We pass into an electric green reading room filled with fake potted palms. Dusty plastic leaves form an awning over our heads. Tracey strolls the perimeter of the room, first taking in the paint choices and then inspecting the zebra-skin couch topped with round fuchsia, yellow, and royal blue throw pillows. “This room looks like Tommy Bahama banged a bag of Skittles.”
There’s an enormous lion-headed water feature in the corner, and the window looks out over the statue of a bear on the patio. “So, what do you think, kids,” Tracey asks, “Russian Mafia or Italian Mafia?”
“But,” I protest,“paint can be changed. Candice Olson says so all the time. And check out the window treatments!” Last time we were here, I fell in love with the thick white wooden-slat blinds. “Those are custom-made plantation shades!”
Tracey’s not having it. “Yeah, and you certainly could never replicate those, right?”
Ooh, good point.
“To be fair, Tracey, you’ve told me how much you love French Provincial houses.”
“Yes,” she agrees. “In Provence.”
I feel like I have to defend our bringing her here, so I say,“I swear this place didn’t seem nearly so over-the-top with the lights off.”
Before she can get in another snarky remark, I add, “Plus, this room isn’t what sold us. You haven’t yet seen the adorable guesthouse off the back patio. A guesthouse! As in a separate house for guests! You know what people in Indiana don’t have? A spare house for visitors. How exciting is that? Guests could have all the peace and privacy they wanted. Genius! And more important, there’s a pool and a pond. Do you realize if we buy this house we could be all, ‘We’ve got a pool and a pond. Pond would be good for you,’ every time someone came to visit. How hilarious would that be?”
“Mia, you can’t drop that kind of cash on a house just because you want to quote
Caddyshack
.”
I guess we’ll see about that.
“Let’s just finish the tour before we completely rule it out,” I reason.
We move on to the ultra-high-end kitchen, with its custom cabinetry and PRO series Sub-Zero fridge and wine cooler and double dishwasher and . . . ropes and ropes of fake ivy and pretend grapes. They seem to have snaked their way from the entry hall, over the balcony, and back down the wall in here. The plastic vines are strewn everywhere—on top of cabinets, over the fridge, looped from the ceiling, and woven into the window treatments. Tracey grows increasingly appalled. “No, seriously, the owners have to fire this home stager. Hell, I might just e-mail some photos to
Get It Sold
, because
clearly
they could use the help.”
Then we get to the big dance—the two-story family room with its trompe l’oeil tray ceiling with its columns and cherubs. Tracey doesn’t notice it until I point up, and when she does, she jumps a little. “It just gets better and better.”
“To be fair, that wasn’t done cheaply,” I say, attempting to be the devil’s advocate for the house. I’m coming around to agreeing that it might be a tad much, but someone dropped a ton of cash upgrading this place, and I really do like the pool and the pond.
Okay, I can’t not say it again.
Pond would be good for you.
See? Hilarious! Every time!
“Oh, no,”Tracey agrees. “You’re right on target there. Someone paid big money on these hideous treatments, thus proving the axiom ‘You can’t buy taste.’ ”
Mac’s been looking in the pantry (which, of course, boasts another ginormous chandelier) (and, of course, impressed me on our last visit) and comes out to rejoin the conversation. “Obviously the place isn’t our taste—”
“This is no one’s taste,” Tracey insists.
Mac is undeterred. “But the reason we brought you here is to get your opinion on the bones of the place. Is what’s underneath all the grapes and sparkles worth salvaging?”
Tracey pulls out a chair and has a seat at the rococo-legged kitchen table with the five-inch-thick marble top. “Here’s my issue with that—you said the house was priced reasonably but not great.”
Liz sits across from us and she nods, toying with the enormous bowl of fake plastic grapes in the center. “I feel like they’d really need to come down on the asking price to make this place a good deal, and from what the listing agent says, they’re not terribly negotiable. It’s not a short-sale situation, at least not yet.”
