Dear Fiona,
After Christmas, my husband, three children (all under twelve) and I are leaving our long-term rented house and moving in with my mother. It’s happening because she’s struggling with the (sizeable) house since my father died – both in terms of running it and being able to afford to run it - but doesn’t want to sell it because she loves it and the equally expansive garden (which she created, but needs a gardener to help with.) It works for us because we also love the house (I grew up in it) and the area, there are plenty of bedrooms so there’s sufficient space, and the idea is that we will inherit it after she has died (which could be thirty years away – and we hope it is! We also love her!) There are lots of things that we’re all excited about, not least the fact that our children will have a really good relationship with their grandmother (she used to teach and is looking forward to helping them with their homework – my husband and I both work so this will be great) and, because we’ll no longer be paying rent, we’ve got budget to do some redecorating – though this is where the issues begin, and they specifically concern the downstairs rooms.
I love cooking and my mother doesn’t, so I’ll be in charge of the kitchen and also have my desk in there (it’s my current set-up, and I’ve found it works) and we can all eat in there, together – and that is top of the list for an overhaul. My mother will have ownership, if you will, of my father’s old study, which has become a sort of snug – it’s easy to heat, and she gets cold, and there’s a telly in there. Then, the boot room and pantry need to stay as such. The problem is that she’s determined that the somewhat cavernous, but theoretically lovely, dining room and drawing room – which are meant to be communal rooms - should also remain as they are in terms of purpose, and, although she hasn’t yet said it out loud, I can tell she’s going off the idea of even redecorating them.
They’re so seldom used though (despite having the best light and aspect) – and what I need is an easy sitting room that my children can relax in (my mother thinks that lying on a sofa is wrong, and has suggested turning an upstairs bedroom into a sitting room for them but I just feel that is too far away from where I’m going to be) and somewhere that they can do their homework or art projects (again, she thinks that this can happen upstairs.) Anyway, she’s suddenly becoming rather territorial and defensive, despite this having been her idea – and while my husband points out that one day we’ll be able to do whatever we like, that could be decades away, and I don’t want to have to put all our art in our bedroom just because she wants to keep the slightly insipid watercolours of seascapes that are hung in a row each with their individual picture light in a room that she barely goes into, but maintains will the place she’ll have her friends to tea. (In reality, she and her friends make it to the drawing room about twice a year, she usually gives them tea in the kitchen and then they walk around the garden.) Also, I don’t love her peach upholstered chairs and sofa, or the endless twiddly side tables, and even as a child I found the dining room depressing – it somehow manages to feel both bare and claustrophobic at the same time. I really want to re-start those rooms with a clean slate – but she’s clinging on to stuff – and I’m worried the ‘communal’ rooms won’t feel communal at all, at least, not in terms of decoration. Weirdly, I’ve never had overly negative feelings about these rooms until now – but faced with living in them, I know that they don’t express me and although they are home, they also feel like the past.
How do you suggest we move forward? For I really feel that these are things that should be ironed out before we turn up with a lorry full of our furniture in February (she is at least emptying our bedrooms of her things, so that’s something!)
Love,
A Multi-Generational Optimist XX
Dear Optimist
I’m glad of your chosen sign off – for, equally optimistically, I’m confident that this can work. There’s a lot to be said for multigenerational living, and in many cultures it’s common practice. Scroll through our sister site, AD India, and you’ll find a range of different approaches, from separate apartments under the same roof, to a family-per-floor and communal entertaining rooms. Your situation however is slightly different, as the house has not been specifically designed for this brand of unity, and thus the idea comes with challenges, as you’ve discovered. But multigenerational living is not entirely unheard of in this country: Farrow & Ball paint consultant Patrick O’Donnell lives with his mother, in her house, and Nicola Crawley, Associate Director of Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, has her daughter-in-law living with her thought the week, and “lucky me!” Nicola says, of the arrangement. For as Patrick points out, “any home is better for more people living in it; it makes it come alive.” All you’ve got to do is work out how to live in it, to which end I’m going to attempt to give you an answer that you can read together – because you’re in this together.
