For a home store to be great (not just good), it has to have creative displays and inventive vignettes everywhere you look. Terra Cottage gets an A+ in this department. It’s full of cottage cuteness--embroidered bedding, coral-print pillows, and lamps with the shades painted on the inside. But what keeps us coming back is the store owner’s sharp eye for crazy-cool antiques and industrial pieces that have been reinvented.
On a recent visit, we fell in love with metal pulleys (originally from an old factory) that had been repurposed into side tables and a perforated steel drum that was granted a second life as a coffee table. “My favorite items are the ones with a sense of history,” says owner Sandie Hurlburt. “I like things that get used in new, quirky ways so they don’t just end up in a landfill.” One of her latest scores: A manhole mold she recently found in Macon, Georgia, that’s now being used as a tabletop. How many times have you seen something like that? Not nearly enough.
