Dear Reader, you know that I love antiquing and junking. Every now and then you find a lovely piece of antique furniture that someone ruined at some time in the past by painting it. "Who would do that?" one often asks themselves. Or my favorite - like an 1840s dresser that someone in the 1960s decided to "antique" with paint. Isn't 120 years old in 1968 terms already an antique?
I found this on the inside cover of an old issue of American Home Magazine, and Reader, Cookie was speechless. And given I was in loo was just coincidence.
Well, lets start right here in the narrative:
So here we have the narrative. A housewife with a gaggle of furniture styles asks an old man who sells LINOLEUM for design advice. So what does he do?
He sells he LINOLEUM for her LIVING ROOM FLOOR. Oh, bitch please!
Today, his alone would spark a comment like "Tom, you aren't going to be happy honey, but the floor people just ripped up the 1960s carpet and instead of hardwood, they found linoleum with an asbestos backing glued to the hardwood. We're going to have to call in a environmental clean up company. What? How would I know who the hell would lay down linoleum floor on hardwood?"
Well we know know, it was Mr. Hart who ruined the floor.
Back in the narrative Mr. Hart then picks the wall color and the accent wallpaper, and tells her to PAINT THE VICTORIAN CHAIRS WHITE. Seriously, what the hey?
On Antiques Roadshow, they would draw a collective gasp and clutching of pearls. "The paint has ruined the value."
Then, and this is my favorite part, he has her hand a floor to ceiling curtain in mid room so she can back up a dilapidated spinnet piano from 1910, which get a coat of paint. So the piano is on one side of the drape, and the sofa on the other side. Isn't that clever?
Then he sells her some flea market tables and lamps. And he mounts coach lights way up top of the fireplace. Evidently no one has that coach lights belong on coaches, not walls. But he's not done, oh no he's not!
His cherry on top for the room is, drum roll, please: a huge ass black ceramic eagle to perch right over the fireplace. Quelle horreur!
What is it with people and Eagles? In nature, they are majestic. But perched above a fireplace, it becomes a conversation piece. In an flea market today it would bring "What do you do with it? Put it on the mantle? Oh. Bitch. Please. You are too funny. Now seriously, what does one do with it? Make it into a bird bath with a metal garbage can lid?"
And the Eagle thing is all over freaking Baltimore. If Baltimore was the setting for an ironic show like Portlandia where you "put a bird on it", the catch phrase would be "slap a spread eagle on it." They are every where.
So if you have ever wondered why someone would do something stupid to a perfectly knick knack, or buy a huge black eagle, you got your answer. Armstrong - the tile people put them up to it.
So what's your favorite part of the room above?
The lunatic but dead parents of the estate we bought our house from apparently had a visit from that Hart bastard. We ripped up the shag carpet throughout our 19-teens Craftsman-ish house to find that that assholes had laid 'wood-look' linoleum over the oak floors. Working a square foot a day at a time, we finally reclaimed the dining room floor. However, the living room and hallway remain - sigh. The 50s-70s were an awful time for homes.
ReplyDeleteAnd here's the bad news. If had asbestos in the backing, then you have a hazmat situation.
ReplyDeleteMy dad's house had asbestos linoleum in the kitchen, as did my daughter's house. We left it in place and floored over it.
DeleteI think what bothers me the most is the fake authority figures giving this ruinous advice.
i'm about to sheet vinyl the ceilings in my house!
ReplyDelete(but i'll use GAF....i'm a sap for hank fonda).
Really? Why?
DeleteMy idiot father in law, refinished every single piece of antique furniture they had inherited from various family members. When Mr. Proud As Punch showed them off to me, I asked him why he felt the need to ruin valuable antiques. I received regifted perfume that year for Christmas...
ReplyDeleteThis actually reminds me of my childhood in suburban (okay, rural) Pittsburgh (an hour outside the city is rual, not suburban). Anyway, colonial/early American was all the rage in the late 60's/early 70's. The color pallet ranged a full four tones out of the full spectrum - red, orange, yellow and green.
ReplyDeleteI have two Heywood Wakefield tables that my parents got from my grandmother and promptly had refinished in "oak." When, at some point in casual, but pertinent, conversation, I mentioned that the refinishing had diminished their value (the tables' value, not my parents) my father exploded, saying they NEVER would have done such a thing because they couldn't afford it. Um, sorry, but wrong; I remember the tables' original blond finish. And why oh why did people think that faux wood linoleum is better than real wood?
ReplyDeleteI have a Settee that came over the mountains to Ohio in 1811 with my great great great great grandparents. When my mother rescued it from its storage place, my father had it taken to the brother in law of a friends upholstery store. The finish was fine, and original. When my mother went to pick out fabrics, the upholster showed her the love seat. He had had it striped and antiqued in baby puke brown. My mother was livid, and told him just to deliver it as is, covered in muslin, and it sat like that for twenty years. I mean why do you need to antique an antique?
ReplyDeleteI have a cork paneled wall, circa 1974. I still love it!
ReplyDeleteCork is cool, again. But this style up above never came back, and for that I am grateful.
DeleteCookie, I hope you guys don't mind if I chime in from time to time, even though I don't have an active blog. You and this "group" make me smile (Norma, Jon, Jon, LX,MJ, Mr. Peenee, yadah, yadah, yadah.)
DeleteGrouchy, by all means, speak up! Your name makes he happy as well.
Delete"So what's your favorite part of the room above?"
ReplyDeleteThe exit.
The drapes. In the psychotic game room.
ReplyDelete