THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 12, 1996 TAG: 9605080050
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KRYS STEFANSKY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 140 lines
DO YOU, GEORGE, take Marty and her Victorian sofa?
Do you, Marty, take George and his mother's desk?
For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, with my La-Z-Boy or without. . .
Somebody oughtta change the vows.
When lovebirds move into the same nest, they often feather it with furniture that the other wants to fling over the side.
Yup, by the time the moving dust settles, hubby's Herculon hide-a-bed - the one they necked on, the one he may even have proposed on - has started to lose its charm. That's when one of the twosome starts to flex his or her muscle in the decorating department and stuff starts to hit the curb. Or the attic.
That's where George Raiss can go for a look at his mother's desk. His wife's Victorian sofa, however, rests in a place of honor, the foyer.
Blending possessions isn't easy - she may be Louis XIV, he, leather and glass. Before it's over, some couples need more than a decorator's advice.
They need a referee.
``Ohh, there was more of it,'' says Leslie Baker, cringing at the memory of her husband's now dwindling household goods. ``I've gotten rid of a lot of it over the years.''
In particular, the 35-year-old Virginia Beach art teacher recalls a sofa, ``An atrocious sectional sofa. It was brown and reminded me of a coffin.
``You could fit 12 people on it. It had a La-Z-Boy at one end and a pull-out queen bed at the other.''
``I sold it to my old roommate,'' remembers her husband, Brian, a sales rep for a heavy equipment company. ``He loved it, he was psyched. Now he's sold it to his brother. It wasn't bad. It was basic brown and tan herringbone that covered all the beer stains. It matched nothing and was comfortable. Now her sofa. We're keeping that and we can't even sit on it. You sink directly to the ground.''
``It's a wonderful sofa,'' counters Leslie. ``We're having the springs retied.''
Marty Raiss' Victorian sofa got a second life when she married her husband three years ago. He still ponders her reverence for the thing.
``Nobody ever sits on it,'' says George Raiss, 51, spokesman for Norfolk Public Schools. He contends that the only time anyone used it was once when the family gathered around its light blue damask upholstery for a Christmas photo.
``It's pretty and graceful in the foyer,'' insists his wife. ``My daughter sits on it to take off her shoes. And it was my grandmother's. I remember it in her house.''
Therein lies the rub. You can't fight sentiment.
``In the beginning, if the couple merges existing furnishings, there are compromises being made,'' says Uschi Butler, a Virginia Beach interior designer. ``But everybody likes to hang onto certain items that are dear to them or are memorabilia. And the stronger taste usually prevails.''
That's why Brian Baker gave in when his wife banished one chest of drawers to the garage and insisted on painting another - his childhood dresser - the one he's kept his underwear in since he was 4 years old.
``It was pretty heinous,'' says his wife.
``It used to be cherry wood,'' he says, eyeing its new dark green paint and cheerful ruffled fabric door panels that match the couple's master bedroom drapes.
``It's always been in his bedroom,'' says his wife, with a knowing look.
``I used to stash my goodies in there, my snacks,'' he says, his voice trailing softly away.
In the Raiss' case, George Raiss' mother's pine desk is in the attic because the couple finally agreed the spindly-legged item was impractical and simply wouldn't fit into their house in Lafayette Shores.
``We did pull it down one afternoon and try it all over,'' says Marty Raiss, who works for the city of Norfolk, ``and at one point he said, ``Why don't you sell the piano?' but that was the only sort of testy day.''
She's lucky. Of course, it helped that she relinquished the entire living room to her husband's collection of baseball memorabilia.
``I am the perfect wife,'' sighs Marty Raiss.
Butler has witnessed many a marital tussle as wives fight to rid themselves of their spouse's bachelor trappings and guys dig in their heels to hang onto the last vestiges of the good ol' days.
``When it comes to art work,'' Butler says, ``a lot of men have lighthouses and ducks and hunting pictures, and women are not always enthusiastic about them. We had a client who wanted to hang a big mounted marlin in the living room. That was quite a struggle.''
The fish made it as far as the den.
``A lot of times wives will try to arrange to send items they are not fond of - big fish, plaques and trophies from golf or marlin tournaments - to their husband's offices, and then we have to deal with them there,'' says Butler, who does residential and commercial work for her firm, Uschi Designs.
``Guns are also a big issue. We had one client who wanted to arrange all his pistols around the fireplace. It horrified her. But he did succeed, up to a point. They ended up in the study until they had their first child and he had to lock them up. It had started looking like one of those old saloons that you see in the Gold Rush.''
Compromise is the ideal.
So Leslie Baker gets a pat on the back for giving up a pine wardrobe she used to display her art books and knickknacks in before she was married.
Now her husband uses it to house his stereo.
And that's also why, in Lynn and Brian Proctor's brand new Virginia Beach home, there is a soft color scheme of rose, periwinkle blue and forest green, whimsical birdhouses, romantic silk wisteria garlands in the master bath and one or two bold surprises. Like a working telephone made of Lego blocks in bright red, blue and yellow that belongs to Brian, who works in traffic operations with the city of Virginia Beach.
``I have the husband who won't grow up,'' moans Lynn Proctor, an office manager for a mental health group and a freelance wedding consultant. The new room over the garage is devoted to Brian Proctor's train set, complete with about 40 feet of track and sound effects. She'd had an inkling this was coming.
Before their wedding, he lived with the back seat of a Chevy Blazer in his living room as a sofa. He decorated his kitchen walls with restaurant menus and accessorized his place with miniature military dioramas.
The Proctors sorted through his stuff before they moved. His wife swears he sneaked most of it back inside when she put it out for Goodwill.
For the sake of love and marriage, they, too, have each given in to the other. She tossed out her wicker papasan chair. He keeps his plastic models in the closet near his train set.
With one exception.
A camouflage brown miniature of a WWII-era German panzer - the kind of tank Rommel used in his North African campaign - is parked on a dresser in the couple's bedroom.
Brian uses its tiny gun barrel as peg to hold his wedding band. ILLUSTRATION: JANET SHAUGHNESSY/The Virginian-Pilot
Color photo
MIKE HEFNER/The Virginian-Pilot
George Raiss ponders his wife Marty's reverence for her Victorian
sofa. ``Nobody ever sits on it,'' grumbles George. ``It's pretty and
graceful in the foyer,'' she counters.
Photo
MIKE HEFFNER/The Virginian-Pilot
Leslie Baker insisted on painting husband Brian's childhood dresser.
``It was pretty heinous,'' Leslie says.
by CNB