`Make yourself at home' and other taboos of a Show House
by Beth Teitell

Tuesday, May 8, 2001

The Junior League volunteer was midway through a passionate description of the grasscloth wall treatments in the study - the first room on this year's Decorators' Show House tour - when a cell phone's ring broke the spell.

``Does it have a garage?'' a woman dressed in Realtor casual yelled into her hand. ``Are the rooms a good size?''

She was inquiring about the kitchen, and threatening to move on to the issue of a music room, when a companion, horrified by the unfolding faux pas, shooed her into the hallway. Wall treatments are serious business.

Depending on where your interests lie - Nomar's wrist, Jane Swift's twins, linen closets - you might or might not know the Decorators' Show House opened last weekend in Quincy, or even what a show house is, for that matter.

League-chosen decorators each take a room in a mansion - the Beale House this year, the old Curley place in Jamaica Plain a few years back - and chintz or wallpaper or tchotchke it to within an inch of its life. While this lends a certain dissonance - one room looks like Lilly Pulitzer's place in Palm Beach, another like a sea captain's home from the late 1700s - believe me, you should be so lucky to live there. (If you could handle keeping your magazines that neat, that is.)

With 20,000 people expected, and tickets running $20 in advance, and $25 now that the home has opened, the Show House is the League's biggest fund-raiser.

On Sunday afternoon, the ``wow'' factor was high, especially whenever the magic word ``original'' was mentioned.

``All of the molding is original,'' the Junior League hostess in the dining room told the group. Heads were nodded in approval.

A few minutes later, out on the porch, it was original city. ``The rhododendrons are original,'' the League volunteer said.

``Wow,'' the ladies responded.

(Upon questioning it emerged that the rhododendrons weren't original original - they didn't date back to 1792, when Captain Beale's house was finished - but rather were there in late November 2000, when the League signed the contract for the house with its owner, the National Park Service.)

The brick walkway leading out to the back garden turned out to be original, too. ``It was discovered under five or six inches of dirt,'' the volunteer said. ``Wow,'' the ladies said. And not just any dirt. That was original dirt.

If there's anything better than original, and there may not be, it's when a designer brings the outside inside, and the inside outside. So hurrah for the decorators of the porch and living room who, respectively, brought the great outdoors indoors (sans bugs - that's not trendy yet), and the great indoors outdoors.

In the living room, this meant using colors and textures found in nature, along with a twig iron garden arm chair. On the porch the decorator hung drapes along two of the walls.

(It seems it would have been easier for the stylists to switch rooms and leave the indoors and outdoors where they were, but what do I know?)

Meanwhile, upstairs in the master sitting room, I happened upon the cell phone outlaw, who turned out to be a designer named Diane on a busman's holiday from Fairfield, Conn.

I asked if she liked the Show House and she said she did, and then we moved on to other matters, such as how does she feel when she goes over to a client's house and they've messed up her grand design?

Diane seemed like a sweet woman, but underneath the nice smile was the steely heart of a professional used to telling people things they don't want to hear. That the Oriental rug doesn't make the right statement, for example, or that burnt sienna is the wrong choice for the breakfast nook.

``I left a scolding note the other day,'' she said.

She had gone over to a client's house when they weren't home (it was an authorized visit), and noticed that the manufacturer's protective covers were still on the arms of the new couch.

``Are you going to be in the next episode of `The Sopranos'?'' she wrote. ``If not, please lose these.''

And I thought my hairdresser was judgmental.