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The Oklahoman, Oklahoma City, Richard Mize column: Here are some ideas for ?staging' a man's space
Jun 27, 2009 (The Oklahoman - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
The room was a mess.
The boy's bed? Unmade, a basketball among the jumbled pillows. Clothes all over the floor.
The big Oklahoma City Thunder logo on one wall explained the basketball. The realities of the teen years explained the rest.
But it was not the typical "staged" room in a model home for sale.
Terri McCaleb, builder Caleb McCaleb's wife and decorator, hit us all where we live -- and in the funny bone -- with the way she staged the room in a model bungalow in McCaleb's new Arbor Creek addition in Edmond.
Anyone who has ever been, or brought up, a teenager got the message and could see their younger selves, or their kid, in that room at Arbor Creek's grand opening the other night -- and that's the point of staging.
It got me thinking about ways to stage realistic spaces of former teen boys.
Here's the recliner where the gentleman of the house rests after a hard day of writing and editing, complete with moat. A moat? The "moat" is what my wife, Dolores, calls the ever-present ring of books, magazines and newspapers surrounding my chair within easy reach. That's real.
Here's the table in the kitchen, which is different from a "kitchen table," since, with it just the two of us now, we tend to eat in the other room in front of the TV. The table in the kitchen is used for computering, researching, writing, bill paying and the like. Very seldom for eating. That's real life.
Here's the "home office" -- scare quotes necessary because it's really a bedroom with a desk and now-seldom-used desktop computer, thanks to the wireless router amid a tangle of wires (ironic) in the floor, and just a fraction of the books owned by the gentleman of the house because most of his books have been in boxes in the garage since being hauled out to let carpet installers in last September. September! What happens to all that time the computers are saving me? Real life!
Finally, here's the "man room." You can tell by the "Smile, You're in Cigar Country" ashtray filled with butts, the ratty futon with the Route 66 pattern and the politically incorrect throw that the gentleman of the house refuses to part with, the former "table in the kitchen" from his bachelor days, a cheap entertainment center from the '70s -- and the dog food, some of his toys and his pallet (the dog's, not the gentleman of the house's). See, the "man room" is the former "sun room" and while it ain't much, it's his (the gentleman of the house's, not the dog's, although sometimes man and dog quarrel over that.) Realistic!
To see more of The Oklahoman, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to
http://www.newsok.com. Copyright (c) 2009, The Oklahoman, Oklahoma City
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