Skip to content
  • Fri. Sep 22nd, 2023
Rockgodtycoo
  • General News
  • Technology
  • Health
  • Automotive
  • Home Design
  • Art
  • About Us
    • Advertise Here
    • Contact Us
    • Privacy Policy
    • Sitemap
Home & Design

In a multigenerational home, design choices can be emotional

ByEva M. Smalls

May 7, 2022 #2008 World News, #2018 Best News Stories World, #Abc News World, #Are Presidential Elecitons World News, #Art World News Bendor Grosvenor, #Bbc World News Anchors 2021, #Bbc World News Closed Captioning, #Bbc World News David Homeless, #Bbc World News Michelle Fleury, #Cambodia World News Religion, #Christian World News Logo, #Disney World Passholder News, #Fact Check Mad World News, #Feeding The World News, #Flat World Concept Globalization News, #Fortune 500 World News, #Galactic News World Transfiguration, #Ket World News, #Kin World News, #Major World Auto Dealership News, #Mirror World News, #Msnbc World News Rachael Madow, #Muslims World News, #News 2026 World Cup, #News Innovations Across The World, #News Of The World Videos, #News World Video, #Nhk World News Casters, #Printable World News Headlines, #Rreef World News Ranking, #Spain World Cup Coach News, #Tekken World Tour News, #Third World Countries Testtube News, #Untold News Around The World, #Us News World Ranking, #Us World An News, #Weekly World News Twitter, #World And Local News Today, #World Chess News, #World Fucking News Articles, #World Live News 24, #World Mad News, #World News In 2002, #World News Polls, #World News Roundup Live Stream, #World News Science, #World News Today Mashable, #World Of Tanks News Us, #World Religion News, #Yoshi Wooly World News

ALLISON PARK, Pa. — Should the hanging from Thailand stay on the living-room wall where it has lived since I was born? Should we lay out the family room as it was when I was 8, when I was 17 or in a completely new configuration? Should we leave my mother’s spice rack on the north wall of the kitchen? What about the spices?

When you live in a house passed down over generations, deep-time design opportunities lurk around every corner. There are so many ways to blend past and present. And the weight of history can rise up and knock you down at the most unexpected moments.

In 2007, we moved into the midcentury modern house that my parents built in 1965 — and that I came home to as a day-old infant in the spring of 1968. It was a split level, and it showed. Upstairs, my mother’s Scandinavian-design sensibilities ruled, with clean lines and blond wood everywhere. Downstairs, my father’s purview, was cluttered with books and framed stamps and record albums and musical instruments.

When my parents left, they moved to a retirement community with some clothes, some furniture, some files, a television and little else. Behind they left 42 years of life’s possessions — things accumulated locally, things gathered during extensive international travels, things we were overjoyed they saved, things everyone agreed should have been thrown out.

It was up to us to add their distinctiveness to our own. But how?

My wife, the one with the finely honed sensibilities, recognized in her kindness that what for her was an act of design was, for me, an encroachment upon good memories. It probably didn’t help that when she did something like moving a stack of bowls from one cabinet to another, she might encounter me in the doorway shouting, “YOU’RE DESTROYING MY CHILDHOOD!” I was joking. Sort of.

Eventually, some decorating patterns emerged. Some were deliberate, others either inadvertent or executed quietly to avoid discord.

— Existing furniture items were replaced with new ones more congruent with our sense of design, but they stayed in the same places. This occasionally lent locations like the living room the sense of an Ikea design showroom, where the layout was exactly the same as decades ago except that, say, the Kibik had suddenly been replaced by the Vallentuna.

— My wife’s increasing proclivity for building industrial-style furniture using stained lumber, metal piping and flanges created an increasingly unified look for the house. But more often than not, many of the items displayed on these spanking-new-but-vintage-looking shelves were carefully curated from my parents’ collection. Best of both worlds.

— Certain things were sacrosanct. That hanging mentioned above stayed right where it had been since Lyndon Johnson was president. But the blank wall around it sprouted with our maritally acquired stuff — cabinets from China, a soda-pop crate from 1940s eastern Pennsylvania, a Thai spirit house from our years in Bangkok. The items of a previous generation became centerpieces for the design musings of the next. Similarly, a Chinese throw rug purchased by my parents in 1980 became the perfect accessory for a circular coffee table we got in Thailand — one made by fusing wood to the steel wheel of a massive Thai truck.

