Once Sam and I had collected ourselves after our ill-fated Bedgate at Macy’s, I started noticing that indeed, I was waking up feeling tired and stiff and unhappy—the primary symptom of need a new bed.  

So I more seriously launched into the research on this whole question of buying a bed, and discovered something called the Sleep Number Bed. 

And the Duxiana Bed.  And then I was heading down the road into a world I never thought I would enter, the World of the Rich and the Very Rich, or at least the world of the beds of those people. Essentially I no longer even cared about Sam and The Bachelor and their bedding problems. The more I researched beds, the more I realized that I myself was in dire need of a new one. So, why not trot myself back to Macy’s and shell out? 

Well, like all things in décor, it isn’t quite that simple. Okay, first there are regular beds, as we’ve seen.  Mattress, box spring, coils, hand-tied, you know. The things you get at Macy’s or some other department store. 

And then there are the beds that operate on a completely different system, such as some kind of foam stuff or air pumps or even, gadzooks, horsehair. 

These start with the Sleep Number Bed. Go into a Sleep Number store and chances are the clerk will launch an elaborate demonstration to show you how the bed works, which essentially is by pumping air into and out of the chambers in the mattress. She’ll also hand you a little brochure with pictures and mysterious phrases like “Dual Foam Layering System.” 

If you’re thinking this is just a fancy air mattress, you’re thinking like me. Now, I did take it upon myself to go into the Sleep Number store and lie on the bed and I did find that as a matter of fact (or could I say “as a mattress of fact”?) it felt pretty good. And if you sleep with someone, there’s the advantage that each side of the bed has its own pump, so you can have a firmer or softer mattress than your bedmate, which presumably prevents marital discord. 

Let’s not go there right now. 

But even though the clerk assured me that this wouldn’t mean getting up every couple of hours and pumping up the bed again, I just couldn’t quite buy it. Plus, what if something sharp, like a clawed cat, jumped on it too hard? (By the way, I don’t think my cats would tolerate those things you stick on the claws to prevent torn up sofas and such.  

And I just want to go on the record here as saying that while de-clawing a cat is nowhere near as terrible as waterboarding a human being, it’s a really, really, bad idea.)  

Another thing that turned me off from the Sleep Number Bed was the hokey name. The Sleep Number Bed is made by Select Comfort. Both these names are hokey, and why are there two names for one company? I don’t like that.   I like a good old-fashioned name for a bed, like “Beautyrest.” That’s a name that makes you feel nice, like the bed is actually going to make you more beautiful while you get some rest.  

But most of all, I was bothered by the visions of my brother waking up after a night on my air mattress in my living room, which had slowly flattened to a thin piece of rubber between him and the cold, hard floor. He looked neither beautiful nor rested. 

So even though the clerk was helpful and the price was comparable to the higher-end regular mattresses, there was just something a little too cockamamie about the whole thing.  

Next I’m working my way up to the more expensive mattresses.  

Meanwhile, in case you’re wondering, I’ve completely abandoned my other home decorating projects. I’m starting to kind of like the stripes on the wall from trying out all the paints, and there’s something artfully charming, I think, about the exposed plugs since the electrical work was done and not done.  

So next I’m going to the Duxiana store. I’ll let you know how that turns out.

So, Sam began bed shopping. 

One drawback to having a fully and happily employed boyfriend (okay, maybe the only drawback) is that he is busy a lot, and so Sam asked me, Stylehound that I am, to accompany her on her preliminary search for a new bed. The Bachelor would be brought in as necessary at the end of the search. 

The first place we went was Macy’s. I should have known when the elevator got stuck on the way up to the top floor that this would not go well, and it didn’t. 

While we waited for the elevator to start moving again, we decided we would turn down any salesman’s attempts to talk to us before we got a chance to just look everything over.  

As soon as we walked into the bed department, a salesman came over to us. I told myself that the fact that he bore an uncanny resemblance to Richard Nixon did not necessarily mean the beds here would be untrustworthy, and I boldly said, “We just want to look first,” and he muttered, “Sure, sure, of course,” and crept away.  

“That was easy,” Sam said. 

“See? Stick with the Stylehound. I know how to handle these guys.” 

We lay on one bed, a Sealy.  

 $1600. It was really quite comfortable, but it’s a little hard to tell, you know, when you’re lying there in your jacket and boots. Still, it felt great, but maybe that’s just because it always feels great to lie down, especially after lunch.  

As we were whispering about the quality of the mattress, Nixon appeared.   

“I just want to tell you that these beds are all on sale, about twenty percent off.”  

“Okay,” we said, and struggled to our feet.  

“What kind of mattress are you looking for?” he asked. He seemed to be wringing his hands a little bit, but maybe that was my imagination.  

“Medium,” Sam said, and then we were in it, Nixon leading us from bed to bed. We duly threw ourselves onto each one, lying there as he stood over us, telling us about the springs and coils and foam until I had no idea anymore which bed was which. 

We staggered out of there and back to the elevator, and then Sam turned to me. “Listen,” she said, “we’d better take the escalator.” 

