How a Pillow Sham Became a House

You see them in your store all the time…the customers who are looking, but you just can’t get them to buy today. “I gotta go home and measure,” they say as they’re leaving. Well, that’s me. I’ve become one of the gotta-go-home-and-measure people.

It began with a duvet cover and two pillow shams Carol bought two years ago. “Someday we’ll use these on our bed,” she said to me.

“Why not use them now?” I asked, full of foolish innocence.

“They don’t fit with the color scheme in the bedroom,” she answered.

“If they don’t fit with our color scheme, why did you buy them?” I asked.

“They’ll work perfectly,” she explained patiently, “as soon as you repaint the bedroom.”
“Okay,” I answered, “Go to the hardware store and pick out the paint color you want.”
If Carol had gone to the hardware store to pick a paint color, that would’ve been the end of the story, but I knew she wouldn’t go. I was calling her bluff. Carol hates hardware stores. After a few weeks, the duvet cover and pillow shams went into the closet. The paint brushes stayed in the basement. Life was good.

A year went by. Carol asked about re-painting the bedroom. I stalled. We talked again. I stalled again. Eventually I persuaded her that the bedroom would never look the way she liked, so what's the point? That’s when Carol called my bluff. “Let’s move!” Five months later, we received an offer on the old place. Hooray! We found another house and decided to buy it. Hooray! The bank okayed the loan. Hooray! We got busy packing.

Then, one afternoon, I noticed something on the dining room table. It was one of the pillow shams. It had been in the closet for more than a year. “What’s this?”
I asked.

“Oh,” answered Carol, “We need it to order the bedroom carpet for the new house.”
At the carpet store, Carol held the pillow sham up to several carpet samples until she found one that was just right. “Here it is,” she said. “Do you see how the burgundy tone in the carpet matches the stripe in the pillow sham?”

I couldn’t see it, but it didn’t matter. We ordered the carpet, plus a coordinating color for the hallway and living room. Hmmm. Now it began to get complicated. We still had to design the bedroom around the carpet and the pillow sham, but the new carpet was the only thing we had for the new living room. The following weeks revolved around swatches, catalogs and sample books.

The bedroom walls were painted in a taupe color (matching another stripe in the pillow sham), which presented a further dilemma because the wall décor was framed and matted all wrong now, and the window treatments…well, don’t get me started. Somehow, in the midst of the planning, Carol decided we could keep the existing bedroom furniture.

The living room didn’t fare as well. The new Sage Green Carpet didn’t go with anything. Not the walls. Not the windows. Not the sofa, the chairs, the tables. The new Sage Green Carpet also didn’t go with the house, because it hadn’t been installed yet. Every trip to shop for paint or furniture began with a stop at the carpet store to borrow the sample of the Sage Green Carpet.

Somehow, some way, Carol steered us through the maze of colors and styles and fabrics. We painted, we window treated, we furniture ordered. Visitors came and asked why one wall of the living room was painted orange. Carol explained that they’d understand after they saw the new furniture sitting on the Sage Green Carpet in front of the orange wall. “You’ll see,” she told them.

When everything was done, Carol was right. It looked terrific. The new furniture looked great against the orange wall, and on top of the Sage Green Carpet, which we bought to coordinate with the burgundy carpet in the bedroom, which, well, you know…the pillow sham. The look of the whole place, maybe even the idea of moving there, had sprouted from that pillow sham and its matching duvet cover.

Then, one morning in the bedroom, Carol got that faraway look in her eye. “You know,” she said, “We never did get the king size bed we wanted. Maybe this is the time to do it.”

“Okay…” I said, tentatively. I’ve learned that statements like this from Carol usually aren’t as straightforward as they seem.

“Of course,” said Carol, “We’d need to get a new mattress and new sheets, too.”

“Okay.”

“And a new duvet,” she continued. Carol started fingering the fabric of the duvet cover and pillow sham. “I don’t know if we can get this fabric again.”

An awkward silence filled the room. “I gotta go,” I said, and headed for the door.

“Wait, I’m going with you,” she answered. “Let’s bring a piece of the carpet with us. You know, if we get a new bed, we’ll need new nightstands and dressers, too. And that mirror, I don’t think it’ll work. I don’t know about that chair in the corner, either…”

It was starting all over again. We were still paying for new carpets, painting, and living room furniture.

“Listen,” I told her sternly. “We’re not buying anything today. If anybody asks, let’s just say we gotta go home and measure.” FLLS