Tracey processes this information. “To me, it doesn’t make financial sense to pay a premium for expensive fixtures and then get rid of them. You’re going to have to fork over multiple thousands to chase the ghost of Carmella Soprano out of here. You want to rip stuff out? Then I suggest you find a house that’s priced accordingly or needs rehabbing.”
Mac nods. “That’s what I’ve been telling Mia. I say if we want the most house for our money, we buy a fixer-upper, but she’s totally against it.”
“That’s not a bad idea, Mia. Why so opposed?”Tracey asks.
“Redecorate? Yes. Rehab? No. I mean, remember when we had the leaky shower pan in the rental house on Old Gold Ave., and the one-week repair job turned into a two-month bath-gutting odyssey? No, thanks. I’d rather keep looking,” I reply.
Mac turns to me, “So this place? It’s out of the running?”
“Tracey makes a lot of sense about not tearing down expensive finishes,” I have to admit. “Should we go?” I rise from the table.
“Oh, no, no—I’ve got to see what treasures await upstairs,” Tracey says.
I’m not sure what particular feature finally pushes Tracey over the edge—whether it’s the Wild West saloon doors separating the hot-pink master toilet from the hot-pink sunken tub
47
or the massive elk-antler chandelier in the upstairs den or the wire-enclosed children’s bed that’s supposed to look like a princess coach but instead resembles a coast guard marine-rescue cage. She spends most of the ride to the city cackling and wiping her eyes.
On the plus side, I’m so glad we brought Tracey, because now we’re not buying a house that can’t be made tasteful.
The downside is, we won’t have a pool or a pond, and either one would have been good for me.
“Anything worth noting today?”
I say nothing, choosing only to grit my teeth in response.
“That bad?” Mac asks gently. I’ve just come in the back door from an entire day spent up in the Cambs.
While Mac’s at work, I’ve been tasked with running real estate recon missions. During the week it’s my job to weed out the stinkers so he doesn’t have to spend his weekends grimacing at faux-wood paneling and unfinished basements. I’m fine with the arrangement, because I have a looming deadline, which means I want to do anything except what I’m
supposed
to be doing.
The truth is that the places I saw weren’t
so
awful today—at least comparatively—provided one has a deep and abiding love for mauve paint, gold faucets, and flood damage. At the moment, my glowering is due less to the fruitless search and more because of what I catch him doing. He’s standing over the stove massacring thirty dollars’ worth of fresh ingredients from Whole Foods in an attempt to make dinner.
A few weeks ago, while we were at the market, I spotted a jar of herbs and sauce called Bush’s Chili Magic Chili Starter. I launched my body in front of it, hoping Mac wouldn’t notice, but I was too slow. He grabbed it, announcing, “Let’s make 2010 the year I learn to master chili!” just as I was thinking,
Let’s make 2010 the year you stop trying to master chili.
I realize some wives would love it if their husbands took the initiative to cook dinner, but perhaps they don’t realize they’d have to
eat
whatever their husbands make.
48
Because I hate the idea of wasting food—or hurting his feelings—I always choke down whatever he serves.
I take off my coat and come over to kiss him. Then I sneak a glance into the saucepan. I’m no chili aficionado, but I’m pretty sure it’s never supposed to be that color.
“See anything worth noting today?” he inquires.
“Sort of,” I say, grabbing a glass of wine from the fridge. I’m having chardonnay, not so much because I need a drink, but more because I’m hoping the oak resin will set up a Flavor Protection Perimeter between my tongue and his chili. (I also keep a secret stash of peanut-butter-filled pretzels in my desk for nights Mac cooks dinner.)
I take a deep, protective swig before continuing. “The place on Goldenmill had a Liberace bathroom.”
Before I continue, here’s where I need to apologize to everyone who’s ever prompted me to roll my eyes on HGTV. I always get so mad at the people who can’t see past the aesthetics of a place, but it turns out that’s easier said than done. Sometimes when I spot something so blatantly hideous, like fake bamboo wallpaper or one of those knit toilet-paper holders topped with a doll’s torso, I question all the homeowners’ decisions, starting with the one to buy this particular house. I mean, a tufted silk ceiling is one thing, but a sad clown painted on velvet? No.
