Friday, April 11, 2003
Angst and Upholstery
In the spirit of consumer patriotism commended by George Bush right after 9/11, I’m trying to spend my way to a better America, starting with my couch. The problem is, I just can’t make up my mind.
I already own the couch in question. It’s a worn, brown monolith, in dire need of a make over. Though it would be cheaper to buy a new couch than to have this one recovered, it’s a family heirloom of sorts, and it’s 8 foot long and perfect for napping. So the question that has come to obsess my days is: how to re-cover the sofa?
I thought this would be a fairly trivial project: just go to the store, pick out a nice fabric, have the re-upholsterers take it away, and in due course, voilà, an attractively restored couch. Then I went to the furniture store. I was confronted with row upon row of samples, then rack after rack of booklets of samples; and, opening the booklets, I find the samples can be ordered in additional colourways. The choice is overwhelming.
I can buy smooth or fuzzy, plain or patterned with teeny Scottie dogs or enormous roses. I can buy plaid or stripes, floral or polka dots, fake patchwork or retro prints. I can buy in cotton, linen, cotton/linen, linen/cotton, polyester, wool, rayon, acrylic. Leviticus (19:19) forbids the wearing of garments of cloth of two kinds of stuff, but I guess nomads had no rules about re-upholstery, so there’s no help to be had there.
Then there’s a whole new vocabulary to master. Though “railroaded” and “off the bolt” sound like undesirable payment plans, they’re actually to do with which way the pattern runs. Some fabrics are also labeled “30,000 cotton duck Wyzenbeek rubs.” I picture my living room filled with preening mallards, then learn that Wyzenbeek is an industry standard of durability. But how does this measure compare to the entirely duck-free future my couch can expect? There is the mystery of finishes. What’s the difference between stain versus soil resistance? Will a spill-proof seal give me a rash? Does prudence require that I invest in the Pro-seal Flame-proof Teflon finish, just in case someone fries eggs on my couch?
Picking a colour is no easier. The folks in the store are unfailingly patient, and let me borrow pile after pile of samples. At home, I prop the booklets open and step back to consider the effect. I try to imagine the changing light, and the effect of enlarging the 5 inch by 8 inch swatch to cover the whole couch. Part of the problem, as I explain to my mother in an anxious transatlantic phone consultation, is that I have not yet settled on a colour scheme. All the books I’ve checked out on interior decorating insist colour schemes are essential. Yet I’ve lived in this house for years with white walls and plain hardwood floors. The books say whatever I choose for the couch will determine the whole future course of my decor. I am immobilised by existential doubts.
Though I hanker after the aloof monochromes of high modernism, I disapprove of impractical, white furniture you can’t actually sit on. I toy with a playful post-modernist palette but something in me rebels at teal and purple. “If you pick neutrals,” friends helpfully suggest, “then the couch will go with anything. You can just change the throw pillows and the rug and, ta-da!, a whole new look.”
But what would such a choice to be non-committal say about me? I ask myself, in anguish. As Jean-Paul Sartre points out, to choose not to choose is itself a choice, an expression of a direction in life. What would it mean to be a person with a monument to indecision in my front room? If I go with earth tones, do I thereby align myself with Al Gore? But, would a choice of kindergarten bolds express a petulant refusal of adult restraint?
By now, the entire house is full of tiny bits of fluff, shed by the sample edges. I have to use a strip of duct-tape to clean my fleece jacket and I have fluff up my nose. My husband, who has been a patient witness to all this agonising, finally offers his opinion. He says, decisively, “Not blue.”