At Last, Color Me Happy 

Here it is. Okay, these photos maybe don’t show the color as accurately as they could. It is a biscuity brown, soft, like a pale coffee ice cream. The detail at the back of the bookshelves was inspired! And was the brainchild of my painter, Paul Flessa. It’s a deep raiseny plum, almost like a rum raisin, so the whole living room is a little like a big bowl of ice cream, and what’s wrong with that? 

You’ll see, too, that I had the window leading painted black, which involved a great deal of sanding, priming, and other activities I don’t want to know about. All I know is the painter was here a lot. And now, it looks great and my bank account is further depleted.  

Next up: the hallway, the windows in the other rooms. I’ll let you know how it goes. 

But let’s not linger there; instead, let’s talk more about green giving, as the holiday season is now just about to swallow us whole. 

You can buy recycled holiday cards, and that doesn’t mean hoarding the ones you got last year and then scratching out the name of the person who sent them and writing in your own. That is known as recycling, but it’s also known as extremely tacky. Instead, check out the cards made from recycled materials at Holiday Classics.  

For a mind-boggling list of websites that sell eco-friendly gifts, go to Ecomall. 

And don’t forget that often a home-made gift is the best one to give, or to receive. If you’re artistically inclined, now’s the time to get to work on making a present, but remember too that you don’t have to be an artist to make a gift. A CD with favorite songs, a photo album with photos of the family, a box of cookies will all make the recipient happier, probably, than another plastic Santa Claus singing “Rock Around The Christmas Tree.”  All you have to do to step away from that Santa is think of a landfill towering with the things. 

And then for the person who has everything, there’s the gift of green. Yes, that green, as in greenbacks.  

Often people who don’t need any more stuff are thrilled to receive a donation to a worthy cause made in their name. Just make sure you match the cause to the person, so that you’re not giving Uncle Dave the Dog-hater a donation.

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.

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. 

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.

The electrician was supposed to come at 9 am, today, so I made sure everything was ready by about ten ‘til nine, and then waited. And waited. Luckily, I do most of my writing at home, so it wasn’t wasted time—in fact, it’s remarkable how much one can get done under the pressure of an electrician arriving any minute.  

But I figured I would also use some of the time to try out some new wall colors. This helped me remember again why it is I’m going through all this tsuris with the scheduling of the electrician—ultimately, this will lead me to a home with cleaner walls (I mean, less cluttered with unnecessary outlets sticking out), which in turn will allow me to paint over those dreadful colors I now have.  

One problem with choosing paint color has been that in order to really try out the new color, you have to buy at least a pint of the stuff. Benjamin Moore has a brilliant marketing ploy, which is that they make tiny little jars of trial paint, in real colors. They even sell a cute little roller and tray so you can roll the paint on a sample piece of the wall.  

First, I tried a deep red for the hallway. The color itself is great, as you can see, but it’s much too dark, especially as the hall is dark anyway, having no windows (as is the case  in most halls).  

Then I tried a pale sage green.  

I really like this one, but I’ll have to decide if I want this in the hall, and something off-white in the living room, or if I want the sage in the living room. The trouble with that idea is that the living room will be very, very, green if I do that. Or maybe I could do the old one-wall-in-a-color-one-off-white trick. 

Next, I’ll try a couple of off-whites—but not right now, because, you won’t believe it, but the electrician is actually here! Better one hour and 45 minutes late than never, I suppose. 

I suppose. I’ll let you know after the work is done. If it is ever done. 

Sheffield’s own Feng Shui consultant, Jennifer Ellen Frank, was so popular on TLC this past Saturday that they’re running the show again. It’s called “Please Buy My House,” and Jennifer is called in to consult on sprucing up a home for sale. We won’t be giving the end away by telling you that her Feng Shui savvy got the sellers a good price. You can see it this Saturday at 3 pm EST. 

Meantime, the electrician was going to come last week, so I made all the proper arrangements, and then at the last minute he cancelled. I mean, he called at 7:30 in the morning to say he wasn’t coming, then called at 8 to say he was, then at 9 called to say he couldn’t make it until noon, and when the phone rang again, I tore it out from the wall in frustration. 

Now, he says he’s coming this Friday. I decided to give him a second chance just because, as you know, just getting the estimate was about as easy as, well, you know.

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.

I have —- drumroll — an estimate from the electrician. 

If I had kids, I could just about put them through college for the price of the electrical work I want done. Or even for the price of some of the electrical work I want done. Or even for just doing one little part of it, like the kitchen. 

The thing that really sends the estimate through the roof is the switch from a fuse box to circuit breakers. Here’s a photo of the decrepit fuses:

The electrician did mention that, ahem, this fuse box is not up to code. At least he had the grace not to break into hysterical laughter or ask whether I was aware that the fuse box was  installed around the time my grandmother was born.

And me, what do I know about circuit breakers and fuses anyway? I know what circuit training is, because I do a little of that at the gym, in my continuing, grueling effort to stave off the ravages of time.

And I know that “the green fuse” is a quote from Dylan Thomas.

Actually, if you look at the poem (and you should! My god, we don’t get nearly enough poetry in this world) you will see it is not unrelated to the topic of age.

Oh, god, even talking about circuit breakers and fuse boxes would be better than this conversation, or I guess it’s really a monologue. If you’re interested, here’s some information about this fascinating topic.

The only way I can get through this kind of information is to remember that ultimately, getting this deadly dull and disastrously expensive work done will lead to a better wall color in the living room. 

Maybe there is one called “green fuse.”  

The electrician showed up. He was a nice guy.

He’s worked in my building, in other apartments, so he knew what was what, and he was reassuringly calm about the whole thing, telling me not to worry, except about that mess by the phones, which he was careful not to step too near, treating it kind of the way you would a dead skunk in the front hall.

He was reassuring, except he kept using the frightening phrase, “that’s really gonna costya.” Of course. Now he wants me to make a list of the outlets I would like and which ones I would like to disappear (ie those boxes and the mysterious Electricity to Nowhere cords, so I did.

FRONT HALL

Get rid of one box outlet
Add 4-outlet where there is a 2 near kitchen door

KITCHEN

Get rid of 6-outlet thing attached to wall by microwave
Move outlets to behind stove and fridge
Make the two 2-outlets into 4-outlets, and lower down on wall

DINING ROOM

Get rid of box outlet
Make 2 into a 4

LR

Get rid of box under A/C
Make 2 into a 4

STUDY

Make two 2-outlets into 4s, and add one near the wall facing the garden

BR

Get rid of boxes
Two 2 s to be made into 4s

Once I made my list, it didn’t seem like so much.