was tucked into a linen closet, making space for a glistening white porcelain plasterer’s sink where one could wash dishes while looking onto a bank of rosemary.

The changes were subtle, and unless one had visited the house before the remodel, there was no reason to think it had ever been any different.

To prepare for the new, upgraded version of our house, I’d taken a vow of interior chastity: No more junk furnishings, I promised my husband.

No more place-holders. We’d decorate our beautifully restored house with integrity.

So I packed up almost everything acquired over a dozen years to be sent off to my favorite thrift store. Adios, bottle-green velvet Victorian-style sofa, purchased at what was supposed to have been a huge discount from a guy who’d claimed he was leaving town. (Later I learned he never left.) Adieu, homely treasure from the Wertz Brothers dustbin. Good riddance, vaguely Madonna and Child-esque clay sculpture modeled by my husband’s former girlfriend. Out, out, damned wall hanging of the planet Saturn, purchased at one of those outdoor crafts fairs.

And I--who had spent dog years stitching curtains, drapes, comforters, shams and even dust ruffles (badly), making finials from plumbing parts and painting my kitchen to resemble the inside of a circus tent--promised to resist my do-it-yourself urges in deference to our pristine new space.

My husband was a willing co-conspirator, having some experience in muffling my decorative impulses.

“What is this?” he had shrieked one day, pre-remodel, spying the tiniest creamy-white stencil border starting its march around the ceiling of his favorite but, I thought, rather sparse room.

“Hmm, mold?” I lied.

Perhaps a normal woman would have turned to a decorator. There is something intoxicating about walking into a home that is completely done. It’s like staying in a four-star hotel, where the Aubusson carpet matches the shams and the upholstery matches the drapes and the lights are just where you need them. By the same token, a professionally decorated house can look like a hotel--impersonal, monotonous, humorless.

With some trepidation, I sought counsel. A valued friend suggested her valued friend. “She has a bit of a drinking problem but her taste is impeccable,” I was assured. A meeting was set.

“This isn’t a Colonial house at all,” cried the disheveled decorator, mounting the crest of our front staircase. She may have tripped on her Manolo Blahniks on the way in , but apparently was much more deft at navigating architectural pronouncements. “This,” she said, eyeballing the place, “is a San Francisco townhouse.”

Unfortunately, all the photos I subsequently saw of San Francisco townhouses seemed to be filled with Asian antiques. Perhaps their decorators had pronounced that their homes were not San Francisco townhouses at all but “Japanese bath houses.”

But I got the gist. Think formal. Symmetrical. Almost Georgian.

The disheveled decorator had given me the embryo of a theme. I began to see that, as with party planners, a good decorator must have a central thesis, no matter how contrived. It is the artistic starter from which an entire project springs like a pungent loaf of sourdough.

“San Francisco townhouse” became my design mantra, as in, “Would this gnarled redwood coffee table go in a San Francisco townhouse?” No way.

My new mantra in place, I avoided purchases left and right, allowing only a Frette duvet marked 50% off, which I concluded would go in a San Francisco townhouse. Suddenly, I was seized by the urge to drape every window in the house--San Francisco style.

“This is not a loaded question,” said my husband, who, after many years in show business, commands enough psycho-lingo to buffet demanding actors and oversensitive wives. “But aren’t drapes the exact opposite direction you were going in when you decided we absolutely had to have those expensive shutters put on every window?”

Since when does logic play a role in interior decorating? I muttered. I could see that a decorator, an expert, might prove a valuable ally after all. Someone who understands this “San Francisco townhouse” thing but who is a bit more down to earth than my friend’s friend.

A former fashion designer-turned-decorator whom my husband adores paid a social call. I knew he had the right stuff because he mentioned to me--without my prompting--that the colors of his own house were inspired by a vintage men’s sports shirt, all baby blues and browns.

He stood in the kitchen for a silence-filled moment. “It’s like a great ice house, like something out of ‘Dr. Zhivago’!” he exclaimed. Can this really be a compliment? Then I recalled his fondness for frozen Absolut and realized that kinder words had never been spoken.

“I see peeling Scandinavian antiques,” he gushed.

Yes, yes, that’s it. So do I.

Maybe.

Why is interior decorating so daunting? After all, I’ve managed to dress myself for the last, oh, 40 years. (Of course, it’s helped immeasurably that the dominant colors for the past 10 years have been off-black, black and deep black.) And, unlike a wardrobe that lets us morph in and out of various identities from PTA mom to supervixen, a decorating “scheme” is more or less fixed by virtue of its weight and cost. In other words, for the next decade, I am what I sit on.

The stakes are high. In his wicked book “Class,” where he gleefully points out decorating faux pas of the proletariat, social critic Paul Fussell adds an appendix called the Living-Room Scale. This handy rating system helps a reader gauge the social standings of friends by ascribing or deducting points based on a very specific list of features that may or may not be found in the living rooms in question.

“Reproduction Tiffany lamp: Subtract 4.”

“Family photograph (black and white): Subtract 2; (color): Subtract 3; (in sterling silver frame): Add 3.”

“Every item alluding specifically to the United Kingdom: Add 1.”

“Any item alluding, even remotely, to Tutankhamen: Subtract 4.”

Fussell’s scale only formalizes (and mocks) the scrutiny that occurs each time we visit someone else’s home. With all these critics on the loose, is it any wonder that I’m proceeding so cautiously at this decorating game?

Resigned to living in a lovely house that has just one sofa and no Egyptian memorabilia, my husband, two youngest daughters and I curl up on said sofa and watch Alfred Hitchcock’s “Suspicion.” Cary Grant may be a good-for-nothing but the house he buys Joan Fontaine for a wedding present is absolute perfection. Mesmerized by the fringe piping on the chair cushions in the movie’s drawing room, I notice a chill and tug the throw tightly around my shoulders. Perhaps this really is a San Francisco ice house.