Staging a shelf!

Donna at Funky Junk Interiors shared a great post about staging a restaurant near her home. Although I can't begin to compare my little experience with trying to decorate an entire restaurant, I had a fun "side project" this summer in helping a friend decorate a high shelf in the entry of her home.

I had completed several projects for "D", like the first Farmhouse table and chairs, this cute bench, and an antique coffee table, to name a few.

D has a lovely vaulted foyer area in her home, with a loft on the 2nd floor that looks down into the entry. There was an empty decorative shelf that was just begging for some personality.


I had been "collecting" items from garage sales and thrift stores and classified ads...things that I was storing in my garage but had no idea how I would use in my home! Believe it or not, almost everything I had seemed to work together perfectly for D's space.

Part of the wall behind the shelf was actual wall, while the other was banister for the loft area. I used one of my antique windows to fill the space, hung next to two not-antique plates that I bought on clearance at Tai-Pan Trading. The plant came from D.I. The laundry basket and the linens inside were different garage sale finds, and the little stool was a garage sale purchase that I painted. The bowl and pitcher are D's, and are family heirlooms.

I have to make a quick comment about the linens in the basket...when I first brought it over, I also brought an afghan that we received as a wedding present to see how it would look in the basket (I knew it was going to need a filler). It looked great!! I had to leave it with D for two weeks until I found a good replacement. I can see how someone could easily fall in to stripping their own home to make someone else's look good!



I had a silver star that used to hang on this window before I found my huge "B." I brought it over just to see how it looked, and we liked it...except that it was silver, and D wanted it to look more rusty! Would you believe, it had been rusty, but I painted it silver! I stripped the silver paint off to bring it back to it's "old" glory!

The ladder and candlesticks were more garage-sale finds, along with another pretty old linen apron. The wreath was something I made myself (my first wreath!) but then decided not to use.

Neither of us were crazy about the statue of the lady, but it belonged to her mother, and she needed some place to put it! It didn't look bad, but it has since been replaced by a little fake topiary tree. The lady had to move on!

The milk can I purchased for a song at a garage sale. It was hard to let it go, but D loved it, and it looked great on her shelf.


It was so fun to see it all come together, and it made me feel better about my "impulse purchases," since they went to someone who really loved them!


Maybe I could be someone's personal garage-sale shopper. Do you think that could work??


In other news...this blog has almost gathered 100 followers! I can't believe it. I dragged my feet over starting a blog for such a long time, but it has been so fun for me to get to "talk" about my furniture/decorating obsessions with some people who actually care! Trust me, my husband....doesn't!

In keeping with Blogland tradition, there will be a giveaway when Red Hen Home reaches that magic number! CSN Stores has graciously offered a $35 gift certificate to one of you lucky people. Stay tuned!