This week our guest blogger, Susanna Salk's mother needs help redecorating, but Susanna is 200 miles away.

A Room of her Own
From Open House by Susanna Salk

My mother wants help redecorating a room she calls "a disaster."

It's a room in my childhood home where she also grew up and still spends most weekends and summers there with my father.

Even though I had spent 20 years walking through and sitting in, fending off bullying brothers and entertaining boyfriends in that room, I am surprisingly not attached to its layout or style in any way.

Alter the design landscape of my childhood? Go for it.

It has always been a reading room. My parents read three newspapers a day on a love seat there, not to mention countless books for their book club.

For a while, they toyed with making part of the room a "media" room. but for two people who only watch television when Wimbledon or political debates are on, this seemed a little drastic. And when a media cabinet and another sofa where brought in, they cringed.

"lt suddenly looked like a showroom," my mother explained.

I tried explaining that no one uses media cabinets anymore but it was too late. The little television stayed upstairs in my father's dressing room and the room remains all about reading.

This decision unfortunately then set off a domino-style of design disasters. There used to be a desk for my father where the television area was going to be, so they had carved into what once was the adjoining guest bedroom to accommodate a new nook for my father's paperwork. So now that there is no desk and no television,that whole side of the room has no, what I call "raison d'etre."

So they created a little vignette with some antique chairs and a painting in that corner. My mother emailed me a picture.

"Will you ever be actually over there?" I asked.
"No, we sit on the love seat. Besides those chairs are from Granny and not very safe to sit on."
"So why did you put them there?"
"Because I didn't know what else to do."

I could hear the frustration in her voice. She needed my help but I was a whole state away and at this point, all she wanted was to wave a magic wand and make it all better. I hated to tell her there were miles to go before she read.

See how Susanna solved her mother's decorating dilemma.