The Vine: July 13, 2004
Dear Deborah,
A few years ago, we inherited two couches. There’s an antique love seat that my mom let her bulldog use as a dog bed, until the dog got too fat to make the three foot jump. (Thanks, Mom!) It does have lovely wooden legs and arms, but the fussy Victorian fabric is faded, dirty, and torn to shreds. The second couch is from my in-laws, it’s long and boxy with straight sides and a horrible print.
I don’t have much cash, so I know I need to work with what I’ve got, but am rather daunted by spending hundreds of dollars on re-upholstering. On top of that, I am also sort of paralyzed about making color and fabric decisions. But I am soooo tired of the old “toss the matelassé spread over and hope for the best” trick. Is there a way to cover these cheaply but nicely, or do I need to fork out the dough to have a professional take over, and are those catalog slipcovers just a waste of money (they’re always so…baggy).
Thanks for your help!
Mrs. Couch Potato-Head
Dear Potato:
The first thing to decide is: do you even want both of these couches? You don’t necessarily have to keep them both, though I understand you may feel obligated. I can’t tell from your letter whether you’re planning to use them both in the same room, but I can tell you that a) it’s not easy to make such disparate styles work together, even if you reupholster both of them, and b) the effect of multiple, stylistically disparate couches in the same room tends toward “flophouse.”
If you’re willing to keep only one, you need to decide which one you’re going to work with. If the antique love seat was well-made to begin with (likely) and the frame is still sturdy and attractive, you’re much better off keeping it. The cost of reupholstering it will be an investment that may even add it to its value, if done well, and will make it a piece you can hang onto for another twenty-five years or more. The other couch could probably be replaced for what it would cost to properly reupholster it. Generally speaking, most mass-market upholstered furniture from the last two-three decades won’t be worth reupholstering. Unless it has very good (kiln-dried) hardwood frame construction and the springs are still very firm, and it’s still very comfortable and you love the shape/style and can’t find similar, please don’t spend money on recovering something like that. I’d try to sell the boxy couch with the ugly print for $50 or $100, whatever it’ll fetch, and then put that money toward reupholstering the antique love seat.
Does your style tend more toward the traditional or the contemporary? I don’t know how fussy the antique love seat is, but it can be made to look pretty fresh, even if your taste leans more toward contemporary (and if you prefer traditional, this is a no-brainer: dump the couch, reupholster the love seat). What I’ve seen done recently that is quite stylish: use an unexpected fabric to upholster traditional, wood-frame sofas and love seats. A casual-but-classic fabric like a mattress ticking stripe completely transforms a piece like this. Here are some Waverly fabric samples (yes, Waverly’s expensive but you can find similar fabrics cheaper): consider this one, or this, or this, or even this. (Use these vertically, not horizontally, please.) This will require a very professional job to make sure the stripes all line up perfectly from the back of the couch to the seat, and with the cushion(s), particularly if loose. But this looks smashing, it really does.
One way to defray the cost of upholstery is to take a course and learn to do it yourself. I always consider this whenever I have to pay someone else a lot of money to do something I could do for myself. I’m not interested in doing my own roofing or paving, so I hire people, but skills like painting, upholstery, tiling, et cetera, strike me as worth acquiring. The cost of reupholstering depends on several things. The main factors are the complexity of the piece, the fabric quality and the labour. So if you invest the money you’d spend on a good reupholstering job in learning the skill yourself, you’ll have acquired something you can use again and again throughout your life, and you can shop for a bargain on upholstery fabric.
I don’t think those catalogue slipcovers are worth even the relatively little money they cost. I personally don’t like the drapey look or the fussy little ties that many of them use in order to achieve some kind of fit, and I don’t think they ever really improve appearance — at least not if you intend to sit on your furniture and not just look at it. I find they naturally shift around on the furniture and just get sloppier-looking all the time. And this will depress you, because your couch will start to look like the dog’s bed again. If you really want a slipcover solution, consider this Canadian company: Potato Skins. They do made-to-measure casual and custom slipcovers. I’ve been in their store and seen samples of their work, and they’re much nicer-looking and better-fitting than the catalogue slipcovers. They also have a good selection of appealing fabrics and will send samples. This would cost more than the catalogue slipcovers but less than reupholstering, so it may be the right compromise for you. Good luck!
(Disclaimer: I have no financial interest in/connection to either Waverly or Potato Skins.)
