by Molly Cooper, Cooper & Co. Interior Design
The perfect fitting piece is always right at your fingertips…that is if you know how to look! I admit, Amazon is my first choice of finding things, especially if I need it fast, of course there are other store I will hit if I need to be specific how I need it to feel or look, but when I have the chance, and there is a local market going on, I’ll turn my back on Amazon and the big box stores for a great piece that has been repurposed into exactly what I need.
Snuggled in the beautiful hills of Clay County, Tennessee, sits a beautiful event venue call “The Barn at Acres of Grace Farms” that hosts A Southern Marketplace, a three-time-per-year market, where 90+ vendors come and show off their amazingly curated items. The Barn is sitting right in the middle of an everyday working farm. From their herd of Akaushi beef cattle, to row crops of corn and beans, to the chickens in the hen house, there is nothing Acres of Grace is lacking, and the beauty around A Southern Marketplace is sure to inspire you to choose the perfect items for your home.
Last year I was looking around the barns at all the different items, I saw old bed springs tossed into an old basket and a bow around it…beautiful. I also came across a booth with an old box spring hanging from the ceiling with lights coming from it, everything had been stripped off, left out to rust, they ran wire and several lights and then hung the most beautiful glass crystals from it. Y’all if I would have had a place to change that, it would have come home with me. But I was on a mission to find something, old yet dainty, preferably painted white, long but skinny and could hang on a wall. Seems easy right… ha that is a long list of points but that is what I had to have for the space.
Walking through, while enjoying an amazing caramel apple 😊…I see it over on the wall…it was exactly what I needed, maybe even better! I go over to inquire what it used to be. It was the back board off an old sideboard that a customer of theirs didn’t want on the original piece, so they removed it, patched the nail holes, painted it the most beautiful creamy white and added some hanging hardware.
It was the perfect piece to add to a collage wall of children’s art, a cork board and TV that hung in a customer’s house. (The photos of the finished room show it on the right).
I needed something dainty because it was a little girl’s room. I needed it long to be able to cap off the things under it, and that old worn-out sideboard back, came to life as a piece of wall art to complete the wall.
So, the next time you see a market in your area, or you could drive up to Red Boiling Springs, Tennessee, on October 8 & 9 or November 19 & 20 and visit A Southern Marketplace.
You’ll find me there, looking and searching for the next perfect piece that was once old, turned new again.
