Vanity

Yesterday, Roomie and I went to the Rose Bowl. Every month on the second Sunday, the Rose Bowl becomes one massive flea market, and I went with high hopes of finding something I loved. I had no idea what that would have been, but I figured I'd know it when I saw it. I also wanted to keep my eyes peeled for a vanity as we only have one bathroom in the apartment and I've become extremely lax about getting up on time so there are mornings when Roomie and I overlap in our schedules. Totally my fault. So, I figured it would be a very good idea to get a vanity and place it in my bedroom so that I could just do my hair and make-up there.

I've been awful about getting my room into order. I've got boxes of stuff just sitting on the floor. My excuse is that I'm completely perplexed about how I want to decorate and, therefore, haven't made any decision about what I might want out and what should be stored away. I need a sense of style. A decor. This room just begs for something light and airy, like a home on the Cape. However, all my furnishings are black and urban as my last apartment just begged for something more citified. (What can I say? I'm a little bit summer house, a little bit LES tenement. Donny and Marie would understand.) And as I haven't made a decision about color scheme or wall art, my stuff is just about everywhere. This causes all kinds of anxiety because if a thing doesn't have a place then it can't be in it, and therefore I have not started to classically condition myself. One day, I found my hair brush with my purses. I don't know how that happened. However, if I had a vanity then the hair brush would be there because that would be its proper place.

A long time ago, my grandfather offered me my grandmother's vanity. I was very excited about this. I ran down the stairs to the basement and whipped off the sheet. The style of vanity was very popular in the 40s and 50s. It was called Waterfall and it was cheaply manufactured during that economic boom time post-WWII. Before technology over took our lives, furniture used to be crafted. It was expensive. It was not unheard of to inherit beds, dressers, or dining room tables. The stuff was made to last. However, after we become industrialized, manufacturers learned how to cheapen the process. In this case, they used plywood and got rid of the drawer coasters (this will be important in about a minute). Unfortunately, since my grandmother's vanity had been stored in a cement cellar in Connecticut, a place that dominates my memory as feeling coolly damp and smelling of mildew, it had warped on the bottom. I was sadly disappointed, and I've always felt the loss of that piece. So, I would be lying if I said that I wasn't looking for a very specific kind of vanity when we showed up at the Rose Bowl yesterday.

I'm not the greatest bargainer in the world. I admit it. I feel that its in bad taste to haggle and that you're inferring that the seller is dishonest if you try to negotiate the price. I also fear that I'm not as knowledgeable about antiques as I should be. For instance, what if I value a punch bowl at $50 and the dealer is asking for $65? I try to get it for $50, but they hold firm at $55. I buy it, because I love it, and then I go two stalls down and see it for $40. I'd slit a wrist, I swear. I had been looking on eBay and craigslist for a vanity for sometime, so I had a pretty good idea about the going rate for one in the Waterfall design. The trick was going to be to get one in good condition.

I found a vanity I liked right away. It was in great shape. It was a Heywood-Wakefield. But it was blond wood and I was hoping for something a little darker, like a walnut. The guy was asking $300 for it and I just couldn't bring myself to bring the hammer down within twenty minutes of walking into the place. So, I said, "Thanks" and kept going. The next vanity I saw was $100 and felt a little delicate. The wood hadn't been kept and it seemed to be splintering. It worried me so we passed. Finally, I saw a vanity that looked like Grandma's. It had the slopping edges and the big round mirror. The only problem was that it was painted white. "Shabby Chic." I had seen this a lot on eBay and especially craigslist. People buy old furniture and instead of paying for it to be refurbished, they slap a coat of white paint on it and call it "shabby chic." The idea is that it refreshes otherwise damaged pieces and gives them new life. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't know how to paint a piece of furniture. Most of them don't bother to sand the item down and the rest don't know to shellac the piece once it's been painted. You touch it and it has the dull uneven feel of a wall. More shabby than chic. We walked on.

For the next two hours, all I saw was 1940-1950 plywood painted white. Some people were obviously catering to the market, as they not only shellacked but would hand paint or stencil on the piece. Other people, just threw the white paint on. Drawers were hard to open as the paint got tacky in the summer sun creating a bit of a seal. The more I inspected, the angrier I got. While shabby chic is the trend of the moment, what happens to all this furniture three years from now? I didn't get wrathful until I got to a gorgeous vanity that had everything I was looking for. Round mirror, cascading lines, coasting drawers, interlocking wood. But it was painted white. The inside of the drawer revealed that at one time, the vanity had been a deep walnut or mahogany color. I wanted to lop somebody's head off. At this point, I realized that the chances of me finding what I wanted in the color I wanted in the condition I wanted was pretty minimal. I wanted to scream at all these shabby painters to "cut it out or I will exact revenge like the Greek Goddess of Furniture!" And there must be one because then...manna from the sky.

Right before we left, I saw it. It was blond wood, but had an art deco inlay design of walnut. The drawers weren't on coasters, but they slid in and out easily. It had Bakelite handles which tickled me. It was in very good shape and they they quoted me $195. I felt I had to buy it quickly before it too became a victim of the shabby chic movement which encroached upon it like the crocodile hunter before that stingray got to him. Roomie figured out how to get it into my car and we moved it into my bedroom last night. I felt like I saved an endangered species.

Oddly, even though all my furniture is different color and different design, I feel like I have an idea of how to set up the room now. Which is good. All I have to do is get a stool for the vanity. Now if only I could choose a color.