March 14, 2008

I've Got the Fever

It has me in its grip and it won't let go. Keeper says it's the Fever.

A year or more ago, I was immune. I even wrote a column about it. I had watched a marathon of Trading Spaces episodes and I was having nightmares about my neighbors barging in and painting my white walls sage green and putting up shoji screens everywhere. I LIKED my white walls and beige carpeting, I whined. Nobody was going to make me give up my blandness.

Well, I'm over it.

It started in my office, where we turned a dingy dump with no storage into a cheery beach cottage retreat with plenty of bookshelves. The walls are blue like the ocean, and the carpet is the color of sand. I was delighted with our handiwork.

There was paint left over, so our white bathroom also took on a beach theme.

And it was good. I was done decorating.

Soon, though, I began to watch shows like Design on a Dime and Designed to Sell, and the lingo started to creep into my consciousness. If someone asked me my favorite color, I would say, "I like earth tones-the blues, the greens, the browns." This is how these people talk: in plurals. The bold colors, therefore, are the reds, the oranges, the yellows.

There's no such thing as curtains and blinds anymore. It's "window treatments," and mine are lacking coherence.

My chandelier isn't old and ugly; it's "outdated." My mismatched furniture isn't a hodgepodge; it's "eclectic."

As soon as the designer vocabulary was entrenched, I began to adopt the designer aesthetic as well. I started to worry that mine was the only house on the block that didn't have granite countertops. Because if I learned anything at all from these shows. it's this: kitchens sell houses! And buyers want granite countertops, brushed nickel hardware, and stone floors! No, I don't want to sell my house, but I want it to look as if I could get top dollar.

So, we started with the kitchen, where we spent literally WEEKS scraping off old wallpaper and painting the walls a lovely terra cotta. Then, of course, the cabinets looked dowdy and they are slated for a makeover next month. Alas, we can't afford granite, but no one has started a petition to have us kicked out of the neighborhood.

With the kitchen shaping up, the dining room looked hideous, so we painted one wall the terra cotta color, and it made the woodwork "pop" -another favorite designer word. Now I'm painting our "outdated" knotty pine table and chairs a warm chocolate color and searching for the perfect shade of khaki for the other walls.

You might be wondering where my roommate stands on all this change. Keeper is always willing to take a chance when I have a vision, so he's been a steadfast and uncomplaining foot soldier in the battle to update our style.

He's starting to worry, though. The other day, we were discussing our plans for the dining room, he caught me looking around the living room at our white walls and eclectic furniture.

"I've seen that look before," he said.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"I might as well get out the drop cloth. You've got Decorating Fever."