On our way down, she ran down the mattresses, their prices and quality.  

“But you know,” she said when we reached the first floor, “there wasn’t any one of them that I Rathed.” 

“Rathing” is a term coined by Sam’s mother, one of those expert shoppers. It stands for “Really Have to Have.” Sam’s mother always said that you shouldn’t buy anything—whether it’s a sofa, or a t-shirt, or a pair of socks—unless you feel passionately about it, unless you love it so much you want to wear it out of the store, unless you Really Have to Have it. 

“Well, there are other kinds of mattresses to look at,” I said, realizing even as I was speaking the words that I was getting myself into an extended job here.  

We went through the revolving door, which spit us neatly back onto 34^th Street. 

“Plus, there was something about that salesman that just seemed a little like a crook,” Sam said. 

Okay, does anyone mind reading about romance in order to get to the current decorating saga in my life? 

Unfortunately, this is not my story of romance. As you know, my life is consumed with contractors, electricians, and testing out terrible wall colors.  

This is the story of my friend, Samantha. Samantha is one of those chronically single women, even though everyone who meets her and then learns she is single has the same response: how on earth is it that no one has snapped you up yet?  

Sam is, in short, great—loads of personality, clever, witty, generous. And I don’t mean by that that she isn’t good-looking (you know, when someone is setting you up on a blind date and they say “he’s terrific, has a great job, he’s really funny ….” and they don’t mention looks, it means looks are not going to be exactly his selling point.) But Sam is also gorgeous, with a wild mop of naturally blonde hair, great athletic figure. You know, she’s that woman in yoga class you look at enviously even as the yoga instructor is saying “we are not here to compare….” 

Okay. So Sam somehow has made it into her 40s without ever getting married. Not that she hasn’t wanted to—she has very much wanted a husband, but has never quite hit it right. So she’s got a terrific apartment in a great neighborhood, which is larger than most New York City apartments because she’s been living there forever and moved in back when a normal person could actually afford an apartment in New York City, a real apartment, with a separate bedroom and a kitchen that actually fits comfortably a dining table.  

Sam is also one of New York’s star editors, with a high-powered job at a big publishing house. She makes a good salary, and she’s been able to furnish her place very nicely, so it’s pretty much perfect. 

And her life is great—going out to expense-account lunches with agents and editors, getting invited to fancy publishing parties, the works. Sometimes she invites me along to those parties, and let me just say that they are the parities you want to be at, even though no matter what you do you feel dreadfully underdressed. 

So, her perfect life had this one blemish: she really wanted to find a man to love and share it all with, but kept striking out. They all seemed great at first, but then turned out to be married, gay, or incapable of intimacy. Or, in one rather stunning case, all three. 

Until now. Along came the Bachelor of West 86^th Street.  A lovely guy, still never married at fifty. All Sam’s friends pointed out to her that this was a red flag, probably indicated that he would most likely never, ever, want to even go near the topic of marriage or commitment. 

But she kept seeing him, and he was delightful. We all fell in love with him. He took her out dancing. He spoke French. He took her to charming restaurants. And then he asked her to marry him, and we all just about fell off our chairs.  

Once they started talking marriage, they started talking about beds and bedding. And not in the way you’re thinking. The thing is, he had a tiny apartment with a double bed in the tiny bedroom. She had a much bigger apartment with — you guessed it — a double bed in the big bedroom. The Feng Shui experts reading this will probably come in to say what I myself told Sam long ago, which is that if you don’t want to be single anymore, start by getting a bed that’s big enough for two.  

The Bachelor of West 86^th Street was, like Sam, quite athletic, but this meant he was muscular, and he was tall to boot. So sharing a double bed soon seemed like torture to both of them, and quickly they launched into a search for a nice, comfortable, and most of all larger, bed. 

Check in next week to see what happens next. 

Reader Jackie Law writes in with this question for Stylehound: 

“My son’s room needs to be upgraded. He wants one black wall with red and a little silver. The walls have paint on top of wallpaper and a border over that. Any suggestions?” 

I love being asked questions like this. Not because I have the answers, but because then I don’t feel like the only one who is stumped by design.  

Can someone bail us out here? Any ideas for Jackie and her, um, creatively-inclined son? Alexia, perhaps you can come up with something? 

Diving Into The Wreck  

Once the electrician got here, he got started working and I fled to the study while he made a lot of noise in the rest of the apartment. When I came in and said, “how’s it going?’ he said the fateful words, “not so good,” as he crouched by the baseboard. Dust was everywhere.

The wires, he said, were so old they were disintegrating in his hands.  When he took his lunch break, I can’t say that the place looked actually better than it had before.

But that wasn’t enough. He came back the next day, this time with a fellow electrician. There was a ladder involved. It turned out they couldn’t change the fuse box over to circuit breakers, because to do that would involve ripping out one of the kitchen cabinets.  

“I’ll just wait until I re-do the kitchen,” I said, thinking that will be roughly about the time hell freezes over. 

It made me feel a little queasy, the whole thing, seeing chucks of my walls disappear, like watching someone undergo surgery—not that I’ve ever seen that.

