Musical theatre fans: help me settle a debate

My partner and I are moving into our new house in January and have been having lots of debates/mild arguments about how to decorate. She wants to go with a higher-end classy look, which is coming into conflict with my decorating taste, which is, shall we say, eclectic. I owned our current home, a condo, before we met, so most of it was decorated by me. I have a lot of collectibles - action figures, movie replicas, that sort of thing, that I like to display prominently in the house. I don't mind having different collections displayed in the same room, whereas she wants things to be more divided, and she has different ideas about what things fit into the same category than I do. For example, I think it's fine to have an area/room that is just spiritual/goddess statues and decor, whereas it bothers her to have Indian stuff mixed in with Chinese, etc. She likes things to be organized and simple, I love knicknacks.

I also have a lot of Phantom of the Opera memorabilia, some Wicked stuff, and about 4 or 5 posters from various musicals. It is these posters that are the point of contention at the moment. Currently, they are framed and hanging in our hallway. I like this and would like to do the same thing at our new house. However, she sees them more as posters a teen/young adult would have on the wall and doesn't really want them up. She also seems to have an aversion to anything big, as I have some poster-sized framed photos of my childhood dogs that she isn't a fan of either. Anyway, my argument is that these theatre posters, if nicely framed, ARE classy. I contend that there are many gay men who have these exact posters in their homes and consider them quite stylish. But honestly, I haven't been to the homes of many other musicals fans and don't know if that is true. So I guess what I am asking are two questions:

1. Are musical theatre posters acceptable to you in a nicely decorated home?

2. How can the two of us reconcile our decorating taste to make this move and new house work?

We really need Queer Eye for the Lesbians, I fear. ;)

But sorry, Andrew Lloyd Weber is never acceptable, in any context. If you were to go with some older, classic playbills, you might have a stronger case.

Of course, I'm straight, so what do I know ;)

I see nothing wrong with movie/theatre posters, especially authentic ones framed.

however, it seems more to me that you two are having normal issues about moving in together, that you both have a certain style and taste and you're going to have to work together to sort that out. I would advise a compromise you both can live with, or a decisions by one of either of you that your relationship is more important than the decor.

that's my simple two cents: what you DON"T want to do is have one of you outargue the other on taste and have that fester as resentment over a long period of time.

I would also suggest you could have certain areas particular to either of you, and a THIRD area where you BOTH buy decor that is different from either of you but that you both can live with.

good luck!

just as your partner says - something a teen or college kid would display. Same with action figures.

Perhaps instead of you trying to jam everything you want into every room, and her trying to unjam it and/or jam her own things into every room, put all your stuff together and go through one room at a time, picking stuff from both collections that you BOTH like - not 'one of mine, one of yours' but agreement on everything.

Then put that stuff up.

If you each also have your own individual room, say for an office or personal retreat space, you can decorate them however you want.

and my office has vintage and modern framed Broadway play posters on the walls.They are quite stylish and certainly not teeny bopper! I do agree with sensible groupings however.That way you can display your collections most effectively! Perhaps you could get an interior designer to help you with the display.Would your partner be amenable to that?

One large framed poster with smaller framed posters around it in some sort of symmetry. Theatre posters appropriate? Hell, my wife and I have two incredible framed posters of Snoopy in our living room and they are very classy. But we have yet to agree on what to put over the fireplace.

Or just get drunk and the two of you throw paint at the walls. Attempted that once in College, oh what a mess. But damn were we artistes!!??

Come on down to New Orleans, stroll Royal Street and that will take care of your decorating needs. You may need a couple of million though. Dollars!!

But you are going to have a war over the knick knacks.

Break your heart, have a yard sale. Auction on eBay.

This is when looking at the cable home improvement channels is really helpful. I watch one of those shows at my mom's and go home and throw something out. If I watch 100,000 hours of them, perhaps I will achieve a clutter-free existence. Do I really need all those old software demo CDs?

