124. All About The Macramé Hanger in My Blue-Cabbage-Rose-Papered Dining Room

I love it how the readers pick up on something and turn a post into something that wasn't originally intended, thus opening up another post.  See how this symbiotic relationship works?  Neato. 

This story is insipid and banal, though; I'm warning you. You might rather spend your time doing something useful like flossing your teeth or picking your belly-button lint.  But first, Rilona time-lapse photography continues.

May 3, 2008, ~2:30 p.m.

A few weeks ago I decided to repot my rattail cactus. It's been underachieving on my windowsill in a too-small pot.  That type of cactus really needs to be hanging, but I don't have any nice hanging pots.  I am rather fond of this Asian pot that my mother gave me several years ago, and it was empty, having been vacated by the moving-up of something else, so I put the cactus in there. But that didn't solve my hanging dilemma.  I seemed to recall that somewhere deep in a drawer (and it turned out it wasn't too deep and wasn't too far away -- right in a kitchen drawer) I had a macramé hanger that I got a few years ago at Home Depot.  Nothing too special and certainly not vintage Norma or anything, although I was a teenager in the '70s and macramé was as hard-wired into a '70s teen as an iPod is to the 2000s.

In addition to this being an anticlimactic story, it is accompanied with an anticlimactic photo.  It was gray and rainy yesterday and this looks pretty bad with the flash. The plant is only now starting to recover from being repotted. I think it's going to be happy in its new pot, but it doesn't yet look its best. Only question is, are the flowers that this cactus is supposed to throw out going to clash with the pot?  (answer: Yes.  I didn't think of that when I potted it, of course) And neither the pot nor the hanger coordinate with the dining room.  At least not now.  I swear, I used to care about this stuff more.  I did.  Really.

Now, about that dining room:  See that something-or-other to the left of the hanging pot?  That's our leaky, horrible, rotten sunroom.  It has been nothing but trouble since we constructed the house. The company that sold it (it was a kit) went bankrupt shortly after it was done. This thing was designed for the Pacific Northwest, where it must not ever RAIN (haha), not the extreme weather conditions of the Northeast, where we do indeed get precipitation and freezing and thawing and snowfall and ice.  Just a hunch here: This might explain the company's bankruptcy.

Anyway, after many years of hiring people to patch it and repair it and try to upgrade it, hemorrhaging money all along, it is slated to be torn down and rebuilt properly, hopefully starting in June, with a pitched roof to shed the snow and weather-tight windows.  As part of that project, the dining room is going to be opened up a bit and it will be separate spaces, but they will flow into one another. That is when I will finally get rid of the dreaded blue cabbage rose wallpaper that I loved so much in 1990, but now?  Not so much.  I figure when the cute contractor is working on the adjacent sunroom, he will provide nice-enough companionship that I won't mind stripping that wallpaper.

What?  My bad?

Okay.  In its (the wallpaper's) defense, I offer the following.  a) I was young.  b) People's tastes change.  c) Reread b and add:  "A lot." d) When I was in psychotherapy in 1990, one of the million and a half things I realized is that a lot of my decorating choices were born of trying to recreate my paternal grandmother's home, which is where I had a little bit of stability in my childhood. e)  I'm over that now.  f) This is my china pattern, which I do still love:

Wedgwood Rosedale.  It's discontinued.  Many of these pieces I hand-carried back from London in 1983 and 1993-94, so they are pretty special to me, although I've evolved into the kind of person to whom fancy china and crystal means less than it did then. I like having nice things, but .... meh.  This china has been used only a handful of times in 26 years.  Seems kind of silly.  Plus, it really wouldn't work in a cave or an Airstream. Or is that just me? I guess why NOT set a nice table, even in a cave? I know the psychology of the thing is, if I couldn't have nice china, I'd be coveting it.  We humans can never be happy, it seems.  But the thing(s) I want right now have less to do with things like china and more to do with experiences.

g) A friend who was a decorator went to a decorating show in approximately 1988.  She came back and excitedly said, "Look at this wonderful wallpaper I found for your dining room!"