Having said that, what is generally agreed is that the key to successful multigenerational living is to be able to ensure that you can spend time apart – which you may well have discovered even in your own family unit, during lockdown (that being the moment so many of us fell out of love with open plan!) And when figuring this out, it’s not unusual, says Patrick – who has also experienced multigenerational living during the course of his work - for people to want to cling on to rooms as they were. Change, however much you want it in theory, is hard in practice, and what’s required – from everybody - is compromise and honesty. For it’s true that your children need somewhere closer to the kitchen (where you’ll be) but it’s also true your mother needs somewhere she can host her friends, and it can’t be the kitchen if you’re working in there. Perhaps the drawing room does need to retain certain elements – or perhaps her snug needs attention? Patrick recounts that when he moved in with his mother, which, like your move, involved some necessary redecorating, he made sure that he also put effort into her rooms. For instance, he found a pair of antique armchairs and had them reupholstered for her sitting room. “I wanted to make sure that what we were doing would benefit her in the long run, as well as giving us our own space,” he explains – which I’m sure is something that you’re thinking about, too, for it certainly helps reinforce the idea of collective living.
You could go through the extensive House & Garden archive, pulling out inspiration for different rooms you’re looking at and applying it to your circumstances, or, time being scarce, it might be worth thinking about finding someone who can help you with ideas for furniture layout (before your truck arrives!), maximising the functionality of every space, and – of course - decoration. A third pair of eyes who doesn’t have emotional investment in the rooms, and has professional know-how, is, yes, an investment, but an investment that has to the potential to pay considerable dividends, not least in making this amalgamation both fun, and a joint adventure. (In terms of names, I recommend looking through the House & Garden Top 100, and The List – which you will have received in paper format if you have bought the December issue, on newsstands now.)
Dining rooms, if well designed with good storage and lighting, can have secondary use - and even contain a sofa - and drawing rooms can have different areas of differing levels of formality. Or, perhaps it’s worth considering if the dining room and drawing room need to be as large as you imply they are? Lucy Hammond Giles, also of Sibyl Colefax & John Fowler, moots the idea that more smaller rooms might be “easier to live with.” Either way, says Nicola, “the decoration of shared spaces requires diplomatic thought on the behalf of the decorator: a developed understanding of the nuances of the various residents’ preferences and the creation of an accordingly symbiotic environment.” In other words, some degree of compromise is required (again), and while I agree that it would be a shame if all your paintings had to be hung in your bedroom, it would be an equal shame if your mother’s seascapes vanished.
Just as your co-living arrangement is bringing together generations and enabling the combining of upkeep and gardener’s bills, so it is bringing together your tastes – and a necessary combining of your varied belongings in the designated communal rooms (don’t forget you’ve got room for individual taste elsewhere – and paintings can hang in a kitchen). Your (joint) end goal here is the creation of rooms that are at once cohesive and workable, but that also combine the best of everybody for your (joint) new future. You may find surprises: a single peach armchair - Mark Hampton described peach as having “remarkable properties of flexibility” explaining it can be “soft and subtle or strong, with enough of a jolt to suite the most adventurous extremist” – might make an Optimist-owned painting sing, and so on. There may have to be sacrifices, on both sides (not least because in joining households there is often a surfeit of furniture, and there definitely will be if you choose new items, together) but there will also need to be concessions. Worth remembering is how different things can look when their surroundings are changed, and also worth remembering – I’ve alluded to it already but it’s worth repeating - is that this is a big change for all concerned, everybody is giving up a modicum of independent ownership for this new life that yet promises gains, so try to tread carefully with each other’s feelings (though it sounds as if you very much are).
Lucy raises another point which is also worth thinking about, especially as you go into a redecoration project with somebody who aims to live out their life in this house, and that’s what can be referred to as future-proofing. It’s not something that you’ve asked about – but as I’m advocating bringing in a professional, it would be remiss not to mention it. I’m not saying that you need to install handles in bathrooms now – but if you are redoing bathrooms and reinforce any stud walls with plywood before tiling, it’s very easy to add a grab rail later. If you’re rejigging doors, make them wide enough for a wheelchair – and so on.
Essentially, there are reams of possibilities. The beginning of cohabitation is one of the trickiest steps, but get the house right, and hopefully the rest will follow - and you’ll find yourself living in a multigenerational idyll with all the people you love best, and homework help on tap. Good luck!
With love,
Fiona XX
Got a question for Fiona? Email agonyaunt.houseandgarden@condenast.co.uk
