Really? Now I'm a designer?

The problem with being a girl who likes projects is that I take on too many projects. But my latest all-encompassing obsession at least has a good cause attached to it.

Because I did a small photo shoot for an soon to be released book about designing with thrift-store furniture, I was asked to participate in Housing Works's Design on a Dime benefit May 7 through 9. Housing Works is a non-profit group in New York that provides services for low-income and homeless people living with HIV and AIDS. They operate a chain of thrift stores to make the money, and anyone who lives in New York knows the shops are excellent place to score great furniture and designer clothes for cheap.

Anyway, Stan Williams, who wrote the book, asked me to create one of the designer vignettes - small rooms outfitted with donated furniture that then gets sold to benefit Housing Works.

I immediately asked my friend and colleague Amy Hughes to partner with me on this, as I'm pretty handy and somewhat creative, but not nearly as full of design ideas as she is.

We immediately knew that as the This Old House team, we'd need to have a vignette with a reuse, repurpose, recycle theme - salvaged items, recovered furniture, reimagined pieces. We're not getting a lot of big-name stores to give us furniture; we're creating our own stuff out of the pieces we've gotten from friends and family. But that does mean a lot of hands-on work from us all.

Above is a chair my friend Allison gave up. Good lines, but it needs new upholstery. This chair has occupied my life for the past week. Stay tuned to see how it's coming along - and what else we're building leading up to the big benefit on May 7th!

And if you want to read more about the event, follow the blog that DOD just launched. Should be interesting!