h)  Anyhoo, I thought it was great for a lot of years, so I guess I got my money's worth.  Now it's just about the dread of pulling off the Band-Aid.  It is a bitch of a job, removing this high-end vinyl-coated wallpaper, and it wrecks the walls. I hired someone to take the wallpaper off one of the bathrooms recently, and my walls and ceiling are a mess, so I don't want that to happen to my dining room. And I can't paint over it, because it is vinyl-coated, not that I'd want to do that anyway.  I like doing things right if I'm going to do them.  All I want now is for my dining room walls to be a nice smooth shade of dark burnished gold or plum or mocha (all of which I finally realize will not only coordinate with my china and my pottery and my antique botanical prints, but will actually make those things "pop") or....anything at all, I guess, other than blue cabbage roses.  They're so twenty years ago.

Comments

[Kristen]

Mmmmm, plum mocha!

AACK--vinyl coated walpaper. Not a happy thing. Please be careful regarding toxic fumes when you are removing the stuff.

[Manise]

We have something else in common- Wedgewood, Mine is "White Dolphins" and also discontinued, though I can find more pieces at Replacements LTD. Fortunately I do not share the wallpaper nightmare or a leaky sun room.

[maryse]

joe and i run into minor decorating kerfuffles because he's always trying to recreate his sister's house. it's a lovely house but it was last decorated in 1988 and even she wants to redecorate. yeah so no cabbage roses in my house ever.

[Nora]

The cabbage roses do have a certain beauty, Norma, but I understand your wanting to be shed of them... refreshing our surroundings is always a nice thing, once the yucky work is done!

When we moved into our house 16 years ago, stenciling was big. So I stenciled a ribbon pattern at chair-rail height in our bedroom. My husband was furious! Ribbons! In his bedroom! They stayed for several years, until we painted again in shades of sand and clay... much more restful and "me." And my husband could have danced a naked jig down the street in his joy.

[marianne]

Stripping wallpaper off walls... not one of my favourite things either... good luck with that, although if I DID live in your neck of the woods? I'd so be there. to help you.
The china I have... there are two different sets, both of which my dad brought back from Japan while he was in the Navy. Mom finally gave them up... have never used any of it.

[margene]

I have some Waterford Crystal goblets I wish I'd never bought...in fact I stopped at 7 and never bought the 8th. Great idea to strip your paper with the contractor handy for company. ;-)

[Vicki]

Do you use a Paper Tiger when you're stripping? It's a small round thing that you hold in your hand with gear-like things underneath that poke holes in the paper as you rub it all over. Make a lot of holes in the vinyl paper. I also use a wallpaper steamer -- it's like a giant steam iron. Steam/water will get into all those little holes you made with the Paper Tiger and removal is much easier. It's great for removing all the glue, too.

Unless these walls are drywall, then it's a pretty sucky, destructive job.

[CindyCindy]

Still, the cabbage roses are comforting. Besides, stripping wallpaper is painful, boring, neverending, and did I mention awful? Of course, I stripped our dining room about 4 years ago and painted it butternut squash above the chair rail and navy blue below and now I'm tired of that. We are a fickle lot, aren't we?

[Marcia Cooke]

I like the clock to the right of the hanging planter...we have several quite like it! And, I also have a discontinued Wedgewood china, Kutani Crane. What is it with W'wood and these patterns, anyway?! I have a hutch full of Waterford crystal, too, but don't use that because Hubby doesn't like it for wine. Too thick. So we now have a bookcase full of Reidel. If it makes you feel better, my SIL has a relatively new, $50,000 "conservatory" that leaks like a sieve.

[Roxie]

The pot and the hanger go quite well together. The cactus - not so much.

How about covering the wallpaper with one of those textured papers that is designed to be painted over? They're way cool!

Love, love the Wedgewood! You don't have to wait for a visit from the queen of England to use it, you know. How about using it to celebrate Tuesday? Or pull out a couple plates for the Sunday morning croissant and coffee?

