The Story of the Red Shed Saturday Spectacular Sale Aug. 23rd 2008

Our mascot, Well Read Red, welcomes you to the story of the Red Shed's Saturday Spectacular Sale!

Well, maybe he is not quite so well read......

First a little background. After two months of buying, collecting, sanding, painting, and reinventing, the Red Shed Girls finally have their plan in place. The Thursday evening before the Sale the movers arrive and we have them move almost every piece of furniture in both buildings and in the yards and gardens. Because they are "guys", they REALLY don't "get" why a piece of furniture that looked perfectly good in one room has to be moved to another! We don't care as long as they are strong and don't complain! (it takes 3 to 4 hours)

Thursday night into Friday is spent rearranging furniture and finishing projects, like the display that Michele J. and Jeannie were making to advertise the new "Runs With Scissors" Art Classes at the Red Shed. Also we spend hours hanging art and moving and displaying thousands of "smalls".

Here is the finished product!

Michele M. is finishing a fabulous chair and dresser!

The chair turned out great! See if you can find the dresser later in the blog!

Friday is spent decorating and re-merchandising 7 outdoor and 6 indoor "rooms". Imagine moving into a 3000 square foot house and doing all the moving and all the decorating in about 36 hours!

Rain or shine, sleep or no, (usually, no) at 8am Saturday morning the doors open, our dear shoppers arrive and the surprises begin!

The display in the area in front of the "real" Red Shed, featured pieces from our French Reinvented Chic Collection. An armoire with real lace panel inserts, a bed adorned with antique french letters, a dresser with vintage keys for drawer pulls, and Butt of course...our pants form decorated with French documents from an 1800s Corset factory.

Rounding the corner onto the patio, there was a wonderful black and wood pedestal table with iron chairs. The most important thing was the fresh baked chocolate chip cookies! Thank you, Marilyn McKechnie (Michele M's Mom). I bet those went faster than the antiques! (Which was pretty fast!)

The patio area continued to a dining room area with a great farm table, slip covered chairs, and an amazing bead board quilt/dish cabinet.

Other displays in the yard.....

The "Home Room" Back to School area was under the arbor. It included several vintage child's desks, vintage flash cards and posters, and a set of vintage lockers decoupaged with pages from a vintage children's French reader.



Into the Cottage, one room had this lovely display. Can you tell what is holding the books on the wall?

They are curtain tie backs! Aren't they great?


Another room had the fabulous curved iron french bed. The window above it is breathtaking. The pains are original wavy glass and they have all taken on a lavender hue!



This part of the room featured a huge three tier antique fountain and one of the best cafe sets we have found in a long time!

Here is one of the rooms in the Red Shed. The theme was Italian Market. It was done in blacks and wood with a touch of red. It was decorated throughout with lively Italian calendar prints (that we picked up in Florence several years ago) and clipped onto vintage hangers.

The other room in the Shed had the theme of "The Dogs of Paris" . It was totally Paris Chic and positively brimming with wonderful French dog prints.

Remember the Giant clock hands from a previous post? What did we use for numbers on the wall? Well, dogs of course!

(hint, there is the dresser Michele was painting. The knobs have been covered with vintage sheet music!)

Another room in the cottage was pretty in pink. Notice the powder pink garters on the lamp shade? Below is a close up of the new knobs we added to this to-die-for iron bed.

Hope you enjoyed just a very few of the many rooms of the Red Shed. In the next post we will show some close ups of some of the fabulous montages and displays that were in each room. We will also let you know what items we still have if you happened to miss the sale!

Thanks to our many friends who came to help. visit and shop! Below, Carol, Margo, Valarie, Michele M, Michele J..(We don't look too bad for 48 hours with no sleep!) Carol came from Oklahoma, Margo from Tyler. Thanks to Theresa who came all the way from Springfield, Mo and we had several ladies drive up from Houston. Thank you! We hope you had a great time at the Red Shed Saturday Spectacular Sale. Next Sale is October 25th.