Alise O'Brien
Just as there is fast fashion, there is fast furniture: sleekly designed dressers, bookcases, and tables that clock a year or less before the knobs fall off, the veneer peels, and the drawer tracks go askew. That 21st-century combo of nifty but cheap tricks us into thinking that the only destination for worn-out furniture is the bulk trash pickup.
That mindset scores Hannah Headrick all kinds of brilliant finds—including a pair of Maya Lin-designed Knoll concrete stools spotted on the side of the road. “They were chipped, but I was able to clean them and fill in the chips,” she recalls. “Then I painted them, because they were so rough.” Now they’re on her backyard deck, along with a terra cotta-colored Maya Lin indoor/outdoor table for Knoll (found on Facebook Marketplace), a pair of aluminum Machine Age chairs, and a freestanding wood-burning fireplace discovered in an antiques shop in the Ozarks.
The huge backyard is what attracted Headrick and her husband, Mike Headrick, to their South City bungalow 15 years ago when they made a wrong turn and saw a For-Sale sign. Headrick says they love the no-maintenance Perma Stone façade, the clay tile roof, and the multitude of windows. “We get great light in pretty much every room,” she says. But what makes this house a true knockout is its interior, the product of Headrick’s keen eye for design and her skills in restoring furniture she’s rescued from curbs, spied in the back of a Goodwill, or found online.
Alise O'Brien
“I started with thrifting,” she says. “Slowly, over time, you hone your style. I really like the timelessness of modern pieces, and I lean more toward a masculine style, with really clean lines. Midcentury pieces have that straightforward, clean look to them. So I upgraded my collection and learned as I was finding things. One of my favorite things to do is research pieces. It opens things up: You learn about different designers, and then when you’re out looking, your eye will pick up on that. I’ve been doing this so long, I have finally gotten some of the bucket list pieces I thought I would never have.”
Because the bungalow is 1,500 square feet, Hannah eventually needed to clear out some space, partly to make room for those “bucket list” pieces. She began selling furniture as part of the Rocket Century collective, then opened Confluence Modern with upholsterer Jeff Swift. The pandemic forced them to shutter last year, but before it did, Confluence helped Headrick secure some of her most beloved pieces, including two Knoll Tulip Tables by Saarinen.
Alise O'Brien
“The dining room table, and the two captain’s chairs, I got from an old customer at the shop,” she says. “The table didn’t have a top, so I hired a woodworker I knew through the shop to make one from reclaimed mahogany.” The process of restoring the coffee table for the living room was more painful: After commissioning a matching mahogany top to replace the original white laminate, she sent the base to be powder coated, but when she returned to pick it up, it had been ruined. “So I started looking to replace it,” she says. “I ended up finding another pieced-together table on Etsy, and was able to have the new top put on it. I’m really happy with how it turned out, but it took at least six months—and it’s no longer the original table at all!”
A pair of turquoise Saarinen Womb Chairs, also on her wish list, arrived in a more unusual way. Headrick was scrolling through Facebook when an old high school friend posted photographs she’d shot inside an abandoned building. Headrick immediately recognized the Womb chairs in the shots, even under a coat of soot and rust, and emailed her friend to ask about them. She originally thought to reupholster them, but decided to try steam-cleaning the fabric first—and it worked, much to her surprise. All she needed to do at that point was replace the foam in the cushion and clean the rust off the legs. “I tend to go with neutrals, because of the longevity—I don’t want to get tired of a bright color I chose,” she says, “but since that’s what it is, I love the color. I love what they are.”
TO SEE HEADRICK’S PROJECTS UNFOLDING IN REAL TIME, VISIT HER INSTAGRAM PAGE, @SECONDHANDHOME314.
The other exceptional piece of furniture in her living room—exceptional for this house, that is, because it’s new—is the leather sofa, purchased from Overstock.com. Vintage sofas, Headrick says, can be uncomfortable, which doesn’t work with kids or pets. “It’s semi-aniline leather, so it’s slowly been aging and taking on some oils and getting better with time,” she says. “The body is down-wrapped cushions, so it has a softness, but it still holds its shape really well.”
There are more bright splashes of turquoise in the kitchen, where open shelving shows off the Headricks’ collection of pretty vintage dishes, including Dansk Kobenstyle cookware. In a corner under a sunny window, Headrick has created a cozy nook with two aluminum-frame chairs (gifted by her parents’ neighbor, who’s also crazy for vintage furniture) reupholstered in sepia leather she found on eBay. “They’re smaller than a lounge chair, but larger than a dining chair, so it’s comfortable for people to sit and have a drink while I’m in there cooking,” she says.
Alise O'Brien
Like so many lovers of vintage furniture, Headrick’s a pro at cleaning, refinishing, de-rusting, and repairing, but sometimes the biggest problem with an older piece of furniture is aesthetic. That was the case with the two Kroehler lounge chairs, originally upholstered in an eye-blistering brown-and-orange velour patterned with butterflies, that grace the sunroom. Headrick first tried selling the chairs at the shop, “but the fabric was so awful, people were not able to see past it,” she says. “So I decided to keep them, and had them redone.” Now, they’re the perfect touch in a room made cheerful with sunshine and houseplants, which sit atop a Gillingham sideboard sourced from Goodwill Outlet. “They were having a sale where any piece of furniture was $1,” she says. “When I got it home and started cleaning it up, I found 76 cents inside one of the drawers, so I got it for 24 cents!” she laughs.
Headrick places plants throughout the house to warm and soften the ambiance; she uses sheepskins in the same way. “Almost all of them have been thrifted or found on Facebook Marketplace,” she says. “I like the texture they bring to the room. It lightens things up. But I also have two boys, and pets, so I started covering things with sheepskin to protect the furniture and to make things more comfortable. If something gets spilled on them, they’re washable.”
Alise O'Brien
The sheepskins also create continuity from room to room. “A lot of people go with an open-plan,” Headrick says. “We kept all the walls.”
The only exceptions: the dining and living rooms, which flow into each other. The dining room features two great curbside scores: a mahogany Dunbar sideboard, which Headrick saw while picking her son from school one day, and two Artemide Nesso lamps, which were cracked. After repairing them, she rendered the fixes invisible by painting the pair black. Floating above the dining room table is a Marcel Wanders Zeppelin chandelier, another major score that Headrick lucked into. “I’ve loved that design. I’d seen it in magazines and online, and never thought I’d own one,” she says. Then a local restaurateur purchased a pair at auction, selling her the spare for pennies on the dollar. “It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s such a cool piece,” she says, “and when you turn it on, it has such a warm glow.”
Headrick’s latest project, an unusual rocking chair, will soon be installed in the dining room as well. “The style is Scandi, but it’s made in Ecuador,” she says. “It was designed so people could put it together without any real tools—it’s held together with wooden rods and pegs.”
“I love furniture,” she says. “It’s something I have an emotional connection to—I’ll see a piece of furniture, a lamp, a chair, something that will actually make my heart pound, or make me gasp. On Instagram, you see so many pretty spaces, but every once in a while you actually see something that makes you stop. It’s different and gives you a real feeling. I think that’s why I love decorating and furniture so much—I really do have an emotional attachment to it.”
