“Somebody has to go polish the stars,
They’re looking a little bit dull.
Somebody has to go polish the stars,
For the eagles and starlings and gulls
Have all been complaining they’re tarnished and worn,
They say they want new ones we cannot afford.
So please get your rags
And your polishing jars,
Somebody has to go polish the stars.”
~ A Light in the Attic
When we first purchased our home, there was a little attic/loft area which once functioned as a children’s play space, at least judging from the writing in the closets. On the floor was a dark, glued-down industrial ‘carpet’ that was like black and blue astroturf. It looked awful and smelled even worse. I scraped it off – by hand – then sanded it down – by machine – and painted it all white (paneling, floors, and ceiling). Since it was still rough around the edges, the easiest style to conjure was a shabby chic hybrid – and twenty years ago it was all the rage.
I hung floral curtains to mask an ugly metal divider gate, whitewashed shelves for decorative purposes, and raided the Marshall’s shabby chic section to fill it with fringed monstrosities. It served its simple purpose as a surplus room for guests, but eventually we stopped bothering to keep it up. It went unheated in the winter and un-air-conditioned in the summer, so it was mostly uninhabitable.
What began as a shabby chic attic evolved into a messy and practically unlivable storage space as time passed and we focused on other parts of the house. So bad did my clutter get that mere walking was often a menace, and navigating the piles of stuff was an exercise right out of ‘Hoarders: Buried Alive’. Reclaiming it from ‘Grey Gardens’ territory took a lot of garbage bags and some ruthless editing, but I spent the earliest weeks of spring making it happen, just as the sun began to heat the room nicely. This was a serious sort of spring cleaning – more than dusting or shifting clothes. It was designed to aid in our storage issues, and to create a bit more space for us. The work began on the staircase, where we had been lining each stair with bottles of soda and seltzer, then spilling it into the space above the stairs, with bags of coffee beans, kitchen items, holiday decor, and things like a fryer, an ice cream maker, and a waffle maker. You know, the shit that gets used twice a year, and only if people are coming over.
Once a little space was cleared, and the place could breathe again, inspiration built on itself. I was rapidly filling 55-gallon garbage bags with the unused detritus and nonsense of two decades of impulse buying. A few items I managed to sell on FaceBook Marketplace, which would provide funding for the slight change-up in style I had in mind.
After obsessing over the concept of hygge over this past winter, I wanted a similar spirit to infuse this attic loft for summer, so I turned to a Scandinavian slant, giving in to a white-washed brightness tempered with some natural wood and ivory shell inlaid work.
Influences and accents of Scandinavian style and mid-century simplicity injected the room with a calming atmosphere – a bright, livable space just in time for the summer season – and the summer guests.
Andy’s antique wooden bed-frame reclaims pride-of-place in the center of it all, shifting the purpose and intent to one of repose and relaxation. It turned out so well I may entertain an office move to this area at some point. I’ve already taken to napping here in the afternoon.
Cue the background music for the rest of the tour…
A new sound-system designed like a mid-century radio allows for music to inhabit the place, immediately bringing new life and energy into a room that had previously stayed largely quiet. (You can see it on the right side of the desk below – unobtrusively elegant in a slightly retro way.)
The multitude of lamps are a necessity because there is only one small window to light the expanse – and half of that is taken up by an AC unit in the summer. While that one East-facing portal allows some morning into the space, it’s not nearly enough for the bright and airy feel I was going for, so lamps abound. That makes this the ideal space for rainy days as well, when you can hear the pitter-patter of raindrops on the roof, lending it a coziness unparalleled elsewhere in the house.
Along with Andy’s bed, my grandmother’s old chest – a hand-painted piece of wooden craftsmanship – adds some love and nostalgia, warming the white and cream environs, and grounding its corner with a necessary element of dark wood.
Almost twenty years into this home, it’s a welcome bit of enchantment to find that there are still places to surprise and thrill, repurposing themselves into a new addition that costs only as much as a bucket of paint and some new lamps and such. I’ve got some more pictures to hang, and a few more accent pieces to find, but this is already perfect for guests to visit. Here’s one more song to welcome summer:
“How much good inside a day? Depends how good you live ’em. How much love inside a friend? Depends on how much you give ’em.” ~ A Light in the Attic