I enjoy going to estate sales, but often I feel sad to see beautiful things which have been so treasured that they never get used. There was one lady with dozens of lovely silk negligees and pegnoirs, still in their boxes. I think her husband thought of her as a queenly, beautiful woman, and she loved the thought so much that she couldn't bear to wear the gowns. Or maybe she just preferred her ratty nylon housecoats. Don't BE that lady, Norma!! Use your nice things!!

[Gillian]

Reminds me of stripping wallpaper in my house. Eighties stuff, applied to wallboard with no primer. That was a mess too. Good luck!

[Cheryl S.]

Use your china! Make a point to pull it out at least a couple of times a year. I used to store all my "good stuff" and never use it, until I realized there was no point in owning it if you never used it. Yes, you risk breaking things or losing them, but they might as well be broken or lost if all they do is sit in a closet or drawer.

[Cookie]

Suddenly, I wish I still had the sea shell plant hanger that briefly crossed my path in the 80's.

Have you priced getting the sheet rock replaced rather than stripping and patching? It would let you have perfect new walls and a fresh start. Just a thought.

Oh, and we do use the nice china in the cave. There is not waiting for "one day". We enjoy life daily. Yes, even in the cave.

[lisa]

I'm reading your post and thinking 'ack', which is what I thought when you sent that email yesterday, and what do I see when I open the comments? 'ack' from Kristen! More of the ack today is, you actually ever liked that? wow! Here I thought you inherited it w/ the house, but the whys of it are surely understandable. My sense of decorating, put stuff that pleases you around, if it all 'goes' all the better, but if not, so what. Decorating to make things match and look pretty seems pretty senseless to me, which is why my mantel is covered with stones, skulls, and odd found objects. That room is the 'living room living room' (so named by my son when he was 4 and to differentiate it from the family room living room), but it gets used primarily as a lab/study/herbarium. I had this thought last night, you could put up that paintable paper, but then I wondered if it would go over the vinyl. I've had a hankering to paint something tomato/chinese red, and I see that color in your china, maybe you could do your dining room something like that, or red below and mocha/ochre above??? Eh, whatever floats your boat. Oh, and a rattail? My boss brought one to work for me to revive in the sunny area, and it was doing ok but butt ugly. Then the intern out there noticed white mealy bugs and away it went.

[Beebs]

I used to have a china cabinet full of lovely Belleek china and Waterford crystal, with drawers full of Christofle sterling that I used when company, (you know: "important people") came for dinner. All those lovely pieces are now in my kitchen cabinets and drawers and are used everyday. Who is more important than I am?

[Helen]

oh my. You're living my life... but we didn't do the wall paper.
The things we have about which I once cared SO MUCH, that I no longer find as important. (My china gets used annually -- and that gorgeous china tea set that I carried home from London in 1984? used what? twice in 24 years? hmmmm....)
The things from my maternal grandmother's house that are all over my house, as though I was trying to rebuilt that space where I KNEW how much I was loved... and slipping it all over my own house. I mean c'mon... those antique chairs? They're truly lovely, but the upholstery has not withstood the cats and kids and life that happens in our house. They're why no one played in Grandmother's living room.... but people seem to play every where here...
I DO envy you the chance to rebuild the sun room etc. What fun....even if it will be messy.

[Elisabeth]

My family never had china or crystal or silver. We used paper plates and cups on holidays because it made the clean-up easier. The first time I went to Easter at John's house changed my entire outlook on all of that. There was fine china and real linen napkins and crystal and silver and I wanted it all. So, I registered for china and crystal when we got married (silver is just too damn expensive). None of it is very expensive which I did on purpose so that I wouldn't be scared to use it. Who cares if you drop a $20 crystal goblet? Just buy another one! Anyhoo, I drag it out every year for Thanksgiving and Easter and any other time I feel like it and I love it. Now, all I need is a fancy china tea set and I'll be happy (though I do have a silver tea set I like to use, too--got it at an antique store for $20, I guess people in that area don't care for silver tea sets).

