Some guys marvel at their wives' attention to detail. "It's all about [kitchen] drawer handles," a friend confides. The question of size has inspired "a three-week conversation involving lots of phone calls and consultations with neighbors."
It doesn't necessarily take a village to redecorate a house, but sometimes it takes a decorator, who may also double as marriage counselor.
(Len Spoden - The Washington Post)
|
|
"All in all, men and women get much more relaxed with somebody helping them," says Reston decorator Patz. "I think before they get started, he's not interested. But as soon as it starts taking shape, he is more inclined to put in his opinion."
Jim Gerson, a designer at Custom Crafters, a Kensington firm specializing in kitchens and bathrooms, says he's often acted as marriage counselor. "I'm usually the tie-breaker. They usually abide by my opinion."
But sometimes even compromise fails. Gerson recalls a Silver Spring couple who agreed she would get to design the master bath for herself, and he'd do the hall bathroom. Then her mother took sick, requiring the wife's absence for some months. When she returned, she found the hall bathroom had been made into a Redskins shrine -- red and burgundy everywhere, a mosaic-tile Redskins emblem on the floor.
"She was chewing me out because of what I let her husband do," Gerson recalls. "The husband and wife had given each other carte blanche, but she didn't like the result."
Gerson's sales strategy involves, first, "getting the wife on your team, helping you sell the husband on the project. When I go out to people's homes, it's usually the wife who's meeting me. I always try to draw out of them: Is your husband in on the project? What level of participation is he taking? When can I meet with him? Generally, the second meeting is in the showroom, I have some prices, and I all but insist the husband be there as well. It gives me a better idea of what the husband is prepared to spend. Usually, it's the wife who perseveres, gets what she wants, and the husband provides the general overall parameters of the project."
Gerson says he once heard another salesman ask a husband, " 'Doesn't your wife deserve the best?' If looks could kill, he would've killed the salesman."
Another time, he overheard a showroom argument between husband and wife. She wanted an expensive Sub-Zero refrigerator. "He was explaining it was too much money, so she didn't get what she wanted. She was angry. She said, 'We better stop at Mattress Discounters on the way home.' 'Why's that?' he asked. 'Because you're not sleeping in my bed.' They were back two or three days later, and she got the expensive refrigerator. I guess he got tired of sleeping on the couch."
Increasingly though, Gerson notes, husbands are having more to say about redecorating. "Because men are cooking more, getting more involved in the kitchen," he reasons, "they are getting more involved with design and with appliances, the more mechanical aspects of it. It's more of a cooperative effort than it used to be."
Lawyers Tom Olson and Jocelyn Samuels, who live with their two daughters in a Bethesda colonial, may not represent a trend, but they do demonstrate that not all wives are insistent about home makeovers, nor are all husbands redecorating duds.
"What I eventually realized about my wife, whom I adore, is that she essentially accepts what is when it comes to decorating," says Olson, 51. "If cardboard boxes are in the corner and there's a crooked wall painting none of us likes, if it's been there for a while, that's just life as it is. I eventually realized if we were going to decorate the house, I would uncharacteristically be the one."
So Olson found a decorator, "because I didn't want to live like a college student for the rest of our life. We put in new hardwood floors, hired one of the fancy faux-painting firms, decided to have the dining room with burgundy faux painting and all black-and-white photographs. We redecorated three major rooms."
Samuels, 48, was "delighted to have him take the lead on this. I am certainly aware our situation is somewhat unusual and that we are bucking the stereotypical trend that it's the wives who take on the most responsibility for these efforts.
"I think I felt both overwhelmed by the universe of possibilities and guilt-ridden at the indulgence of focusing on home decoration," she says. "I was thrilled he was actually willing to execute a plan. It was certainly not one of my priorities. But it's terrific. I had felt like a tenant. So this has been a giant leap forward into adulthood."
Of course, the original redecorating is now beginning to wear a bit, so there is more work to be done -- "the occupational hazard of just living in a place," Samuels said.
Will she take a more active role this time? "There's no evidence that I will," she says, relishing the role reversal. "I find this whole topic entirely entertaining."