And I don't mean "classics" like Thomas Kinkaide.

I would just recommend hanging them apart from your Rembrandt.

Or maybe one room one way, and another room the other person's way.

Or several months of one way in a room, and then changing it for another few months. Sharing for period of time.

Maybe the whole idea is to celebrate one person for a while.

I wish I had help from someone. I'm single, and suffer from heterosexuality. My place is decorated with the flavor of early bedspring juxtaposed with modern soldering iron. Basically the house is dedicated to my two giant cats. And their decorating sense is dictated by whatever they can get their claws into.

I envy your happy life. Good luck.

Especially if the piece is of some historic interest.

e.g. from the original run of "Showboat" or "Oklahoma." Also if you consider the artwork exceptional -- Deco themes are my favorite, but as with everything else, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I myself, have never displayed framed posters, because I never lived in a space big enough to do that. But when I lived in New York, I had plenty of friends in the East Village and Chelsea who did. I did prominently display my most recent playbills in the same way most people display coffee table books.

As for the decorating wars, the best advice I can give is that each of you gets to have at least one room in the house that is uniquely yours -- and you will have to find some common ground on the other areas... I had to put a few things of mine in storage when I moved in with the SO, but we both had some things that we agree on.

Good luck in your new home.

I thought it was "standard," rather like a landscape over the sofa for the Depends and Metamucil crowd...

Pair it with tasteful copies of Modern Woodwording and Cat Fancy, and I see a lesbian lovenest in the making!

:sarcasm:

No, it's not "gay" or "teeny bopper" per se, in my opinion, as a devotee of the theeatuh for many years, but I'm the kind of gay guy who can change my own oil and remove and replace a toilet in 15 mins, so what do I know from decorating?

...since it varies wildly in my experience. But I did sort of have a similar dilemma a couple of times, once in living with a roomie, and once after I got married.

I always insisted that we have, in effect, two "living rooms" or parlors, or whatever you want to call them. One that reflected the kind of style where we could entertain company, including strangers and acquaintances and business colleagues, and one more "private" one just for us and close friends. The Doctor Who posters, K-9 soft sculpture, Grandfather's old marching band trombone, and suchlike memorabilia ended up displayed casually but tastefully in the "private" living room which was also the television-and-DVD-watching location, with one wall lined with bookcases filled with books, stacks of board games and puzzles, DVDs and VHS tapes, etc. We put a comfy sofa bed in there and a casual chair and the more whimsical items of decor.

The "company" living room had the family antiques and the curio display with the artsy pottery and glass and the other swanky-type stuff.

IMHO, it is way, WAY, worth the slight extra expense of a larger place to have that option. When one person wants to watch telly and the other one wants to listen to nice music and read a book, there's no conflict. When someone has a messy project like wrapping holiday gifts, they can put up the card table in the "private" living room and spread out the mess for a few days, and the other one can entertain the folks from work for a glass of wine before going out to dinner in the "public" living room.

Hope that helps!

encouragingly,
Bright

Our new house has a living/dining/great room and a separate room that will be a game room. We still have ongoing debates about exactly what the living room will look like but it is definitely a nicer/fancier space. The game room will display my lava lamp collection and be a funky/fun space.

We are moving from a 1200 sf condo to a ~2500 sf house, so my feeling is that we can work out compromises. But keep the suggestions coming, they've been very helpful so far. Thank you all!

Is the basement finished? How about the attic? Is it an older house with the standard living/dining room, or do you have one of those family rooms, great rooms, or what have you?

Your best bet might be as follows: major compromises on both sides for the "public rooms" which are the living and dining rooms. For example, in exchange for less clutter, you get a montage of posters in the dining room. Your more classical statues go on display in the living room, but in a coordinated display cabinet. If you have a computer room, you get to put the action figures on shelves in there along with a few posters and your partner gets to do the rest of the decor in that room.