I have a patient wife; this much should be said. Someone with as many great ideas as she has about how a house should look is a patient partner indeed when confronted with these emotionally freighted details. But what we have now, 15 years into living here, is something of a design detente.

She (as she has been from the beginning) is accommodating to the sometimes annoying fingers of the past when they reach into present-day discussions about, say, what color paint to use in the kitchen or what kind of light fixture is best for the upstairs hallway. I, in turn, have learned (not quite from the beginning, alas) to be open to new things.

The result: a home that summons the past without getting lost in it, and the promise that, if something new and innovative is possible, it doesn’t get shot down just because history says so.

My parents are long gone now; our home stands as, among other things, a tribute to them and what they gave us. But I close with an anecdote from the years immediately after 2007, when they moved out and we moved in.

In that time, as our decidedly less minimalist aesthetic started to prevail, my parents would come over for dinner often. We always worried that my mother would blanch at the clutter and the usurping of her clean lines. Instead, she’d sit by our newly installed “Family History Wall” — a busy concoction that came from our aesthetic, not hers — and invariably express her delight. “It’s not the same as when we lived here,” she’d say, “but I love it just as much.”

She’d add: “This will always feel like our home, but I love that it’s your house now.”

In trying to blend the sensibilities of multiple generations and the emotions that come with them, that’s about the best outcome I can imagine.

Post navigation

Barbra Streisand’s My Passion for Design: Review
Finding home in hotpot capital

By Eva M. Smalls

Related Post

Home & Design

Manipal MET 2023 – Exam Date, Application Form Started, Eligibility

Sep 19, 2023 Eva M. Smalls
Home & Design

Our Favorite Social Media Platforms

Sep 14, 2023 Eva M. Smalls
Home & Design

Why some airline refunds take so long

Sep 11, 2023 Eva M. Smalls
September 2023
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
252627282930  
« Aug    
Archives
Categories
  • Art And Entertainment
  • Baby & Parenting
  • Business Opportunity
  • Car & Automotive
  • Computer & Technology
  • Dental Clinic
  • Fashion & Shopping
  • Food & Cooking
  • General News
  • Health
  • Health & Fitness
  • Home & Design
  • Lifestyle
  • Real Estate
  • Society
  • Sports
  • Website Design
Recent Posts
  • Nutcracker Christmas Tree Decorations | Nanny Anita
  • What to expect in martech in 2023 and how to harness it to your advantage
  • Building Science into Early Childhood Education with Dr. Tzipor Ulman
  • Your Guide to the FeedBlitz Email Ad Program
  • Manipal MET 2023 – Exam Date, Application Form Started, Eligibility
BL

rockgodtycoon.com

citratextile.com

Tags
Abc World News Journalists Abc World News Now Asian Asrelya World News Bbc News (World) Bbc World News 2014 Bbc World News Guatemala Bbc World News Samsung Bbc World News Video Stories Bbc World News Washington Bigest News In World Breaking World News Et Breaking World News Right Now Breaking World News Turkey Today Cc World News Live Cnn World News Programs Dartmouth College Us World News David Muir World News Podcast Disney World Gator News Duterte News Around The World European Renaissance World News Fox News Wilson'S World German World News Media Glassdoor Morocco World News Headline World News Germany Host Of World News Tonight Monster Hunters World News News News Of The World Intro Ok Google World News Tonight Recent News In World Reddoit World News Ricos World Kitchen News Shooters World Tampa News Switzerland World Cup News Tech News Around The World The World News Channel Banner Track World Cup News Trump Us News World Report Tundra Women News Around The World World World News Media London World Of Diveing News World Severe Weather News Www.Reddit.Com/World News
Visit Now
Xtreme Free Games

scorpion exterminator las vegas 

Related Article

Art And Entertainment

Nutcracker Christmas Tree Decorations | Nanny Anita

September 22, 2023 Eva M. Smalls
Computer & Technology

What to expect in martech in 2023 and how to harness it to your advantage

September 22, 2023 Eva M. Smalls
Art And Entertainment

Building Science into Early Childhood Education with Dr. Tzipor Ulman

September 21, 2023 Eva M. Smalls
Health & Fitness

Your Guide to the FeedBlitz Email Ad Program

September 19, 2023 Eva M. Smalls
Rockgodtycoo

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: Newsup by Themeansar.

  • Home
  • About Us
  • Advertise Here
  • Contact Us
  • Privacy Policy
  • real estate school jacksonville fl
  • Sample Page
  • Sitemap

WhatsApp us