THE HOUSE, Part II
So let’s talk about what this house is not. A funny place to start, I know, but it’s akin to having to tell your friends about your new boyfriend who is not at all your usual type. It doesn’t have white trim (wood trim). I can’t hang drapes (not the right kind of windows). The bathrooms aren’t jazzy snazzy (think: whatever was really hot in 1987), nor is the kitchen (apparently, using bath tiles on coutertops was the thing back then). Half the house is carpeted (I’m a wood floor girl), and the closet doors are those floaty kind that have a track at the top and one slides behind the other (‘nough said).
Have I mentioned how much I love this place?
One thing I didn’t tell you the last time is that a key reason I love this place so much is that it’s not perfect. You see, all of those things I typically love (white trim, wood floors, shiny appliances and countertops, elegant drapes...) help to create a space that feels really perfect to me. And I don’t do so well with perfect. And not because I’m a mess or anything, quite the contrary: a perfect space brings out my tendency to want to keep everything perfect – all the time.
As a kid I once made my cousin Jane cry because she futzed with the curtains in my bedroom and messed them up. Apparently, she was lucky enough to escape the genes passed down on my mom’s side of the family that turned seemingly agreeable women into crazy people who (as we have all termed it), like things a certain way. My husband, dad, and grandfather would have a different way of describing this gene, but we like to say that we are particular, and damn you naysayers, this is a good thing. Ahem.
But, at this stage of the game, I have enough self-awareness to know that I need a little help being more laid back about my house. When we first moved in, we had very little furniture for the first four months or so. We sold a lot of it in Chicago and needed to get some new stuff out here. And as those of you who have ever ordered new furniture know, it takes a long time for it to come. Add transport to an island and you’ve not only tacked on an extra 20% or more to all of the shipping, you’ve added a few more weeks to the delivery time. But, the beauty of this furnitureless period and the reason I bring it up is that there were no throw pillows to arrange, no wool accent rugs to vaccum, and no dining table to clean nightly (we ate picnic style on the floor for a while). If I do say so myself, I may have even passed for a relaxed person in those early days.
So I’m being a little more thoughtful this time around to making this place feel happy and cozy and not slick and perfect. As drawn as I am to elegant interiors, this northwest charmer will never be elegant. She’s a little too rugged, a little too simple, and a little too woody to be considered elegant. I’m trying instead to focus on what she is and accentuate that. Like those windows that I can’t cover with drapes? Just today, I was sitting for a moment in front of the living room windows that span almost the entire front wall of the room. And guess what I saw...in January?
Image: Jack Doyle
I can’t even begin to describe the iridescent sheen on this little guy’s head. Seriously. Won’t even try. What a shame for me if I had hidden this view behind the drapes that I had wanted to put there when I first saw the room. Now, I can’t imagine any sort of adornment on any of the windows.
Oh I promise I will show you the before and afters of what we have done so far to the place. I hope it translates as well in photos as it feels in real life. And I hope if you ever come to our house, you feel welcomed. That you feel like I cared enough to make this place look nice, but that I won’t bite your head off if you mess things up. I hope perfect isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. “Warm and inviting,” a friend recently said on her first visit here. Success!, I thought.
On an end table in our living room, I have a few Scrabble and game tiles arranged to spell the words stay awhile. They are of course in two perfectly stacked rows (okay, reform takes a while), and they face outward so they catch your eye when passing. My three-year old, naturally, likes to rearrange the letters and I often walk by to see lestywahia or whaatylesi spelled out instead. The first couple times it happened, I explained to her that the tiles weren’t for touching, just looking. When I realized the absurdity in my reprimand, I have since taken to letting the words sit there as is. Lestywahia. Sounds like it could be Hawaiian for “stay awhile,” or at least something pleasant. And as much as I’d like you to admire the little witty invitation on my table, I’d prefer that you feel its sentiment instead. Whaatylesi, visitors, lestywahia. That is what this new place is all about.
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