It's summertime, which is cranky-time for me. If you were having a hot flash every 30 minutes you'd be cranky, too.
To get through these hot, sticky days I indulge in a healthy dose of griping, which just may have led to a brilliant idea. I'll let you be the judge.
The gripe du jour involves formal living rooms and dumb waiters. These are not things you often see together in the same sentence. Both are relics from the past, but the former strangely persists despite how families live in 2008, while the latter went the way of the dodo ages ago, even though I think it still has legs. This is a dichotomy I may have resolved.
By "formal living room," I mean those tiny, useless spaces you find even in new homes right off the entry foyer. In another era, this room would have been called the front parlour and was reserved for when the minister came to call. It was part and parcel of a proper home with proper people doing things properly.
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Today, we're a titch less proper by Victorian standards and we're a lot less formal since so many of us prefer to live and entertain in the kitchen and family room. And we pretty much have to since modern versions of formal living rooms are too small for serious entertaining. They're therefore rarely used, with the result that many of them look like tiny, pristine furniture showrooms. In my ex-mother-in-law's formal living room, for example, the furniture was even covered in plastic. Besides those instances of furniture abuse, this all adds up to an unforgivable waste of real estate.
We, too, have a useless formal living room. I often wish a minister - priests, rabbis and shamans are also welcome - would come calling so that, if we're forced to use Victorian reasoning, the space would have a purpose. Instead, we're so ambivalent about it we haven't even replaced the drapes or painted the walls, all of which are still as bright yellow as the day we moved in. In the morning, the whole room glows like the inside of a light bulb, which, in my overheated state, gives me yet another reason to avoid it.
So here's my idea for all future new-home construction. Builders, listen up. First, designate that space right off the foyer as a den and kit it out with all the bells and whistles, such as French doors for privacy, built-in bookshelves, and state-of-the-art communications wiring so that it's super-functional.
Then - stealing a smidge of the former formal living room's square footage if you must, install a dumb waiter. Now there's a hoary old convention worth resurrecting, but when was the last time you saw one outside of a Three Stooges movie?
You may be wondering if the hot flashes have fried my brain, but think about it. It could be indispensable in homes with finished basements and two or more storeys above.
Imagine being able to tow the kids - your own little stooges - up to bed without climbing two or three flights of stairs. Can't afford either the space or the money for an elevator? A dumb waiter could be just the ticket. Builders could offer various sizes of dumb waiters, depending on individual family needs.
I lamented its absence from the architectural scene just the other day when we hosted a croquet party. There we were, hauling our outdoor furniture, umbrella, drinks, ice, food and a hundred other things from one end of the house down the basement stairs to the patio at the other end of the house. You couldn't find two more disparate points in our house between which to drag stuff.
And it was hot and sticky. Forget about looking poised (not to mention dry) once the guests arrived. With a dumb waiter installed midway along the deck railing outside, the kitchen the problem would have been solved.
I'm therefore thinking of designing one. For our house, I envision an outdoor contraption not unlike those used by high-rise window washers but made of weathered cedar to match the deck.
It would be pulled up and down by a simple block-and-tackle, pulley-type arrangement. And it would solve one of the issues I've been griping about.
As for the other - that vast and unused formal living room - since we're stuck with it, I'll have to find myself a minister or suitable equivalent to come calling. And work on being appropriately proper. Wish me luck.