I am a somewhat obsessed with design. I love décor, fashion, art, etc. Part of the reason for starting this blog is to “meet” other people like me. People who love the character of an older home, who can appreciate honoring a home’s heritage, and spend a great deal of time thinking about it and working on them.
One of the things I find most interesting is seeing other people’s reactions to the new house. Their reactions generally fall into two camps—1. The ones that are awe-struck by it and don’t think we should change a thing, and 2. The people who think it’s old and needs to be gutted and filled with a bunch of furnishings from Pottery Barn. I don’t mean to bash “The Barn” so much…they have nice things and I actually used to really like them. And the houses that are decorated in this manner tend to sell very quickly so it obviously appeals to a lot of people. (It just seems so generic to me these days.)
But it doesn’t feel like the soul of THIS house. This house longs to be groovy, hip, and cool—but in a grand way. This house tells me it longs to be in California. It begs us to lounge around and sip martinis with our friends. It wants a kidney shaped pool in the back yard.
The fact that the home has never been remodeled remuddled is mostly a great thing since we don’t have a clashing mix of styles. But it also brings about a sense of responsibility that we have to be stewards of the home and honor its midcentury roots with our decorating decisions. So that question is how far to take that? How do I update the home to make it comfortable for me and my family, while staying true to its groovy beginnings? It’s a challenge.
I’d say that we fall more towards the “don’t change a thing” side of those two camps but not entirely. While I certainly don’t feel it needs to be gutted, I do want to change a few things. While I do feel that a home should be decorated in a way that is congruent with its architecture, ultimately, you need to be happy with it. And it needs to work with your family. So while some people might somehow save the peeling original starburst wallpaper in the powder room, I don’t really like it and it’s not something that we will save. With that said, I don’t think we’ll be installing granite countertops in the kitchen anytime soon, either. (Sorry—no offense to granite countertops—again…too generic for me and I’m over it.)
Budget, at least in our family, is another strong consideration. Even if I wanted to, we don’t have the budget to replace all of our furniture with period appropriate pieces. Besides, I love the look of an eclectic, well-curated home. We’ve parted with a few beautiful pieces from our old home that didn’t really fit the new house, but we’ve kept most of them. I guess you could say that my decorating style is “vintage-modern-earthy-glam”. And that is the style that I hope, with time and money, to instill in this home too.
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