hotel lobby couch with a more comfortable, overstuffed Pottery Barn version. It’s not high style, but it’s great for naps. I am terribly envious of people who can take a can of paint, a few plain-Jane pieces of furniture, and several yards of fabric and turn them into art. I have a friend who, after coveting a way-too-expensive quilt in a magazine, bought fabric scraps and sewed the quilt herself. I died a little inside. Another friend told me she redecorated her bathroom to “look like Tiffany’s” because she’d found “mistake paint” at Lowe’s that looked just like Tiffany blue. I imagined a silver and turquoise mess, but the actual results were stunning. She’d hung black-and-white photographs on the walls, replaced old hardware with stainless steel, and in less than a week had a brand new bathroom that you never would have known cost less than $200. Again, I died. At the last dinner party I attended, I marveled over my friend’s home office. Walls painted the color of a winter sunset, it had French doors that opened onto a patio, hanging lights, and a wall that served as her “mood board,” filled with inspirational bits and pieces. My own home office, where I spend the majority of my time, is the last room in my house that still contains a hodgepodge collection: the huge oak desk I bought used when an office supply store on King Street went out of business, the rogue plaid chair from my former living room, a green bookcase from my pastel phase, two 1940s chairs I inherited from my grandmother, my bicycle, a magnetic white board, and a tiny paper kite hanging from a hook on the wall. As I jealously compared where I work to my friend’s perfect office, I realized that it wasn’t photogenic perfection I was after. My home office, with all of its faults and oddly shaped corners, was all me. With all of the photographs I’ve torn from decorating magazines because I loved this piece or that one, I could hire someone to come in and create an office that would look just like the ones I’ve coveted for so long. But what if I couldn’t write a word there? What if, just like when I got help choosing my abhorrent living room furniture, I could no longer get w w w. c h a r l e s t o n h o m e m a g . c o m
My living room looked like a hotel lobby. The sofa was narrow and uncomfortable and the pillows would have been perfect for a 1950s French bordello. comfortable in such a room? It struck me that what I’d been after all along was someone else’s idea of home, and that I should embrace mine as a work in progress. So, okay, it won’t end up in the pages of a magazine, but there’s that perfect
spot on the couch I love to snuggle in; the chair in my office with perfect lumbar support; and, of course, my old-faithful, thriftstore chair in the bedroom that’s perfect for reading, watching television, and thinking.... Perfect—all of it—at least for me.
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