{"id":2126,"date":"2008-02-15T13:11:50","date_gmt":"2008-02-15T18:11:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2126"},"modified":"2008-02-15T13:11:50","modified_gmt":"2008-02-15T18:11:50","slug":"hahahahaha","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=2126","title":{"rendered":"Hahahahaha!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Double-Income, No Kids Power Couples are the <em>first people in history <\/em>to discover that children will <em>mess up your perfect designer house<\/em>!<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>WHEN Jacqueline Brown and her husband, Gavin Friedman, were in their early 30s, they lived in a condominium in Santa Monica, Calif., with a black leather Ikea couch Mr. Friedman had bought for law school, a few modest pieces from Pier 1 Imports and assorted hand-me-down furnishings. Within a few years, though, having acquired professional and financial stability \u2014 both were litigation associates at prominent law firms \u2014 they bought a house in Cheviot Hills, an affluent neighborhood in West Los Angeles, and began remodeling and decorating.<\/p>\n<p><script language=\"JavaScript\" type=\"text\/JavaScript\">if (acm.rc) acm.rc.write();<\/script>During two renovations, each costing more than $100,000, they built a two-sided fireplace to separate the living and dining rooms, put in a wine cellar and installed a sleek maple and granite kitchen. They bought molded-wood chairs in the Arne Jacobsen style, Murano glass pendant lamps and a custom walnut entertainment unit. Ms. Brown, who had become obsessed with interior design in law school, poured heart and soul into the projects.<\/p>\n<p>But just as Ms. Brown and Mr. Friedman were establishing their first truly grown-up residence \u2014 she was 38, he 37 \u2014 Ms. Brown gave birth to their first child, Harrison, a boy who turned out as bouncing as most.<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly they were confronted with a question that had never before occurred to them: given the way baby gear and toys take over households, the uncivilized habits of toddlers and the dangers posed by sharp-edged contemporary furniture, could Ms. Brown and Mr. Friedman continue to live their high-design dream?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Hahahahahahahaha <em>you can&#8217;t, yuppie slapnutzes! <\/em>hahahahahahahaha!<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;when the investment has been not in cribs or other nursery furniture but in the classic \u201cdouble income, no kids\u201d fantasy of a pristine, high-style home for grown-ups, the transition can be hardMs. Brown and Mr. Friedman \u2014 who of course were thrilled to have a child, like all the later-in-life parents interviewed for this article \u2014 were also determined not to let Harrison \u201ctake control of the house,\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Bwahahahaha!\u00a0 &#8220;Determined&#8221;, were we?\u00a0 Oh, you slay me.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>OTHERS, like Debra Cherney, 49, and Hartley Bernstein, 56, were more resigned to giving up control&#8230;the couple realized that they would need to create a designated play space in their prewar Park Avenue apartment. Still, the room they sacrificed \u2014 the formal dining room \u2014 was tough.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m pretty sensitive aesthetically, and it does something for me when I look at a pretty room,\u201d Ms. Cherney said. \u201cLooking at what the room used to be was the visual equivalent of listening to Bach or <a title=\"More articles about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.\" href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/people\/m\/wolfgang_amadeus_mozart\/index.html?inline=nyt-per\">Mozart<\/a>. Now it\u2019s the visual equivalent of listening to Barney.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, Dammit all to hell!<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>She felt the full impact when she and Mr. Bernstein put their 18th-century mahogany dining table and chair set in storage. \u201cWhen I bought the table I was envisioning these beautiful, lovely dinners with fine china,\u201d she said. \u201cOnce you have kids and once you give up those things, it was like, \u2018Who was I kidding?\u2019 I remember thinking this room will look nice again \u2014 in about 18 years.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, Deb and <em>Hartley<\/em>, that&#8217;s what boarding school is for, now, isn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><script language=\"JavaScript\" type=\"text\/JavaScript\">if (acm.rc) acm.rc.write();<\/script>The issue of safety, too, can pose vexing choices for parents in thrall to design. Even before Kipp Cheng and his partner of 15 years, Mark Jarecke, arrived home with their son, Beckett, last March, they could see that many of the furnishings in their Maplewood, N.J., colonial house, including a set of four Barcelona chairs and a glass-top Noguchi coffee table, were accidents waiting to happen. But they weren\u2019t eager to act.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are both small-town guys who lived in the city and tried to establish an aesthetic point of view that was largely modernist and minimalist,\u201d said Mr. Cheng, 40, a playwright and a publicist for the <a title=\"More articles about American Association of Advertising Agencies\" href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/organizations\/a\/american_association_of_advertising_agencies\/index.html?inline=nyt-org\">American Association of Advertising Agencies<\/a>. \u201cBut when you become parents, you kind of have to throw that out the window.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Or raise a modernist, minimalist kid.\u00a0 Y&#8217;know.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As for the coffee table, they avoided doing anything until Beckett gave them no choice: while learning to walk last summer, he used it as his main training prop. \u201cHe\u2019d cruise and trip and hit his face on the table\u2019s edge,\u201d Mr. Cheng recalled.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Jarecke initially refused to discuss parting with or altering the table in any way, but they eventually compromised and decided to wrap the edge of the top in foam. \u201cAs I\u2019m taping it,\u201d Mr. Cheng said, \u201cI\u2019m saying, \u2018I\u2019m taping over what makes the difference between this being a Noguchi table and a Kmart table.\u2019\u00a0\u201d Mr. Jarecke was even more distraught. \u201cIt transformed this beautiful modernist piece of furniture into a piece you\u2019d find in a \u201970s rec room,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Simply <em>ghastly!\u00a0 The Horror! <\/em><\/p>\n<p>THE HOR-ROR!<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>FOR some design-minded parents, certain compromises are too much.<\/p>\n<p>In 2004, Bob Stratton, a design technologist who specializes in home automation, and his wife, Sandra McLean, 50, a food activist and writer, bought a former tool and die factory in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, and set about turning it into a two-story, 4,000-square-foot loftlike home appropriate for themselves and their son, Vin, and daughter, Fia, then 2 and 5&#8230;.\u201cThey can play with a toy in the main living area, but it has to go away when they\u2019re done,\u201d Ms. McLean said. \u201cI\u2019m very concerned with what\u2019s in my visual space.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Just as a matter of principle, I think people who refer to their &#8220;crap&#8221; as their &#8220;visual space&#8221; need to be beaten with sticks.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>She also refused to babyproof furniture when the children were younger. She was \u201cnever one of those mothers\u201d who put safety corners on coffee tables, she said. \u201cThat stuff is just gross, and I don\u2019t feel you have to sacrifice living space to that degree.\u201d And she decided not to install wire railings on the open side of the floating walnut staircase Mr. Stratton designed to connect the first- and second-floor living spaces.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe couldn\u2019t bear it,\u201d she said. \u201cIt was too ugly. So basically what we did was we trained the kids to hold onto the handrail, and it\u2019s worked. No one\u2019s ever fallen off.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;d love to interview <em>those <\/em>kids in twenty years.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s it like, growing up feeling like a museum piece?&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Double-Income, No Kids Power Couples are the first people in history to discover that children will mess up your perfect designer house! WHEN Jacqueline Brown and her husband, Gavin Friedman, were in their early 30s, they lived in a condominium in Santa Monica, Calif., with a black leather Ikea couch Mr. Friedman had bought for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-men-and-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}