My Before and After September 25, 2009

If you’re like me, you’re always looking for little ways to add inspiration to your daily life. I recently did that by making my homepage the Design Sponge design blog. Seriously, that has made my life exponentially richer, just from looking at all the beautiful, quirky, ornate things they post throughout the day. One of my very favorite sections is the Before and After. In it, people take old ratty chairs, dilapidated houses, plain, boring bedrooms and junky “found” furniture and transform them into something completely new. Just looking at the pitiful Before picture and then scrolling down to the After picture gives me a small, secret thrill. And what I’ve wondered as I’m ogling those gorgeously recovered chairs and sparkling rooms is, do they do people? Because I want to be a Before and After. I want to be one of those old pictures, and then one of those new pictures. I’m not talking about the haircut that I happen to really need, I mean a real below-the-surface redo. A kind of drywall-ripping, dust-flying redo.

In my Before picture, though, I think I’d be an old mustard yellow couch. If you know me at all, you know that I battle a lot of personal demons. As a result, my cushions would be worn and flattened from heavy, unwelcome visitors like guilt and fear. My arms would be deeply scratched by the claws of my vicious pet, shame. My originally vibrant color would be faded from years of sitting in the hot sun of criticism. And my legs, though made of tough oak, would be scuffed from dragging myself down. I would obviously be only fit for the curbside, probably not even Goodwill. Yet, in the next picture, the long-awaited “After” picture, my appearance would be drastically altered, even unrecognizable. My cushions would be overstuffed with acceptance and plump with confidence. The scratches and fading would be lovingly covered with a rich, colorful, patterned material, even more bright and spunky than I thought possible. My legs would be sanded and refinished with kindness, so that they looked like brand-new baby skin. I would even have some lovely decorative pillows resting against my arms, happiness and contentment. Oh, how I want to be that couch. I believe in the restoration of furniture, why not of me? The only problem (said so well by Anne) is that you can’t rush transformation. I can’t hurry up the recovering or the re-stuffing or the sanding of my heart, as much as I desperately want to. I can hope though, that one slow recovered button at a time, I am being made into my After picture.