[Tish]

My Wedgewood Coalport Pearl is almost identical to yours! (My flowers are tree flowers with yellowy leaves and the pinks are fruits and a bit paler, but the arrangement is identical). We got it in Germany at the Wedgewood store of one of the huge US military PX complexes and got it for a bargain price b/c it was, you guessed it- discontinued. The manager gave us a 12place setting, the serving pieces, and the coffee service for the (already discounted military store) price of an 8 place setting since that's what she had left of it in stock and wanted the display space for a new design. My kids love to use it for the major hols and sometimes we pull it out just for the heck of it. (But never when we eat out on the deck!!)

[Imbrium]

Apparently no one even does fine china anymore. Bradon and I went and picked out our china pattern, and even though the individual pieces were reasonably priced we didn't get a single piece of it. Which is fine, really, because we're still several years away from being able to host an event that requires fine china, but it still seemed weird to me.

[Teresa]

I am lucky in that our house only came with wallpaper in the nursery closet (which we stripped this week). I would suggest scoring the vinyl top coat and using a fabric softener solution to help release the glue.
My husband informed me a couple of weeks ago that the reason he hates wall paper so much is that when he sees it on the walls all he can think of is that in a couple of years he will have to remove it. So I can do what ever paint techniques and colours I want just not wall paper.

[Carol]

Completely off topic but I was reminded while taking the Dyson out today - I also throw everything from the vacuum into the compost!

And I've stripped wallpaper before. The UK is covered in horrible 'woodchip' paper which is a bastard to get off. I've done my bit for mankind by ridding 2 rooms of it.

[sandy]

Stripping wallpaper is the worst. Honestly, you could live with it a WHILE more, couldn't you? :D (says the QUEEN of looking the other way)
I just love that cactus. And the macramé. I used to love doing macramé.
Hey, look! The spell checker put a....um....accent over the E!
:D
Go Rilona GO!

[KellyS]

Uh oh, we cheated: we didn't register for china, we just registered for over-priced daily stuff at Crate n Barrel. It's pretty, but unwieldy, like our silverware. The plates tip if you cut off center, and the silver is end-heavy and spends a lot of the time falling. So whatever you do, you get screwed. But the matter is that it's pretty!!
On the wallpaper, it functions fine for its purpose, and goes well with your vintage stuff imho.

[Laura]

This is the post that makes me say "OH, I so love Norma." I'm all about "leave it there until I can do the job right." I would rather die than paint over wall paper because my anal retentive subconscious would never let go of it.

[Donna]

My husband is a remodeling carpenter. When it comes time to redo walls whose surfaces are a mess, he usually opts to cover them with new, clean, 1/4-inch drywall rather than spend a lot of time stripping or patching or whatever. If the room is pretty much a rectangle with walls that are more or less square it's quick, clean, and not too pricey. If you're having work done anyway, I'd ask them to give you an estimate.

Donna

[Kay]

We must never regret our old wallpaper. Save a piece of it, or something. I love the gold room in Bridge to Terabithia. And I am not a gold-room sort of person. Check it out!
xo Kay

[Miranda]

I had very similar wallpaper in my room while I was growing up, only the roses were all red and pink rather than blue. Gah! I am quite fond of solid colored walls now, thank you, but in the early 60s it was the look. The boys' bathroom in our house now has rose-colored wallpaper with little white flowers, and this summer's project is to strip and repaint it in greens. They've lived with it for four years now with little complaining, poor guys.

[Jackie]

I really enjoy reading this blog. I am probably much older than the rest of you as I have been married for 44 years. The old blue cabbage rose is the pattern of my good dishes that I purchased with money that my grannie in law gave us as a wedding gift. I haven't used the dishes in many many years as my taste have changed but I don't have heart to give the dishes away yet. Our grannie died when she was 103. She was a great knitter and knit some of the most treasured baby sets for us.

[Doris]

I understand exactly what you mean about tastes changing. And I also get it when you say the "good china" etc. is less important to you now. When my husband and I got married in 1983 we were oh so concerned about all that stuff....and hardly ever used any of it. I am definitely in a simplify life mode, but not getting there as quickly as I'd like. And my mother keeps sending me things she thinks I'd like to have (because I think she is simplifying and shipping it all off to be "stored" at my house!