Dream Buying Experience for a Dream Home
excerpts from September 2006 INFURNITURE Magazine Article by Barbara Nelles

Although Mabel Broach loves fine furniture, she and husband Ted can’t seem to hold on to any for very long. Buyers of their last two homes took all the furniture, too. So in 2005, when the couple built their 10,300-square-foot dream home in Lewisville, N.C., just north of Winston-Salem, they were starting from scratch. But actually, it was all by design.

“We knew we were going to build, and we wanted to start with a clean slate,” says Mabel, who admits she loves to furniture shop and says French Country is her passion. The couple had been dreaming about building for at least four or five years when they finally moved eastward from their Boomer, N.C home. “We wanted to be nearer to the arts and good medical care, too.” Mabel adds.

Planning Stages Mabel and her good friend Jo Anne Kriegish, and interior decorator based in Nashville, Tenn., had a couple of starting points for their decorating plans – there was the rustic, corner fireplace Mabel once spotted in a shelter magazine, and the colors and textures of the fabric sample Jo Anne found in a New York design studio.

Three shelter magazines- Southern Accents, Veranda and English Home – were especially helpful to Mabel as sources of inspiration. So was the Internet: “I used it to research items in the magazines as well as to just see what was out there. But I didn’t buy anything online,” she says.

Jo Anne, who describes the home’s décor as French Country and European, was “inspired by my years of living in Italy and England. I could just picture how the mellow woods, the ironwork and the fabrics would all fit together in the house.”

The two friends worked closely together, albeit from a distance, planning the home’s décor and tweaking floor plans. The planning stage took weeks of e-mails, phone conversations and package shipments of sample’s, swatches and drawings. When the time was right, Jo Anne traveled to North Carolina for a week of furniture shopping. Later, when all the pieces were delivered, Jo Anne returned to help Mabel set up the house.

Time To Shop Brands matter to Mabel. She chose to shop at Furnitureland South for its enormous brand selection as well as the opportunity for one-stop shopping. The store had provided excellent service in the past, she says, and didn’t disappoint this time, either.

“We chose all the furniture for our house in one week and couldn’t have done it without the help of our sales design associate, LuAnne Box,” Mabel says. “LuAnne was absolutely great- energetic, knowledgeable- and she had no problem whatsoever working with my decorator. She worked with us for three days and saved us an additional week of shopping. All we had to do was mention a particular wood finish, for example, and she would take us right to it.”

When it came to choosing wood finishes, Jo Anne knew mellow tones were the way to go. “Mabel and Ted wanted to feel comfortable living all over the house,” she says. “The challenge was to create a feeling of intimacy in each room so that two people would feel at home in the space that might also accommodate 50. We accomplished that with mellow finishes, furniture groupings and material choices.”

Shopping Recommendations
Mabel Broach chose Furnitureland South in Jamestown, N.C., as her primary resource. She says, “I had shopped there before and had been treated well. They had all the brands I was interested in-Lorts, Marge Carson, Leathercraft, Bradington Young, Eddy West – and honestly, I am a big fan of the one stop shopping.”

Mabel was so happy with the service, brand selection and delivery at Furnitureland South, she wouldn’t change a thing about the entire experience, but she advises fellow shoppers to “bring along an extra set of feet – the place is huge!”

A talented decorator helps, too, she says. “I couldn’t have done the house without Jo Anne,” says Mabel of her good friend Jo Anne Kriegish Designs in Nashville, Tenn. “She is one of the most talented people out there for layering fabrics, and what an eye for color! She would look at something and say, ‘This is dead on’.”  - Barbara Nelles

-- this article was published in the September 2006 issue of INFURNITURE Magazine.