digsandthat.com

DigsMagazine.com
transform your space into
your personal haven
.
.
.

what's for dinner?

take the poll

 

 

 

 

a home + living guide for the post-college, pre-parenthood, quasi-adult generation

10.13.2003

home
editor's note 
_____________

DEPARTMENTS
 
o lounge 
o nourish 
 
o host
o
laze
_____________

o BOARDS
_____________

about
contact
submit your ideas
search

..
big decorating dreams. tiny little budget. don't be a wallflower! jump on over to the discussion boards and get decorating help.
 

copyright ©1999-2003
DigsMagazine.com.

a great personality by Yee-Fan Sun | 1 2
continued from page 1

A great sense of character lends an intangible richness to a nest that goes way beyond the more mundane matters of whether the chairs coordinate with the rug that matches the paint on the wall. In a house with great character, you don't think about how pretty the furnishings are, but about how much you enjoy spending time there. Before he moved on to greener pastures, my friend Barrett lived in a dark, cramped little apartment, furnished in a mishmash of clashing chairs and sofa sectionals that he'd inherited for free from a variety of sources. But Barrett's a scientist, artist and a former natural history museum exhibit preparator, and his home was a mini gallery of his personal history and eclectic passions. Every object in his house had a story behind it -- whether it was the oddly pretty, candy-hued plastic virus models perched on the bookshelves, prototypes from an exhibit he had once worked on, or the beautiful, exquisitely-rendered insect drawings and paintings that hung so densely they practically papered the cinderblock walls -- some rescued from museum discard piles, others collected during travels, many created by Barrett himself. Compliment Barrett on any one thing in his home, and you'd most likely trigger a 20-minute tale of the inevitably fascinating circumstances by which he came to acquire the object, or a detailed explanation of how he decided to make it and why. Getting to know Barrett's home was getting to know Barrett. His apartment wasn't any interior decorator's notion of a well-decorated home, but it had a weird, wonderful beauty nonetheless.

People sometimes seem afraid of the weird, a fact that has always mystified me. I don't know a single person who doesn't have a few serious quirks once you've gotten to know them: weird, to me, is what makes people interesting, and without it, the world would be a dull place indeed. Some of the things I love best in my home are the things that others just don't seem to get. "So what's up with the astroturf?" a visitor asks, pointing at the framed blocks of fake lawn, self-expanding insulating foam, fur, caulking, and dripped candle wax that line the wall in our hallway, a fun tactile art project that the boy and I worked on together. "That's kind of creepy," notes a guest as they point at the blank white styrofoam heads lining the top of my kitchen, each featuring one of the array of wigs that the boy and I have somehow managed to collect thanks to our penchant for going all-out at costume parties. I know they're unusual; I recognize they add to the already significant clutter; I know the house might look neater, and more elegant, if I didn't feel the need to display these strange objects so prominently. But I love these things, and I like having them out there in the open where I can enjoy them all the time, and their presence makes perfect sense to the two folks who happen to live amongst them on a daily basis.

This, in the end, is what really matters when it comes to decorating a home. So maybe "decorating" is a bad way of approaching the process of turning a blank white box of a house into a place in which you can fully, happily live. Fill your home with things that make you laugh, think, remember, smile. The difference between a pad that feels like a home, and an apartment that's merely a place to house a hodge-podge of belongings, has nothing to do with how "nice" the furnishings are, or how "cool" the color scheme is. It's in whether the decor says something about the unique folks that live there.


check out these related articles: 
travel decorating | packrat's guide | essentially essential | style and stylishness | please do touch: texture wall art 

---------------------------> lounge . nourish . host . laze . home.