Alternatively, if you have two "family" type rooms, say, a four-season room and a great room, flip a coin and you each get to go hog wild to your own tastes in those. Same with any spare bedrooms/computer rooms, what have you.

As for "classy" here's my take on that: If it makes you happy, it's a good thing. Do you want to live in a museum, or a house? You really want to feel good when you open that door and walk into your house, and while you want your home to be welcoming, you aren't decorating for "them" that come visiting every now and again, you're doing it for yourselves. I mean, really--unless the place pleads for smartass remarks, and say, looks like the homes featured in "Redneck Yard of the Week" or you're living in some sort of outlandish and unusual neon-painted, former water tower home, the odds are that however you decorate there's not going to be a huge amount of commentary from people who are visiting YOU, and who are not there to cattily criticize your taste.

Also, the word "partner" in this day and age has way too many meanings--are you in a "committed relationship" --and is it formalized (civil union/marriage or signed legal contract) or informal (a "said so" relationship) or are you just living together in the first bloom of the rose, as it were?

This part can be touchy, too--who's paying the lion's share of the costs, or are you splitting everything down the middle? Yeah, I know everyone says that stuff ain't supposed to matter, but it's the first stuff you always hear about when the relationships go south!!! {I paid for all of the XXXX, and SoAndSo took ADVANTAGE....after all "I've" done....!!! Everyone's heard that sort of thing at one time or another...).

If you're paying most of the bills, you may not be "paying the cost to be the boss" (to quote BB King) but your wishes deserve respect. If you feel like your tastes are being marginalized or put down, that's not a good feeling, and if you feel pressured to be something you aren't, that's a warning sign, too.

Hopefully you will be able to compromise so that each of you feels comfortable in your new dwelling. You may have to divvy up the rooms, or perhaps you can split the difference in each room...good luck, in any event!

Moving's a pain--I had to do it every few years for decades, and I'm glad to be parked in one or three places, now!

There is a great room, a game room divided from the great room by a pocket door, 3 bedrooms and 3 baths (two nice plus a tiny one in the garage). We're converting the garage to an office, which will be great as in our condo our desks are in the living room and it creates a lot of mess. There is no basement, but the attic is HUGE, which we're very happy about.

Uh, duh, I do have pictures. These are pre-remodeling, but the layout of the house isn't changing, so you can get an idea. The furniture in the pics is not ours. We've totally redone both bathrooms, converted the garage, put in new kitchen counters and are replacing the carpet with beautiful cork floors. I'm in a wheelchair, my partner has fibromyalgia and we have 5 dogs and a cat, so we've had to make lots of changes to accomodate that.

We have been together for 2 years and are definitely committed. We have advanced directive arrangements but are not registered as domestic partners because at this time it's more financially advantageous for us not to be. She can't work because of her illness, but she does a lot around the house and will be able to help with our home based business. She's also going to go back to college part time. I just finished my MA in psychology and am training to be a therapist. My disability was caused by medical malpractice, so we are OK in the money department.

House pics here:
http://pics.livejournal.com/ayesha/gallery/0000qdeq

It does look like you'll have enough square footage and rooms to be able to do some compromising OR dividing, which is a plus. You'll just have to sit down and sort it all out!

Say, if that doesn't work out, maybe you should call those Queer Eye guys and ask them if they'd do a QE "special" for you. Are they still on the air? I haven't watched much TV lately but I used to get a kick out of that show. I know they focused on straight guys generally between 20-40, but whose to say they can't do a show for you two? It might be just the thing--and the HOUSE!! What a backdrop! The challenge would be, I guess, to convince the network to fly them out from NYC; I seem to recall they did most of their shows in the Tristate area. There's also that perky gal who does the show where they clean out people's houses and redecorate, not sure if that's an LA-based program, which would be a bit of a haul for them. Of course, you COULD always call in a paid decorator, but that's sometimes an excuse to cop out of the detail work, and then, you don't feel as invested in the results.

