Green Decorating 101/Design Show Sneak Peek

This piece will be transformed for my room at
the North Shore Design Show: Favorite Spaces
at the Wenham Museum, May 15th – 22nd

When I was little, my mom would take us out to search for discarded treasures on the side of the road on “junk days” when it was okay to put large, bulky items (like old pieces of furniture) out for trash collection. Well we did a lot of collecting of our own ... hunting for “that piece is still good!” items before they made it to the landfills. I can still remember when we found an antique student desk on one of our excursions. We could barely fit it in the back of the station wagon (especially with five kids in tow!) but we managed to get it home and it was mine! I did a lot of writing and drawing on that desk. It is now the inspiration piece for my designed space at the Wenham Museum (come see it at the show!) To this day, I still cannot leave a decent chair on the side of the road or pass up on an offer from a friend who might ask, “Do you want this? Maybe you can do something with it?” like the small sewing cabinet shown above, generously donated to my creative cause by my neighbor. I have already begun to glam it up for the show to look something like this gorgeous writing desk that I saw at the Grange showroom at the Boston Design Center ...

See more items from Grange
in their Winter 2010 Look Book

I plan to display lots of other tips on recycling time-worn pieces in an effort to “be green,” hoping to inspire visitors to take a second look at still useful items before discarding them, while showing that
what is old can be new again.

Happy Earth Day!
xo yvonne