Dear Sarah,
I have a kitten that’s around seven months old. We got her when she was four months old. She was great for about a month — quiet, playful and sweet. But the last two months have been miserable. Her medical problems have cost well over a grand to correct, and she is almost bionic now. But that’s not the problem. The trouble is that she won’t shut up for one goddamn minute, and she unexpectedly pees on always-different items, roughly about once a week. My husband and I play with her for ridiculous amounts of time every day, we cuddle, we nurture her like a hothouse flower. I change her litter daily, and take her to go potty, and then praise her for doing so every three hours when I’m home.
Yet she still meows all the time, and still pees on things for unknown reasons. The vet said she’s perfectly healthy, and suggested different litter and food, which I have tried to no avail. She has been spayed, and the vet said that anti-anxiety drugs probably wouldn’t help enough to make the cost worthwhile.
Several people have suggested that I get her a cat friend, but my husband is completely against the idea, as our experience with this cat has completely sucked, financially and emotionally. I don’t blame him, but I’d get her a litter of kittens if she would shut up and stop peeing on stuff. The vet said that she has anxiety issues and needs to be retrained, which means keeping her under constant surveillance when we’re home and able, or confined to the bathroom with her food and litter when we can’t watch her. The vet also said to ignore her when she’s crying. If we ignored her when she was crying, we would only pay attention to her when she’s sleeping. Seriously. And carrying her from room to room as I move around the house, and then enticing her to stay in that room with me isn’t a walk in the park either. I am at my wits’ end with the constant effort this cat requires, and my husband and I are both beginning to irrationally resent her. I was on the bus to work last week when I noticed that she’d peed in my briefcase, and no one would sit next to me due to the smell. She’s so sneaky.
I hate the idea of getting rid of her, since she’s so nice when she’s sleeping, and for the month that she was not a pain we really liked her. I asked around to see if there were any farms where she could live outside, meowing and peeing with abandon, but no luck. I would feel like a complete heel bringing her to a shelter. The vet said that we should make her an outdoor cat, even though I live near several busy roads. Her logic was that at least the cat would have some good times instead of being shut in the bathroom or shuttled around our house. Would you please weigh in on this issue, with either suggestions on how to fix our little train wreck or an opinion on outdoor cats in urban settings?
I Can’t Even Smell It Anymore
Dear Smell,
I’ll take the meowing first. I know it’s annoying — be-lieeeeeve me, I know — but teenage cats, which yours is, have a lot of psychotically irritating behaviors that they tend to grow out of. Meowing, pouncing that is no longer cute because it leads to bleeding, climbing to the refrigerator, whatever — usually, it passes.
The thing is, though, that you have to try not to betray how annoying it is, because cats can pick up on your mood, and part of what’s causing the meowing (and probably the peeing too), I think, is that the cat can sense how much it bugs you, which in turn worries her, so she acts out more. She’s not testing you; she’s just anxious. So, you do have to try to ignore the meowing, and if it’s really getting to you, give everyone a time-out and shut her in the bathroom for a half hour.
The other thing is that, although cats can sense moods and learn a lot of things, it does take time and persistence to train them out of unwanted behaviors, and you have to invest fully in doing that — and to that end, just don’t leave anything on the floor that she can pee on or in. The fact that she peed in your briefcase means that you left your briefcase in a pee-ready spot; you can’t do that anymore. Half the battle here is removing opportunity — it’s like having a small child. A small child can’t stick a fork in a socket if the sockets are blocked and the forks are locked up, right? Same principle. Pick all of your stuff up off the floor. Put another litter box out. Watch her every minute, and if you can’t, put her in the bathroom. The idea here is to make it so that it just doesn’t occur to her to pee anywhere but in her box — she can’t pee on the laundry bag because you put it away, she can’t pee in a corner because you yelled at her and sprayed her with water, she can’t pee in your shoe when you’re not home because she’s in the bathroom.
You need to plan long-term to do this. It might take six months. But you can’t bring her to a shelter, because they can’t place a cat like this and she’ll get put down, or get emotional shelter-itis and be unadoptable. But if you can put in the time and effort — picking everything up, following her around while you eat a popsicle and read People — you can break her of this stuff. Think of it as an adventure, a hilarious tale you’ll get to tell later, so that you don’t feel hostile and vibe that out to her; breathe deeply (through your mouth…heh) and stay calm. If it’s winter and she’s still a mess, ask your vet if he has any ideas about special placement, but for now, chin up — it’s not hopeless.