That IS a glorious home, swell yard, too--with that as your starting point, I'm thinking you'll be able to work it out....congratulations to you!

...if I may tell a little story, here.

I always tell people I don't "decorate," I just "arrange." That is, I don't buy stuff that "matches," I buy stuff that I need, and (occasionally) that I really, really like. None of it goes with any of it, although when I replace things like bath towels or bedding if it wears out, I pay attention to what colors are already there in the room, etc. Be that as it may, I generally end up with something that is clean and pleasant and welcoming.

One time a couple of years after we moved into our first home, we had a visit from an old friend of my spouse's, who stopped by to consult on a book chapter they were collaborating on. Up until then, we'd always met at restaurants. They spread their stuff out in the dining room and spent the day on it, making periodic visits to the kitchen to fill plates from the refrigerator, and when they were done I booted them into the family room to talk old times while I cleaned up the dining room and put together something for supper. When it was over and the friend was leaving, he turned to my spouse and said, "You don't know how lucky you are. This place is SO cool."

This baffled us since we knew that he and his wife had recently moved into a VERY upscale subdivision in the Baltimore suburbs, a fancy all mod cons new huge house, and ours was a 1950s brick Cape Cod in a small town with nothing at all extraordinary about it. But we thanked him. That year, he invited us for dinner to their new house over the holidays, which they dual-celebrated because he is nominally Christian and he'd married into a liberal Reform Jewish family, so the kid got a little of everything.

We walked into their house and his wife showed us around, obviously extremely pleased with the house and how it was decorated, which was sort of a cross between Martha Stewart and Town & Country. VERY 'home beautiful,' VERY gracious, big comfy upholstered furniture with matching slipcovers, silk flower arrangements everywhere in colors that complemented the draperies, magazines and coffee-table books arranged at just the right casual angle on the tables, etc. We made suitably admiring comments because our Moms brought us up right.

While she was fixing dinner, he took us up to the ONE room she hadn't included on the tour, which was his office/study, which had been carved out of a SMALL bedroom upstairs. It was jammed to the gills with his guitar collection, his books and memorabilia, a tiny TV/VHS player and stereo and his music and tape collections, etc. It was kind of crowded, but it was comfortable in a way the rest of the house simply WASN'T. I realized that the poor guy spent EVERY MINUTE he spent in that house, except when he was eating or sleeping, in that one little room. It was the only room he could do anything in. He loved our house, not because of the way it looked (which was nothing special,) but because they could spread their stuff on the dining room table and work together in comfort, they could raid the fridge and hang out in the kitchen for a break, they could kick back in the family room, we could have a relaxed after-dinner coffee in the living room, etc., and neither he nor my spouse ever felt like they couldn't set their stuff down there, or couldn't bring a drink into that room, or couldn't put their feet up, or whatever.

So thereya go. In my book, "classy" has much less to do with how things look than with how a place feels. Clean is classy, but ultra-neat, don't-set-that-coffee-cup-down is not classy. Find the line between relaxing and slobby, between welcoming and artificial. Fresh air is good. Natural light is good. Not too much clutter, but a friendly relaxed attitude toward the stuff of daily living is good. Anything looks nice on the walls if it's kept dusted, carefully placed, and obviously of value to, or a reflection of, the person who put it there.

didactically,
Bright

And, be ruthless with your purging. The earlier you start the easier it will be and you must keep it up your entire life - otherwise your heirs/children/friends will make fun of you.

If you have a younger friend or relative who enjoys musical theater give them the posters/collectibles. Tell them when they no longer want them to give them to someone else who can appreciate them. Same with the action figures. Store the pics of your pets in the attic.

P.S. I have been in the homes of many gay men over the past 35 years - don't remember ever seeing a poster from a musical.

in a hallway or bathroom. unless they're collector vintage posters, your living room will look like a casting office.