The Objects We Restore

A reader asks if restoring paintings or refinishing furniture devalues those objects. I hold onto objects that are damaged or need to be repaired; I call these objects “my orphan-things” and it has given me great satisfaction to breathe new life into them with restorations; but not all my efforts have worked. This newsletter discloses the top FIVE DUMB THINGS I have done to objects in an effort to refinish, refurbish, rewire, reupholster, or restore art or antique furniture. These missteps shine a light on psychological attachments to objects.

I always have a project: Recently I bought 30 wooden salad bowls from thrift stores to be refinished, stacking them up in the kitchen. Is that a symptom of a compulsion? 

In 2013, “hoarding disorder” was officially recognized as a separate psychiatric diagnosis after years of debate, but the history of literature is full of characters with a disjointed relationship to the material world. In 1321, Dante Alighieri’s Inferno in The Divine Comedy narrates the Fourth Circle of Hell, in which misers and prodigals (hoarders) push stone weights against one other: “They struck against each other, and then they all turned around, and rolled the weights back, screaming ‘Why do you hoard?’ and ‘Why do you throw away?’”

Characters in literature and in our families may exhibit an anxious relationship with objects, such as in hoarding disorder. But there are other psychological personality diagnoses to describe a person’s relationship to objects, often named after characters in literature. A certain relationship with objects, good or bad, tells a story, and may be one narrative of life. For example, take Plyushkin Syndrome, named after a character in Nikolai Gogol’s novel Dead Souls. Stepan Plyushkin worries over, saves, and repairs small useless objects that should be discarded; in one scene he scrapes the mold off a cake and re-gifts it. At the same time, he neglects his acres of farmland. Sounds familiar! I have spent more money on two storage lockers than the stuff contained there is worth – I have furniture waiting to be reworked, paintings to reframe and clean, and books waiting for rebinding. 

Here are five of my Plyushkin-esque moves:

1. I hung onto a 1940s hardwood framed sofa for 35 years, waiting for the day I found the time to re-upholster that beast. I found 40 yards of fabric for under $5,000, made the investment and spent six months working on the sofa, covering it in a light lemon silk striped with deep black. One month after I moved it into my condominium, my friend surprised me with a gift of a dachshund puppy who was not house-trained.

2. Going through a closet of floral arranging vases, it dawned on me that a textured blue midcentury vessel would make a perfect table lamp. I asked my electrician to drill and electrify it. When he bought it back, he mentioned it had a name on the bottom, “BEATO” – for the world famous Ojai potter, of course; Beatrice Wood. There goes $2,000.

3. A friend asked me to help furnish her grandson’s nursery, and I spruced up a thrift store $20 dresser made of medium density fiberboard. I used blue latex paint, which, once we installed the dresser, peeled off. One huge mess later, I was told that only chalk paint would have worked. I have often spent far more money fixing a thing up than it had cost me originally to purchase.

4. Lazy and rushed to finish a project, I dismounted and spray-painted hardware from a dresser instead of sanding down the rust. You can imagine how that looked. Later I learned that simply soaking rusted hardware in vinegar and then buffing with steel wool works well.

5. I saved my dad’s dental office 1960s midcentury modern waiting room vinyl couch given to me when he retired in the 1980s. When I bought a cabin up at Lake Arrowhead, I thought PERFECT. Problem is, it sticks to rear ends in hot weather, and when exposed to wet swimwear folks slide right off. And in winter it is freezing cold and very hard.

Differing from Plyushkin’s Syndrome, one could suffer from another psychiatric disorder, the Diogenes Syndrome, in which one has an apathetic relationship to objects such as kitchen garbage, old paper, and other useless objects. Fitting that this apathetic and cynical disorder should be named after the 300 BCE Corinthian philosopher, Diogenes, who was known for parading nude with a lantern, claiming to be searching for “one honest man.” I had an older relative that suffered from this disorder: old milk cartons were used for mini trash bins, and SAVED. But me, I am not there yet (I tell myself!).