Designing for Mom

Today’s topic is the problems/benefits of working with family members on interior design projects. Apparently, like everything else you have to take the good with the bad. Let’s start with my mom. She is an 84 year old charmer living in our family home where she raised 5 kids with one bathroom.

Mom (Baba to my kids)

Did you see that recent movie, Gran Torino with Clint Eastwood? Two of my three brothers called to tell me he was living in Mom’s house. So get this picture in your mind-a home 80 some years old, no family room, small kitchen, 4 tiny bedrooms upstairs, one bathroom and a really nasty shower stall in the basement. A word to the wise – she recently updated the shower but for years my advice was “don’t look up.” Any creepy slimy thing could have been living there.

Eighteen years ago, when Mom began to make noise about updating her living room and dining room I knew I could help her make some good choices – after all its what I do. I lived about 4 hours from Mom at the time and I gathered my best samples for her and drove north. I brought fabrics to reupholster chairs, fabrics for window treatments, and wallcovering samples for the dining room. I figured we would look locally for a replacement for the green shag carpeting. Becky sure didn’t know everything about this project.

Apparently the green shag was to stay since it only had a few threadbare areas we could easily cover with mis-matched throw rugs, so we moved onto the dining room wallcovering. I made the error of bringing along entire books of wallcovering with pages tagged with my ideas. BIG MISTAKE. Mom couldn’t resist looking at every page, relishing each paper until she settled on one that had the right colors but the wrong scale for the room. Our dining room is very large and she insisted on a round rose pattern that I figured would repeat itself a zillion times in the room. All the talking in the world wouldn’t convince her to reconsider. (To her credit it is still hanging 18 years later and she still likes it and isn’t that what it is all about?)

Tomorrow we will cover the living room draperies, 10 yards of lined draped fabric in one piece. What was I thinking?