Interior decoration: reality show in a retirement home

 

 I confess a slight obsession with property shows. (Question to myself: can any “obsession” be slight?) The Property Brothers, Love It or List It, International House Hunting, or anything to do with tiny houses—these fascinate me. Especially tiny houses. I dream of decorating one and then living in it. But reality tells me that if I find it challenging to manage our own two-room apartment of almost 600 square feet, a 300 square foot tiny house would do me in.

Anyway, one can dream.

If I had another life, I think I might have been an architect or an interior designer. I arrange rooms and decorate walls in my notebook. In my real apartment, I love picking things up and then putting them down in more pleasing places. I search to find just the right picture for that wall over the couch. I look forward to the day we can change out our old carpeting for some newer lovely flooring.

Right now, the retirement home is undergoing major changes to its interior design. It’s more about upgrading, easy maintenance, and safety than it is about beauty. The décor of the downstairs lobby has proved controversial. The carpet has been replaced with vinyl flooring, synthetic stuff made to look like wood. It’s water- and scratch proof, plus easy to clean. That’s practical. The walls that once served as a gallery for local artists now has permanent decorative art, with only one real picture by a real artist. The furniture is tastefully arranged to invite conversations. The administration tells us that all this is more attractive to potential residents. The Marketing Department had a large say in the design.

But when I sit in one of those tasteful chairs, why do I expect a nurse to enter and tell me the doctor will see me now?

Practicality and safety have replaced the old cozy hominess. I feel sad about it.

This week they’re redoing the floor on the 5^th floor hall. That’s where we live. As I sit here writing this, I can hear a machine just outside the bedroom wall. Today they’re tearing up the old carpeting, not only in the hall but also in our community lounge. We can come and go only when they aren’t working outside our door.

Hal thinks the old carpet has been here since the establishment’s foundation in 1962. Can that be? That would make it over 70 years old. That hardly seems possible, but there’s no doubt it’s old. So, scrape, scrape, scrape. Then the next two days will feature washing, glueing, and laying, you guessed it, vinyl flooring. It will probably look nice.

We residents of the 5^th floor family are especially concerned about how the lounge, our community living-room, will look. The old carpet was maroon with old-fashioned rose bouquets scattered over it, something from another century that I would never buy for my own living room. Even so, I’d grown used to it. It gave the whole room a warm cozy feel. Most of the furniture we found downstairs in the resale store. It was eclectic and comfortable, like a real living room that a real family would enjoy. Grandma could pleasantly fit in the corner chair.

Since so many of us are grandmas or grandpas, it worked for us. We used our lounge for community meetings, private conversations, a place to entertain guests, or somewhere to sit quietly and read a book. The puzzle table by the sliding glass doors was always occupied. We’re hoping the redecorated room will invite the same kinds of activities. But we’re all a bit nervous it won’t turn out like that.

(I’ll give a report in a couple of weeks. I hope I can eat my words. Yum yum.)

Of course our retirement home needs to be maintained and updated. The interior decoration needs to comply with government codes for safety. This is all for our benefit. So then why is it so hard to accept these kinds of changes? I don’t believe the myth that all old people resist change. That’s not so, as some of my more adventurous friends have convinced me. Maybe it’s that some changes are hard for some people, no matter their age.

Can the new (safe and practical) and the old (cozy and homelike) merge? Wait and see in a future episode of this somewhat exciting reality show. Property Brothers, move over!

 

[PS: The new book is out!]