Renovate Your Way To Love

by Emily Bolls

Klein says one of the biggest issues between couples renovating their homes is when one person (about 75 percent of the time, he notes, it’s the woman) wants to spend more money than the other. “Often, you’ll have a woman saying, ‘I want to live in a beautiful home, I’m looking at all these design magazines, and I’ve got all these ideas,’” Klein says. “On the other side of the dynamic, the man can fall into the psychological issue of feeling like the victim, thinking, ‘I’m working so hard, you don’t appreciate me, if we continue spending like this, how will we ever save for retirement?’”

Klein has a point about the magazines—they’re dangerous.

In the midst of our renovation, I began a new job doing public relations for Rejuvenation, a Portland-based manufacturer and retailer of reproduction lighting and hardware. All of a sudden my inbox was crammed with the latest issues of Martha Stewart Living, Elle Decor, and new publications like Cottage Living and Domino. I’d bring them home and read in bed about how to choose upholstery and create the perfect master-bedroom hideaway, while Ryan lay next to me reading a how-to book about electrical wiring.

Also, as part of my job, I spend a lot of time in Rejuvenation’s Portland store, a 38,000-square-foot showroom in a historic building with beautiful stained-glass windows. It’s filled with classic light fixtures (antique originals and reproductions), hardware, Stickley furniture and rugs, and an entire department of architectural salvage.

For better or worse, my coworkers enabled my growing obsession with home renovation. They don’t think it’s weird to spend an entire lunch break talking about the best light fixture to hang in a Colonial Revival entryway with ten-foot ceilings, and nearly all of them have their own renovation war stories to tell.