He glances up from his simmering pot of unpleasantness. “Meaning?”
“Meaning the bathroom was mirrored everywhere, and I’m not kidding. I’m talking on the ceiling, on the back of the door, on the vanity, and on the floor. Plus there was a rounded wall, and in the curve there were about twenty long, narrow strips of mirror. Topping it all was a gigantic mirrored chandelier.”
At that point in the day, I’d had about six lattes, so I ended up needing to use that bathroom. I now know what I look like while taking a leak from fourteen different angles. I kept swinging my head around so I wouldn’t make eye contact with myself, but no luck; I was everywhere. FYI? There’s some stuff you just can’t unsee.
“Nice.” He stirs his pot, and then licks the spoon when he’s done. Did he just wince? Yeah. That bodes well. “What about the Cape Cod on Foxfield? I took the virtual tour and it seemed right up our alley.”
“They must have shot the MLS listing photos while lying on the ground or something. The bedroom ceilings were so slanted I couldn’t stand upright. A place like that would require major reconstruction.” I rub the sore spot on my forehead. I hope the sellers aren’t too mad I dented their wall with my face.
“Then maybe renovations should be an option,” he says, dumping a handful of salt into his bubbling potion. I shudder inadvertently. “If it means we get a bigger house or a better neighborhood, we should consider expanding our search to rehab properties.”
Ack, the rehab-versus-redecorate discussion. This has been our perpetual “tastes great”–versus–“less filling” argument, and it’s the biggest reason we’re still in a rental house. He’s dying to take something down to the studs, while I’m really confident in our ability only to switch outlet covers and paint trim.
Seriously, every time he says the R-word I can’t help but recall the time we bought our new chandelier for the dining room. Mac was convinced he could install it himself despite having never done so before, and even though the instruction sheet from Pottery Barn clearly stated,
You should really call a professional for this; no, really, we mean it.
To his credit, he was able to manage the assembly and the mounting of the fixture. After it went up and he went to the basement to flip the breaker, I was awed by how merrily the chandelier twinkled for six whole seconds before the switch plate sparked and we lost power in half the house.
The best part was when Mac tried to get the electrician to convince me of what a good job he’d done up until the part where he almost started an electrical fire. The electrician agreed, saying that if indeed Mac had realized we had a triple rather than a double switch, he’d have done everything right. And yet as I wrote out the two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar time-and-a-half check for the repair, I failed to recognize this victory.
As Chandeliergate 2008 is still a sore point around here, I don’t bring it up. Instead I say, “I thought we agreed renovations would be too troublesome. I mean, I want to put my mark on a place, but I had new paint and carpet in mind, maybe a little crown molding. Possibly some light cabinet hardware shopping.”
An oddly determined look crosses his face. “Listen, we’ve spent every Saturday for the last year watching HGTV. What they do only looks difficult. Do you know how easy it is to rehab a bathroom if you’re just swapping vanities and exchanging fixtures? Most of the work comes from the teardown, and I can swing a sledgehammer and rewire an electrical panel. The only hard part’s moving pipes, and we can outsource that to a professional.”
“You spend one high school summer working in a lumberyard and all of a sudden you’re Bob Vila?”
He wipes his hands on a dish towel and begins to ladle out our dinner. “No, I’m saying we’re capable of doing more than you’d guess.”
I mull this over while collecting napkins, spoons, and enough bread and butter to absorb the taste of our dinner. When he’s finished preparing our bowls, he sits down across from me and places his hand over my left hand. “Promise me you’ll at least consider our buying a rehab.”
I glance down at the gelatinous blob in my bowl and I cross the fingers on my right hand under the table. “If we can’t find a house that’s move-in ready, then yes, I promise.”