brunobaby

Driven by Apartment Therapy's "eight step home cure," I had the inspiration last night to switch two framed posters, one in the living room and one in the bedroom. Since our apartment is one big room with an arch in between, the idea of having separate rooms is an illusion. Or a delusion.

One is a black and white poster of a Cartier-Bresson photograph that I bought on my one and only trip to Paris in 1987. The other is a colorful poster by a Montana artist named Monte Dolack.

My rationale was that since most of the stuff in our living room/kitchen area was black and white, and most of our stuff in the bedroom is pastel, the Dolack poster would be happier in the bedroom and the Cartier-Bresson photograph in the living room.

So we switched them, and this morning I'm looking at both of them and thinking, something is still not quite right:

• The picture in the bedroom is too high. This is because that spot originally had a high dresser, so the picture that was there was placed to be above that dresser. Now that spot has a low cabinet that my husband's father made for him when he was a kid, which made the other picture look too high and the current picture look even higher;

• The picture in the living room is narrower than the other picture, as evidenced by the "Dirt Lines of Demarcation." (A good paint job is also on the "cure" list.) When the wider poster was there, having any more than a couple of smaller pictures there would have been overwhelming. Now, that wall looks too sparse without at least another medium-sized piece of artwork.

And here's the kicker:

• The bedding in the bedroom is muted colors. The poster, although colorful, displays the bright tonal range of some place the Rat Pack would have hung out at in the 1950's.
  

This last realization caused me to probe way down deep into my psyche, and come up with a daring scheme...color scheme, that is. Since I liked the poster, why not re-do the bedroom to match the colors in the poster?

A couple of pieces are already the light color of the coffee table in the picture. A wardrobe cabinet that I bought unfinished when I first moved in and stained dark brown at the end of my provisional adulthood is now so full of marks and scratches from two generations of cats that painting it would improve it. The only dark pieces that I wouldn't paint/refinish/get rid of would be a hutch and bookcase we got a couple of years ago. And of course, the Cabinets of Dad are sacrosanct.

I related my brainstorm to Jim. Whenever I'm really enthused about some idea, I'm always afraid he's gonna go all Ricky Ricardo on me and go "Looooocy!" and start jabbering in Spanish, which would be very strange because he doesn't speak Spanish. And then I would have to sneak around behind his back and it would involve some escapade with a side of beef and a loaf of bread ten feet long.

Instead, he said, "Why don't you paint the molding around the windows one of the colors in the poster?"

So we're all set. Oh yeah, and some new bedding. Century 21's basement is excellent for that. And K-Mart--I'm totally serious. Oh boy!

Meanwhile, when we took the pictures down, we removed what seemed like a quarter of an inch of dirt, grease and tobacco smoke before we put them back up. And correct me if I'm wrong, but if you accidentally drop a piece of clothing on the floor while you're getting dressed, it should not render the garment unwearable. So perhaps it's time to take time for Step One: A good cleaning.