Dear Sars,
Quick question: Is a contraction, like “isn’t,” which is a short way of saying “is not,” considered to be one word or two?
Secondly, one of my cats likes licking the bathroom soap. I thought maybe he was doing it to get moisture, but he does it when it’s totally dry as well. Do you or any of your readers know why?
Ta,
Sheffield Steeler
Dear SS,
1. It’s one word.
2. I have no idea. It’s probably the same reason Little Joe licks my leg right after I’ve put lotion on (freak), but I don’t know the exact reason. Maybe it tastes salty to them, and they like that? Not sure.
Sars —
So my Vine question is actually fairly boring, but this is one that I figure you’ll have a good answer for. Is there any cure for the “I drank so much vodka that I threw up my toenails four times and still have no idea how I ended up in bed clad in my best friend’s Spongebob pants” hangover that will allow you to function the next day?
Not That I Showed Up To Work This Morning Still Drunk Or Anything
Dear Russian Flu,
Different alcohols give you different hangovers, and with the more stuporous — like white wine or tequila — you really can’t do anything but try to fly under the radar with mindless busywork until you get a second wind.
Vodka isn’t as mind-killing as white wine the next day, but it does tend to linger around as a ghost taste/smell in your sinuses, which is 1) wretched and 2) resistant to pretty much anything except chain-smoking in front of the TV and sleeping. If you can’t call in sick, take a very hot shower, drink an Alka-Seltzer before you head out (do it as a short shot — two tabs in an inch and a half of very cold water), get a large container of very hot black coffee for the commute, pack a roll of Life Savers to kill that aftertaste and amp your blood sugar, and just try to get through the day. You’ll start to feel better around lunchtime, but eat lightly, because certain hangovers will boomerang on you, and the vodka-over is one of the worst offender in that department (all-time champ: dessert wine).
And take comfort in knowing that, usually, the weeknight-puke-drunk lesson takes on the first try. You won’t have to go through this again, probably. Hang in there.
Dear Sars,
A short time ago, I issued an email to several staff members at our law firm regarding a change of our domain name. At the center of my question to you is the following sentence contained within that email:
“But in the interest of getting clients and contacts switched over, I want to propose that each of the attorneys uses a standardized signature that goes out with each email, similar to the one below.”
Shortly after I distributed the email, I got a response from one of the legal secretaries here who had decided to correct my grammar. She claimed that a critical portion of my sentence should have read, “…that each of the attorneys USE a standardized…” instead of “uses.” The secretary at issue here considers herself to be, among many other things, superior regarding all things grammatical. I don’t think I’m grammatically perfect, but I was fairly certain that I was correct in this instance.
What proceeded over the next two days was a series of face-to-face and email exchanges whereby we argued our respective positions on the issue. I cited a number of grammar resources to back up my case that the word “each” in this sentence requires the use (heh) of the singular verb form. My sources included The Blue Book of Grammar, the American Heritage Book of English Usage, and the Columbia Guide to Standard English. Her argument, on the other hand, was that “[i]t’s conditional (or something) — it’s ‘use’ — has nothing to do with singular or plural. Trust me on this.”
Well, I don’t trust her, and I don’t trust anyone that can’t (and refuses to) back up their information. The argument became heated enough that she finally said that she knew she was right and didn’t want to discuss it any further. So I dropped the issue with her. I’m not going to raise the issue with her again, but for my own sake, I’d like to know if I’m wrong (or, preferably, right). I decided to seek out someone competent who would would provide backup for her rationale, and naturally, that led me to you.
So, please, Sars — will you solve the mystery of the proper use of “use”?
Sincerely,
Diagram THIS!
Dear I Will — But You Won’t Like It,
“Each” takes a singular, it’s true; it’s one of those rules that has relaxed of late, but “each” is standing in for “each one,” which therefore requires a singular.
But the conditional “that” overrules the singular “each.” You use a subjunctive — “I want to propose that” — and the subjunctive mood of the verb, i.e. “use,” is therefore required regardless of the subject number, to wit: “I want to propose that Jane Doe use a standardized blah bling blah” and “I want to propose that all attorneys use a standardized blip blap blooey.”
So, she’s right, but you can still one-up her if you want by telling her it’s explicated in Garner’s entry on the subjunctive.
[7/13/04]
Tags: cats grammar health and beauty rando
