---Inspired by Nancy Lancaster’s famous yellow room, a moonlighting Irish painter and I glazed the walls – badly – and that was the extent of my decoration. Finally, a year or so ago, I enlisted the help of my friend the brilliant and entertaining (which is almost as important) designer Thomas Jayne. In more than ten years I had never even hung curtains—the windows are so big I couldn’t afford even a small lapse in judgement. Of course, what was intended to be a brief collaboration turned into a full-scale
but much-needed makeover. A shoe closet (my favorite of all of Thomas’s good ideas) was added in the bedroom; the heavily wine-stained carpet was replaced with sisal; the cracking walls were glazed this time by Anne McGee, who, in addition to being the current owner of her aunt Fanny’s couch, is an exceptionally talented decorative painter. I resisted everything: When I said I didn’t want to paint, Thomas said he’d “pray about it. It was with no less trauma that he persuaded me to replace my grandmother’s figurine lamps with a pair made from comparatively wild green-and-orange nasturtium vases (my father has not yet recovered from the sight of them), and the threadbare throw pillows with some made of my now-favorite Claremont silk lampas (if I ever win the lottery I want an evening coat made of the stuff). He knew better than to stray too far away from the parrot-green silk that for more than 60 years had covered the sofa—but he found me a more modern fabric, along with a great bold blue-and-green strip for the previously despised dining chairs.

continued on next page