She started selling furniture as part of the Rocket Century collective, and then opened Confluence Modern with upholsterer Jeff Swift. Today, you can see her work on Instagram, @secondhandhome314.

Just like fast fashion, furniture is fast: stylishly designed dressers, bookcases, and tables, a year or less before the knobs fall off, the finishes peel off, and the drawer tracks are skewed. This beautiful but cheap combination of the 21st century makes us think that the only destination for dilapidated furniture is the bulk garbage collector.

This mentality has brought a variety of wonderful discoveries to Hannah Headrick-including a pair of Maya Lin's Knoll concrete stools found on the side of the road. "They were chopped up, but I was able to clean them and fill in chips," she recalled. "Then I drew them because they were too rough." Now they are on her backyard deck, and there is a terracotta Maya Lin indoor/outdoor table for Knoll (found on Facebook Marketplace), a pair of aluminum Chairs from the machine age, and standalone wood-burning fireplaces found in antiques are shopping in Ozark.

Fifteen years ago, the huge backyard attracted Headrick and her husband Mike Headrick to their bungalow in South City. They took the wrong turn and saw a sign for sale. Headrick said they like the maintenance-free Perma Stone exterior wall, clay tile roof and numerous windows. "We can get good light in almost every room," she said. But what makes this house really stand out is its internal structure. It is the product of Headrick's keen design vision and furniture repair skills. She was rescued from the side of the road, spied behind Goodwill, or found on the Internet.

"I started with frugality," she said. "Slowly, over time, you honed your style. I really like the eternity of modern works. I prefer a masculine style with very clean lines. Medieval works have direct and clean lines. Appearance. So I upgraded my collection and learned while looking for things. One of my favorite things to do is to research works. It opens up the situation: you learn about different designers, and then when you go out looking for your Your eyes will notice this. I have been doing this for so long and I finally got some bucket lists that I thought I would never have."

Since the bungalow is 1,500 square feet, Hannah eventually needs to make room, partly to make room for those "bucket list" sections. She started selling furniture as part of the Rocket Century collective, and then opened Confluence Modern with upholsterer Jeff Swift. The pandemic forced them to close last year, but before that, Confluence helped Headrick get some of her most beloved works, including two Knoll Tulip Tables by Saarinen.

"I got the dining table and two captain chairs from an old customer in the store," she said. "This table does not have a countertop, so I hired a carpenter I knew in the store and made one from recycled mahogany." The restoration process of the living room coffee table was painful: the matching mahogany countertop was adjusted to replace the original white. After the laminate was laminated, the base was sent for painting, and it was broken when I came back to take it. "So I started looking for a replacement," she said. "I finally found another patchwork table on Etsy and was able to put the new top on it. I was really happy with the result, but it took at least six months-and it was no longer The original table!"

A pair of turquoise Saarinen uterine chairs, also on her wish list, arrived in a more unusual way. While Headrick was browsing Facebook, an old high school friend posted a photo she took in an abandoned building. Headrick immediately recognized the Womb chair in the shot, even under a layer of soot and rust, and emailed her friend asking about them. She originally wanted to re-decorate them, but decided to try steam cleaning the fabric first-the result surprised her. All she needed to do at that time was to replace the foam in the cushion and remove the rust on her legs. "I tend to choose neutral colors because of their persistence-I don't want to get bored with the bright colors I choose," she said, "but since that's the case, I like these colors. I like the way they look."

To view Headrick's project progress in real time, please visit her INSTAGRAM page, @SECONDHANDHOME314.

Another special piece of furniture in her living room — special for this house, that is, because it is new — is a leather sofa purchased from Overstock.com. Headrick said that old-fashioned sofas can be uncomfortable, which is not suitable for children or pets. "It is semi-aniline leather, so it will slowly age and absorb some oil, and it will get better over time," she said. "The body is a cushion wrapped in down, so it is very soft, but it still maintains its shape well."

There are more bright turquoise splashes in the kitchen, and open shelves display beautiful vintage dishes from the Headricks collection, including Dansk Kobenstyle cookware. In a corner under a sunny window, Headrick re-decorated two aluminum frame chairs (given by her parents’ neighbor who was also obsessed with vintage furniture) with the tan leather she found on eBay and created one Comfortable corner. "They are smaller than reclining chairs but larger than dining chairs, so when I cook there, people sit down and have a drink very comfortable," she said.

Like many old furniture enthusiasts, Headrick is an expert in cleaning, refurbishing, rust removal and repair, but sometimes the biggest problem with old furniture is aesthetics. This is the case with the two Kroehler lounge chairs, which were originally decorated with brown and orange velvet cloth with a butterfly pattern to add luster to the solarium. Hydrake first tried to sell chairs in the store, “but the fabric is so bad that people can’t see it,” she said. "So I decided to keep them and let them redo." Now, they are the perfect touch for a room full of sunlight and indoor plants, which are located on top of the Gillingham sideboard from Goodwill Outlet. "They are discounting. Any piece of furniture is $1," she said. "When I took it home and started cleaning it, I found 76 cents in one of the drawers, so I got it for 24 cents!" She smiled.

Headrick places plants throughout the house to warm and soften the atmosphere; she uses sheepskin in the same way. She said: "Almost all of these are found on Facebook Marketplace." "I like the texture they bring to the room. It makes things easy. But I also have two boys and pets, so I started covering things with sheepskin To protect the furniture and make things more comfortable. If something splashes on them, they can be washed."

Sheepskin also creates continuity between rooms. "A lot of people choose an open plan," Headrick said. "We kept all the walls."

The only exception: the dining room and the living room, they flow into each other. The restaurant has two great roadside decorations: a mahogany Dunbar sideboard, which Headrick saw when picking up her son from school one day, and two broken Artemide Nesso lights. After repairing them, she made the repair invisible by painting the black pair black. Floating above the dining table is the Marcel Wanders Zeppelin chandelier, another important score for Headrick's luck. "I like that design. I have seen it in magazines and on the Internet, and never thought I would own it," she said. Then a local restaurant owner bought a pair at the auction and sold her the spare for a few cents. "It's not perfect anyway, but it's so cool," she said, "when you open it, it emits such a warm light."

Headrick's latest project, an unusual rocking chair, will soon be installed in the restaurant. "The style is Scandi, but it was made in Ecuador," she said. "Its design allows people to assemble it together without any real tools-it is held together with wooden rods and dowels."   

"I like furniture," she said. "This is something I have an emotional connection with-I will see a piece of furniture, a lamp, a chair, these things actually make my heart beat faster or make me breathless. On Instagram , You will see a lot of beautiful spaces, but every once in a while you will see something that makes you stop. It is different and gives you a real feeling. I think this is how I love decoration and The reason for the furniture-I really have an emotional attachment to it."

Russell was the cultural editor of St. Louis Magazine from 2005 to 2018.

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