Friday, October 03, 2003

Tales of Interior Redecorating

Like many folks we know, we are in the midst of repainting the inside of our house - and the story, friends, is not a pretty one. Perhaps we can blame it on an economy that is slouching so low that paint is all we can afford to re-imagine our current situations. But here we find ourselves, wading through vats of spackle and discarded sandpaper, every conversation revolving around miniature square paint swatches - all with names that evoke food, vacations, and even pornography, but rarely describe the color itself. (I found a color swatch labeled “Warm peachy fantasy”! Where is Tipper Gore on this issue?)

I have found the process of deciding on paint colors completely paralyzing, and when I finally landed on a green for our livingroom, I showed it to a neighbor who said disarmingly, “Yeah, that green will be great ... if you want to be depressed all the time.” Suddenly my mossy green looked muddy and sad. A green of death. Like a friendly pharmacist, though, my neighbor pressed half a gallon of a much happier, growing green into my hand, saying comfortingly, “Here, try this - this will help.” Listeners, we chose the green of life.

In fact, nearly all our new wall colors have been borrowed from others. My friends and I trade paint like we do perennials at the end of the growing season: “Do you mind if I use your livingroom yellow in my diningroom?” “Is it OK if I try your bathroom’s toast and vanilla combination for my hallway?” All of our houses risk looking like slightly disordered versions of the exact same place - a Pottery Barn place translated for Target budgets. I suppose this is exactly how our parents’ homes in the 1970’s all ended up in identical shades of Harvest Gold and Avocado. Will our bold Eddie Bauer reds, earthy Martha Stewart greens, Provençale blues and Tuscan terra cottas look as dated to our children as our parents’ tastes to us? Will our offspring say, some years down the road, “Oh, man, when are you going to update the house? It is so first decade!”

Our young daughters are out of patience with the project, after endless weekend trips to the “most boring” aisles of the “most boring” stores. A bit of hope crackled in the air when we announced we had go to the hardware store yet again, but this time for something called “crown molding.” Any sparkly tiara fantasies harbored by the children were dashed once we headed down the worstaisle of all - plain old boards.

I admit to no moral superiority when it comes to my own attitude toward this project. I plunge into the task at hand - whether spackling holes, sanding corners, painting walls or woodwork - with the gusto of a toddler. And, like a toddler, I lose interest almost immediately. I accuse my husband of hogging all the fun jobs. “When will I get to use the cute, tiny brush?” I whine, only to discover that the work done with the cute, tiny brush is about twelve million times more boring than the big brush work.

I am sure this is good for my moral fiber, and I mutter aphorisms to myself as I tediously paint along the edge of woodwork detailing. I try “Virtue is its own reward.” Nah - kind of stupid, really, and distinctly un-American. I try “Wax on, wax off,” and that actually holds me awhile while I’m wielding the large brush. But I only really find comfort in recalling the thoughts of John Ruskin, the crotchety, nostalgic nineteenth-century critic who railed against the mathematical perfection demanded of Victorian artisans. Ruskin argued: “To banish imperfection is to destroy expression,” because it’s only in the human imperfections that the artisan leaves his or her mark. I like to pretend that I’m hewing to Ruskin’s artistic principles as I slop around the paint, rather than simply rationalizing my own hasty work.

By now, I am so impatient with the project that I just want to call it quits - leaving the rough edges, the partially installed crown molding, some walls patched and prepped and naked of paint. I may even try to tell my friends that we are finished - this IS the final product. When they raise their eyebrows, I’ll act superior and claim, “We’re not redecorating, we’re making a statement about redecorating! It’s a process piece - a post-modern comment on our early
century mode of reinvention. Don’t you get it?”

Mostly, though, I’m afraid this interior redecorating project has marked my official entry into middle age by the embarrassingly bourgeois nature of my current fantasies, in which my husband reaches around to embrace me, whispering cozily in my ear, “Darling, next time, let’s ...” and here in my fantasy he pauses suggestively before whispering the three words that send me swooning, “ ... hire it done!”

Broadcast by April Lidinsky on October 03, 2003
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