Sue Whitney

Back in August, I had the opportunity to go to a home show here in Charlotte. I was so looking forward to hearing everyone speak on home renovations, kitchen remodels and more specifically, junking. Author, speaker, notable junker and creator of Junkmarket Style, Sue Whitney spoke on repurposing trash to treasure. I'm always interested in saving a buck, so she was inspiring in encouraging us to look at everything as possibility. At first, when she asked who in the crowd admitted to being a junker, I wasn't sure what she meant by that. I was thinking more of the A&E show, Hoarders where people can't get rid of old, used make-up sponges or plastic 7-11 cups because they think they might need them again someday. I was hesitant to raise my hand, but then she described junkers as the kind of people who make their husband slow down past the neighbors trash pile to see what kind of goodies they migt be getting rid of. I raised my hand.

During Sue's presentation at the home show, she went through a powerpoint slideshow of pictures from her own home. A couple of pictures caught my eye and I hadn't been able to find them until yesterday. I had done a lot of google searches in the past couple months to find Sue's staircase and chandelier that she had created for her home. Yesterday, during yet another search for these pictures, it led me to a great blog, Harmony and Home, who had done an interview with Sue back in August. I was so happy to discover these pictures that were in her first book Decorating Junkmarket Style . I had bought the book above, Junk Beautiful, in search for them and although it does not include pictues of her own home, it has plenty of great ideas for every room of the house.

without further ado...

The stairs. Yes, the hallway itself is awesome with those old theater signs, but we are in staircase mode at the farmhouse and I can finally show Adam a visual that I've been trying to describe the past few months. A metal grate on the stairs? Have you gone nuts? Unfortunately, this is the only view we get of it, but I'll take it because even from this view, it looks fab. Luckily for us, Adam purchases sheet metal all the time at work so now we have a contact of who to get this from and have got the feelers out already.


Hopefully, we can turn this into that! That support beam you see will be repeated a few more times as you make your way up the stairs, but there will be a handrail that just goes up halfway.

And lastly, here is the barbed wire chandelier. We have a bunch of barbed wire in the backyard and I'd love to see a little bit of it turn into something like this, even if we just hung it outside on a patio one day (Sue's idea).

When we were filling up our dumpsters in the beginning of the demo process, I shouted, "Darn you Sue Whitney!" I can hardly throw anything away without staring at it for 5 minutes and wondering if we can use termite ridden wood or soggy sheetrock somewhere. Okay, so I'm not that bad, but I bet Sue Whitney has a self-portrait somewhere in her house made of those exact materials. :)