Half-Assed But Happy: The Jenny Mattern Way

Half-Assed But Happy: Interior Design for the Broke and Impatient.

This is the book I am going to write. I have been looking for this book, but it doesn’t exist. It would feature real pictures of small, cramped houses and terrible flooring and hideous wallpaper that won’t budge and bad light fixtures and awful furniture and the poor people who live in these places, people who can’t go and hire an architect or a designer or a Ty Pennington to make things better. Then I would take pictures of the people doing $50 improvements. Maybe $100, if it’s a big job. I’d help them skip steps. Skip the priming. Skip the sanding. Skip the cleaning. We’d just dive in and DO STUFF. And then I would take “After” pictures, and everyone would be happier than they were before, even if it still looked crappy, because at least it would look LESS crappy.

Would you buy my book? I would buy it. I am going to write it and then I am going to buy it from myself and collect royalties.

I am getting mighty cranky reading about “simple” home solutions and “weekend projects.” Removing all of my kitchen cabinet doors, setting up a woodshop in the garage that I do not have, sanding down every surface of those cabinets with power tools, priming those sanded cabinets, sanding and priming and painting the cabinets, sanding and painting and priming and painting the INSIDE of the cabinets, reinstalling the painted cabinet doors, drilling new holes, and adding new hardware IS NOT A WEEKEND PROJECT, not even if seventeen diligent Shaker handymen came over to help.

My kitchen looks truly ridiculous now and I am hyperventilating just thinking about the work I have ahead of me. My hands are tingling so it’s getting hard to type to you. I would take a picture but I think I would drop the camera and then David would be mad because a digital camera is about the last thing we should be spending money on these days. So I think I have to go lie down or breathe into a plastic bag.

But I wanted to tell you that I am still Officially At It in there. I am still At It.

Okay, I got the feeling back in my fingers. Here’s what I’ve been thinking about these days: I’m going to continue my half-assed but happy decorating and get people all over the world excited about my revolutionary approach to home design. I can’t be the only one who’s tired of waiting for life to hand her a yellow and blue and white kitchen with charming wood floors. So I’m going to grab the bull by the horns and paint his horns, people, possibly with a sponging or ragging or combing technique, I haven’t decided which will look best with his nose ring.

Here’s my latest half-assed but happy kitchen idea: I am going to remove the upper cabinet doors and paint the insides and everyone will see my cute yellow Fiestaware inside! Tearing the doors off! Genius! No sanding, none of that crap! Maybe I’ll prime, but that’s it! Underachievers get more done fast!

David says he suggested the open-shelving idea three years ago but I told him it was impractical and our Fiestaware would get dirty and disgusting. I have no recollection of this. Now I think it is a brilliant idea and I am going to go on thinking that I came up with it.

And I’ve begun slapping BIN primer all over the wallpaper. That’s right. ON THE WALLPAPER, above the beadboard. Don’t you go arching those plucked eyebrows at me. Don’t you go shrugging those manly lumberjack shoulders. I know the kind of people you are. You are the people who like to do things RIGHT. You are the people who have SHE TOOK THE TIME TO STEAM OFF THE WALLPAPER and HE ALWAYS CLEANED HIS TOOLS BEFORE PUTTING THEM AWAY on your headstones. You are either a contractor or you’re married to a contractor or you’ve hired a contractor at some point in your life. You think anything under 3500 square feet is a small house. You worry when your savings account dips below $20K. You know the right people to call for things like trimming low tree branches and fixing a broken sump pump and yanking out the old medicine cabinet with the hardwired lighting fixture. You would consider Berber carpeting, or a tasteful kilim rug from Afghanistan. You do not order books from Amazon about Flea Market Style.

You would not be happy living here, so you should thank your lucky stars that you are accustomed to the beauty-and-organization-for-hire lifestyle and don’t have to live with me. At 35, I have decided that I would rather do things wrong in our house just to have finally done SOMETHING.

I know my limits now. Wallpaper removal is not for me. I don’t care what the guys on This Old House say. I don’t have the resources, I don’t have a handyman or a nice Shaker man to seduce. Even if I did seduce a skilled handyman, I wouldn’t have the stamina to keep him entertained for as long as it would take to do my kitchen the right way. And it seems pointless to seduce a half-assed handyman when I can just seduce myself and get the same results.

I have to earn a living and take care of two children. I feel guilty when I buy my kids clothing from anywhere other than eBay, and I feel ashamed when people see our front porch. For a long time, I’ve been yelling up at the universe to lend us a hand, maybe throw us a little decorating bone in the form of a book contract or better pay.

I am officially not talking to the universe anymore. I will always long for a cranberry storm door and a beautiful farmhouse dining room that will seat 20, but my new home-improvement mantra is Imperfection and Instant Results. From here on in, I’m not going to wait for the dumb old universe to send us somebody to do the job right. Screw you, dumb old universe! I bet you live in a coastal home with painted wood floors and a cupola, you dumb old jerk of a universe!

From now on, I am going to plunge ahead and do the job wrong. Every home improvement I can do, I am going to do it badly, and I am going to be happy about it because at least I did something.

After the primer (A really crappy streaky job! Thank you very much! You’ve been a great wall!) I am going to sponge a whole bunch of Benjamin Moore “Weston Flax” all over the place. And then my walls will look like ancient plaster in a French country manor. Ancient bubbling warped plaster with wallpaper seams. Some people play good money for that kind of thing.

Right now our kitchen looks psychotic, yes, yes it does. Sophie thinks it’s hilarious. She runs into the kitchen every day when she gets home to see what Mommy has done while she was gone. “Oh, Mommy,” she says, shaking her head and smiling at her favorite Obsessed Old Coot of a Parent. “It looks CRAZY.”

But I am still happier than I was before I started graffiti-ing all over the walls with Benjamin Moore and Pratt & Lambert paint samples, my little vials of aesthetic crack. I am happier about my kitchen because I have officially joined the ranks of People Who Are Renovating. I have joined the herd and we are all chewing our cud contentedly and my kitchen gets great light so who cares if it’s not a pro job? Visitors will still take one look at the sunlight bouncing off of my clumpy, patchy Weston Flax and ask for another cup of tea and a homebaked muffin that I stole from someone else’s house. And I will say, Of course! Stay as long as you like! It’s so nice to have you here! I’d bake some more but actually I stole that muffin!

55 comments March 22nd, 2006