Many appreciaters of TR cocktails have been asking for updates from the homefront…. We are doing our very best to make our Houston home as cool as we possibly can. And rest assured, in the meantime we are absolutely welcoming visitors and serving cocktails of many sorts.

Some of the moving process is kind of glamorous and exciting, at least for those of us who enjoy domestic adventures: choosing wallpaper, hanging artwork, planting herbs.

Some of it is not glamorous or exciting at all: fixing broken toilets, replacing 1930s electricity, installing insulation, & painting, painting, painting. Luckily we are not doing all of this ourselves, but we’ve done our fair share. The guy who loads large purchases at Home Depot recognizes me, R, both our cars, and says the next time he sees me he’s “giving me an apron.”

When we first toured the house, I saw everything I liked about it (still like). The symmetry, the clean proportions, the beautiful light. The location. I loved the things that are really hard to change, which is why we bought it. The second time I toured the house, I saw all the issues, and there were many of them. It seemed everything was filthy; everything was broken; 87,000 things needed to be fixed/replaced/improved. Between buying the house and now, I’d say we fixed about 70,000 of those 87,000 issues.

In the first installment of Before and Mostly-Afters, I present: the laundry room.

The laundry room (I guess you could also call it a mudroom?) of our house was a major selling point, despite its relatively decrepit state under the house’s former neglectful owners. I think lots of people can appreciate the convenience of a big utility sink and full-sized washer/dryer right off the kitchen, but for us, moving from Manhattan….. this felt like a HUGE luxury.

Here’s what we toured when we first visited the house. I wonder what it looked like before all the cleaning and staging to put the house on the market? Eek.

And here’s what it looks like now:

(pardon photos from iphone b/c we can’t find our camera charger, weekend t0-do list on the chalkboard)

The key improvements:

• Refinished the hardwood floors (we did the whole house, but the laundry room was in  especially bad shape)
• Found the original cabinet doors that had been ripped off to make room for the wine fridge and reinstalled them
• Built a counter over the washer/dryer
• Put in marble countertops. You can’t see in the photos, but the bizarre Formica, faux-butcher block counter that was around the sink was split and rotten, because the faucet was also broken/leaking all under and through those cabinets. 
• Painted everything
• Installed new hardware/faucet/chandelier, put down new rug, etc.

I am thrilled with it. After years of shared laundry machines in freaky Manhattan basements with maybe the occasional dead roach in the corner, taking laundry out of my own dryer and folding it on a clean, marble counter in a sunny room feels like a miracle.

Right now the utility sink is doing double (triple? quadruple?) duty since we ripped out our kitchen and we wash our dishes there. But it is also perfect for the main activities I originally envisioned: arranging flowers, washing Dahlia’s paws, and rinsing out paint brushes. And I’ve been doing a lot of painting.

Other rooms soon…

Regardless of whether you know the novel (though I hope you do), the point here is that first impressions aren’t always right, but that they do matter.  In the real-life Tessin Rinpoche salon (my home), I’ve been thinking about the first impression my home gives – what do I perceive when I walk in the door, and do I like it?  How can I enhance it?

Ideally, our apartment would have an entryway.  Entryways make coming and going very civilized, and allow one to both contain and control a home’s first impression.  I would love the process of figuring out how I wanted my entryway to be, and then playing with all the details (and in a small, enclosed space, pretty much everything is a detail).

For a couple examples of cozy entryways that I love, see Christopher Spitzmiller’s Upper East Side apartment, featured in New York Social Diary, and Steven Gambrel’s Greenwich Village townhouse, featured in Habitually Chic.

Absent an entryway in my own home, I do have an entry area, and I recently added a detail which is much more impactful than I would have believed possible: potpourri.  

I’m serious.

To give credit where it’s due, the potpourri suggestion came from Rita Konig (in Domestic Bliss, an actual book – no link!).  Her logic, which was good enough to persuade me to at least give it a try, was basically this:

• Entering a home that smells lovely is a luxury worthy of some investment.
• Candles are okay for when you have guests (and even then, I think sometimes a little over-the-top), but they obviously aren’t already lit when you come home from a long day at work, and are most wanting your home to provide some luxurious comfort.
• Even the most high-end, luxurious potpourri really isn’t that expensive relative to the price of literally burning through high-end candles.  Good quality potpourri can provide daily happiness for minimal daily cost.

To be really clear, the potpourri we’re talking about is not the stuff that’s sold at craft stores.  I’m sure it’s possible to make good potpourri yourself, though this isn’t something I’ve tried, but if you’re purchasing it pre-made, this is a case of go big or go home.  I bought Agraria, which makes a variety of different scents, and also sells coordinating “refresher” oils.  Agraria products are sold a lot of places, and online, but if you’re in New York, I’d recommend an in-person visit to Bergdorf Goodman.  Because if you can complete an even vaguely legitimate household errand on the 7^th floor of Bergdorf, why wouldn’t you?

I installed the potpourri in a vase literally right next to the front door.  While its introduction to the home originally resulted in some eye-rolling from Bertessa… a few weeks of subtle, balanced, life-enhancing fragrance as we enter and leave the home has won everyone over to its benefits.  All in the name of (the right) milieu.

Potpourri in the entry area

A previous TR post referenced my desire to rearrange the side tables in the living room.  This was true, but my vision was more ambitious than that.  The last couple of weeks saw the reconfiguring not just of side tables (which is still not complete, perhaps a subject for another day), but also a fair amount of art reframing and rehanging, and the piece de resistance: wallpaper in the dining room.

Our dining room, which we generally call the “center room,” is so-named because it’s in the (umm) center of our apartment.  Everything connects to it – the living room, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and front door.  It’s the dining room, but it’s also the entryway, my office, a hallway of sorts… we ask a lot of it.  And because it’s the center of everything and visible from everywhere, I want it to look good.

In the 15 months we’ve lived in this apartment, I have painted the center room 3 times – and while Tessa did not actually participate in these projects (he “does not paint”), they were nonetheless extremely unpopular with him.  Sort of understandably.  So when I casually floated the idea of wallpapering over the room’s pale gray paint with something more bold, I was surprised when he responded pretty positively.

See below for the finished product:

I think it looks fantastic!!!

I love that the pattern is strong and modern, but also sort of calming.

I also think it’s brilliant that somehow, the wallpaper is an ideal rococo reinterpretation of our silver pattern, Gorham Strasbourg.  The connection between the two designs is remarkably satisfying to me, although others may be forgiven for not noticing.

The way silver used to be sold – v. cool

See the matching swirls and shell shapes?

Where does one find the ice tongs with the clawed bird foot?

The wallpaper I put up is actually temporary – it’s called Tempaper, and more or less works like Contact paper.  You peel the paper backing off of it, and then just stick it on the wall.  Since we rent our apartment, temporary wallpaper is great in the sense that we may actually get our security deposit back when we move out.  This is huge. 

The reviews I read before I bought it were basically 100% positive, but I personally would only give the product a B+.  Because it’s thinner than actual paper, the walls need to be really smooth for the finished product to look really smooth (which our plaster, pre-war, barely-restored walls certainly are not).  And because the adhesive on the back isn’t as sticky as paper+glue, it is impossible to have as clean, as sharp, and as totally secure edges.  It’s actually more difficult to put up than real wallpaper, since it’s more fragile.

BUT – to bring it full circle – I love the pattern, and think that the center room finally pulls together and anchors the rest of the apartment with the kind of style I wanted it to have.  Even its temporaryness is kind of comforting in that if I do change my mind and feel inspired to try something new (and to take a more kamikaze approach to our security deposit recovery mission) … the milieu-enhancing aesthetic experimentation can continue!