But maybe it’s like cosmetic surgery. Maybe it will be a great face-lift, and afterward, everyone will say, “has your apartment been on vacation?” 

Even the cats were freaked out.

Luckily, the painter, the original guy who did such a great job even with my terrible paint choices, said he can send a guy over to re-plaster, this week even. So maybe the next part of this ordeal will go more quickly.  

Meantime, I’m still checking paint colors. Luckily Sheffield’s own Alexia Rosetti knows a couple of things about new colors.

For those who like to play guru and proclaim the latest on all subjects, we have the color forecast for 2008-2009 for you. Pantone, the leading color authority, regularly studies the color pulse of the worldwide community and forecasts the latest color trends that will be used in the graphic, interior, industrial and fashion design worlds.

Not surprisingly, the influence is leaning towards environmental concerns. Apple greens, yellow-greens, acid yellows, and sky blues are the colors that will dominate the design fields. These colors project a “strong, environmental message” to the world.

The color palettes that Pantone is projecting for 2008-09 include the biological identity, diversity, and the collective conscious palettes. The biological identity palette is human and voluptuous – amber golds, desert sands, purpled wines, and brick reds. The diversity palette consists of herbal greens, deep forest greens, astral blues, bronzes – reflective of the environmental colors that are dominating the community. The collective conscious palette shows a more stable background consisting of navy blues, khakis, reddish browns, and mid-tone grays.

These color palettes can be combined to offer more visual excitement – such as the grape purples against the astral blues. The deep greens can be fused with the bronzes, the amber golds complement plummy wines and the apple greens can play off the sky blues.

All of a sudden my mauve walls are looking SO last decade……quick, where’s my paint swatches?

As the physicist John Archibald Wheeler said, “Time is nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once,” and yet, when it comes to décor and design, it seems everything does happen at once, and now that I’ve decided to go ahead and get started on fixing the electric mess in my apartment, Seddy’s sister has returned from the netherworld and contacted me. 

She sent me some links for some fans, none of which, I’m sorry to say, really thrilled me. Here they are, in case you’re interested.  

Minka Aire Artemis Fan 

Minka Aire Retro 1950’s Fan 

Woolen Mill Fan Company: Architectural Fans 

Quorum Fan Angel

But at least I know now she’s extant, and I have hope again that maybe, one day, my apartment will look not so bad. 

And, in the meantime, I’ve contacted my friend who wants my old sofa. You can see why I’m ready to let it go. 

(Sorry, that last photo features the old cat making good use of the old sofa) 

Everything is always more complicated than you think it’ll be—especially when it comes to design. You know, you start out thinking, great, I’ll just paint the walls, and you end up having to re-wire the house first.  

Or, you decide to get rid of the sofa and then your friend, who lives on your street, has to hire a couple of bulls to carry it to his place. And then you remember how the movers had to take the door off the hinges to get it in here, and you have no idea how to do that, and you have to call the super to see if he can show up on the same day as the guys your friend will hire, god willing.  

And it’s all going to end up costing you—that much is sure.  

But I called the electrician this morning, and said, Okay, I’m in, and I’m putting a check for half the total in the mail today. The receptionist said she thinks they can start work this week.

Thanks to Alexia for that great take on LEDs. Anything that is not only green, but also allows one to feel like a diva in bed (or, really, anywhere) is okay by me.  

Me, I have not been feeling very diva-like, ever since getting that estimate from the electrician. In fact, I’ve been sitting here looking forlornly at the estimate, trying to screw up the courage to pick up the phone and call him, and tell him okay, come on over, break the bank. I’ll sell the cats, if I have to. Because I keep working backward, thinking, every time I come into the living room, that I really must get a new wall color, and that of course leads me back to the fact that first I have to take care of the dreadfully dull task of the electrical work. 

I don’t think I could get much for the cats, even though they are quite talented and cuddly, and very, very, large. If only cats sold by the pound.

Or their fur! Why is alpaca so damn expensive, but no one is interested in buying cat fur to make a fancy sweater from? 

Okay, back to decorating.  

Meanwhile, remember my friend Seddy’s sister, and how I paid her 150 bucks to come over and advise me about my place? I haven’t heard from her since. No, that’s not entirely accurate. First there was an email to a long list of people saying her email hadn’t been working, and then there was an email saying she was going to Mexico for a couple of weeks. I swear—I know it sounds like the oldest scam in the world, but she really said precisely this:

…we’re going to Mexico for the week.  Great deals to be had in the hurricane season.

Well, yeah. Especially when you’re taking my 150 bucks with you! 

Really, I do still trust this person, maybe mistakenly, maybe just because I love and trust her sister, who really is a very good friend. But now what? I’ve written to her once more, and she said she’d get in touch “early next week” which was like two weeks ago.

Do any of my readers have any advice about how to handle this? I mean, the whole thing was that I didn’t have time to do all the research on finding good ceiling fans and everything on my own. And now in addition to that, I’m working on hounding this woman who does seem like a lovely, if scatterbrained, talented, creative person. And I certainly don’t want to put a smudge on my friendship with Seddy by bitching about this situation with her.