Recommended by Carol at Magistramater.
I’m not sure I have the interior decorator/homemaker/domestic engineer gene or talent or something. Although I enjoyed this book and found the history of the idea of “home” and a “comfortable home” interesting, I can’t say I felt that much of the information in the book related to me or my family or the way we live.
That is, I didn’t become engaged in the book’s ideas about home and how to achieve a comfortable home until the very end of the book when Rybczynski discusses comfort as both an objective, measurable ideal and a subjective, experiential idea:
We should resist the inadequate definitions that engineers and architects have offered us. Domestic well-being is too important to be left to the experts; it is, as it has always been, the business of the family and the individual.”
SO what furniture and what kind of design makes your home comfortable? What would make it more convenient and comfortable and habitable?
I know exactly what would would improve my home. I have a whole list:
1. I want new countertops. These kind.
2. I want my lower kitchen cabinets to open on both sides. I want bookshelves in the sides towards the living room, a divider in the middle, and shallower cabinet space in the kitchen. I don’t know if anyone else can picture what I’m talking about, but my lower cabinets are much too deep and dark with lots of unused space. And I always need more bookshelves.
3. I need better lighting for reading in the living room and the game room.
4. I would love to have a durable, but fluffy comforter on my bed and lots of super-sized cushy pillows that could be configured as needed. Right now I have a quilt covering on the bed because the comforters I’ve had in the past have not stood up to repeated Semicolon family use and abuse.
I may not be much of an interior designer, but as the amateur art critics say, “I know what I like.”
Sherry, I love the countertops! And the bookshelf/kitchen cupboard makes sense to me. There is always a need for bookcases. My older brother had a floor to ceiling built-in shelf installed in his master bath, but it was a bad idea. All the moisture didn’t bode well for the books.
What are you considering for lighting?
I am on a quest for a chair that my hard working husband likes. Along the way, I found one that I l-o-v-e. I wish I knew how to link to it with html.
http://www.reclinersplus.com/leather-recliners/cream/macmotion54seriesleatherrecliner.cfm
He graciously bought this chair for me, and I’m still dragging him to stores to sit in chairs until we find the one he likes, most likely a glider rocker.
When it comes to interior design, I can only steal ideas from others. I rely on my brother, my daughter-in-law, and my sister-in-law to give me good advice.
Carol, I’m glad you approve of my countertops, but have I told you I want them to be red? Fire engine red, not rust or browny red. I didn’t think so.
My family despairs of my taste in countertops and just about everything else.