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So…
Since it’s deliciously cool outside, it’s football season, and the leaves are actually falling this year, I’m looking for ways to dress the apartment up in some homeyness.
But now that I’m all grown up, I don’t really know what that means. Am I looking for my mother’s kitchen with the plaster rooster, floral wallpaper accents, and colonial dinette set? No.
I just want that fall flavor. That sense of warmth you get when you come in from the cold with ruddy cheeks, when you peel off the outer layers and get comfy, knowing Halloween is this week, and soon it’ll be Thanksgiving. I’m missing that feeling of standing at the front door with a little chill, the only barrier between me and the cold, an aluminum door and some tempered glass.
So I’m thinking about things like bringing flowers in, hanging a many-shades-of-brown-and-yellow wreath on the front door, and getting a pumpkin.
And I’m toying with the idea of breaking some house rules (maintain flat surfaces, minimal living, one-tv-is-enough) and adding a baby flat screen to the kitchen. There was always a tiny tv in my mother’s kitchen. The tv where we watched the news and Jeopardy, where the Thanksgiving Day parade flickered despite all attempts at fixing the antenae.
We all know you can’t go back home, but I’m wondering if this is one thing I can recapture: the kitchen as a place to hang out.
PROS:
TV = More cooking, more often.
Less eating out/ ordering in.
House smells nice like yummy food.
Able to watch It’s a Wonderful Life while cracking the annual peppermint bark.
There’s a tv in the kitchen.
CONS:
We become a middle of the country household with two televisions, going on ten.
Holes under the cabinet.
Ruined “clean” look in here.
I gain ten pounds.
There’s a tv in the kitchen.
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This is the item under consideration. Yea or Nay?
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Homes Gone Wild
I always felt sad seeing what happens on homes-turned-sets. The process of coming in and turning a place upside down, filling it will equipment, and moving furniture and personal belongings as needed doesn’t involve much careful handling. One film I worked on had its set designer open a hole in a wall to facilitate an unplanned POV.
Still, average rental prices might get some prospective renters’ hopes up.
They are the ones who are renting their apartments and houses to those crews, and making $500 to $10,000 a day, depending on the size and duration of a production.
But keep in mind, crews create sets to work for anywhere between a day and a few months – not forever. So the work done is only to make a satisfactory appearance on camera. Anything outside that lens is left unhinged, sloppy, and often destructive of the property’s previous state.
[H]omeowners who have watched as their dining room was set afire or had a front parlor turned into an outdoor garden warn that while the money may be good, having 50 or more people come into a home to create an alternate reality can be quite unsettling.
An LA friend who owns a historic four-story home (that boasts its own ballroom) got into the film rental business to finance some home restoration, and found himself with sticky, slapshod wallpaper covering previously pristine walls, a kitchen that had been set ablaze when the crew tried to operate its 19th century stove, and collapsed plaster throughout the bedrooms.
He and his partner lived in a hotel for three months longer than expected while the production company construction crew attempted repairs, and eventually, when the crew gave up, he was offered an unrealistic sum to repair the rest. In the end, he wound up in court with a legal bill larger than his profit on the rental, and they’re still not settled on the damages.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, another friend rented his UWS apartment to Law & Order more than once and never had a problem. So, yeah, you won’t have any problems either. Definitely go for it. The risk sounds so worth it.
(via Apartment Therapy)