Dear reader
I had a good chuckle the other day when someone on a Facebook group quite innocently asked what she could use to turn a black leather sofa into a light brown leather sofa. No, she wasn’t looking for a slipcover, she likes the leather. Just not the colour.
My fingers naturally itched to type: you need a light brown cow (with a heart condition). But, of course, I restrained myself because, you know, not everyone’s sense of humour is well developed. Be that as it may, before long there were some ingenious responses, and this one had me laughing out loud: “Magic! You need magic!”.
Sometimes magic is indeed the only solution, even if you have to create your own.
That’s what Home readers are known for and as I’ve said many times before, it’s also one of the hazards of my job. There are so many beautiful and clever ideas out there that I contract a chronic case of ‘unbiblical greed’ when I page through the stories and photos in the magazine.
I’ve just completed a renovation in my own home, a messy business that finally drove me to move out because one can only endure so much – especially if you unexpectedly end up fostering a rescue dog and all it wants to do is run away every time a builder/tiler/painter/plumber/electrician opens the front gate. My nerves were shattered.
But the dog wasn’t my biggest headache. It was making final decisions about tiles and paint colours that kept me awake at night and eventually delayed the project by weeks. Because just when I thought I had reached a decision, there were new things to consider. I was so overwhelmed that I simply cancelled the tiler and painter and started the search from scratch. When you’re spending money, you don’t want to make mistakes!
Which brings me to the bedroom story on page 54. Blue is my favourite colour, and both of my bedrooms are blue. For me, it’s both a warm and a cool colour. It soothes the soul but still makes a style statement. And you can use virtually any other colour with it. It’s the perfect choice.
Until I saw the green bedroom on page 67. And suddenly I’m, well, green with envy. Should I repaint? (As it is, I have a thing about a terracotta pot with a cactus in it; take a look at what designer Juanita Lacock says about how beautifully green and terracotta go together in her expert advice on page 66.) I see floating shelves made of old scaffolding (oh, that staircase on page 35!) and a new bedroom in my future...
The green craze actually started to take hold when we worked on our annual paint guide: In Home Paint It, which this year focuses on chalk paint projects and includes two free highquality stencils, there’s a chest of drawers that Shelly Bergh decorated for us with Annie Sloan’s Amsterdam Green. The tin of paint is staring at me here next to my computer screen, and just this morning I Googled Tjhoko Paint’s green shades as well.
I’m not usually an indecisive person. But this issue of Home you’re holding in your hands has definitely created a décor dilemma under my own roof.
Should we stick to blue, or should we go for green?
Ai, just when I wanted to pack away the paintbrushes…