Shawn Hall has opened her own shop in Kenwood filled with the eclectic and repurposed things she loves to use in her design work.

Shawn Hall was upcycling shabby long before it was chic. It was how her mother got by as a single mom in St. Louis and then Southern California: polishing up homes with a little paint and inexpensive fixes and foraged finds in exchange for a break in rent.

They used to set out on hunting expeditions through Hollywood on pick-up days and grab furniture that had been set out on the street.

“I used to laugh that my mom could paint an entire set of kitchen cabinets with what was left on the lids of paint cans,” she said.

Hall learned all the tricks as a willing apprentice, and parlayed the skill — along with her own creative eye for combining old and new — into a successful interior design business specializing in restaurants and winery tasting rooms.

For years, she was the go-to designer for a string of popular watering holes from Willi’s Seafood in Healdsburg to Hopmonk Tavern in Sebastopol. She has left her distinctive mark on 42 restaurants and numerous winery tasting rooms with an ethos of sustainability.

Hall loves to re-imagine and reinvent things, including her own life. After 11 years running her own restaurant, The Gypsy Cafe, in Sebastopol, she is remaking herself once again, and as usual, weaving a little bit of old with a little bit of new.

“I feel like I’m Jane Fonda in my last chapter,” she said, “and I’m creating one last run. I thought I was semiretired but that doesn’t work for me. I have to work. I have to do a million projects at once or I’m lost.”

She’s back doing interior design and has been tapped to do new tasting rooms for Truett Hurst and VML wineries for a second time.

She’s also now trying her hand at retail. Her new shop in Kenwood called Mayacamas Home: Modern Vintage Goods offers affordable items that reflect her casual, eclectic, often quirky style, from rugs and pottery to table linens, pillows, side chairs and small tables, some that she makes herself from disparate salvage pieced together in new ways. Little things to uplift the look of a home at low cost and will fit in your car.

Her vision extends to the entire property. She’s working with the new owner Rami Batarseh, (who also revitalized Fulton Crossing into a lively gallery space,) to improve and beautify the entire Highway 12 parcel, which was a little down on its heels but still has a rustic patina that works well with Hall’s salvage aesthetic.

She’s stirring up energy with activities and events she hopes will make it a community hub with a series of events, from antique fairs and art shows to concerts and workshops.

She sells bouquets at the shop fresh picked from her own garden and plans to have tomatoes and other summer produce as the season progresses because she loves tomatoes, a reminder of her early childhood days eating the real farm-to-table food at her grandfather’s farm in the Ozarks.

Aside from the venerable Swede’s Feeds across the highway and a small market, Kenwood is a retail desert. Hall wants to fix that.

Her shop sits between another gift shop, run by Swede’s co-owner Aspen Mayers, and The Zapata Grill, a Mexican food truck and outdoor eatery with an inviting sit down space.

Everything in the shop reflects her own eclectic taste which is very much evident in her own home, a contemporary rancher personalized with intriguing objects from travels, vintage signs, antique salvage and lots of art, including her own travel photos of architecture and vignettes of scenes and “stuff” from the flea markets and brocantes she haunts.

Her photographer partner prints them on watercolor paper or handmade paper and mounts them in frames they make themselves. They look like actual paintings.

“I’m glad to be out of actually making food but I’m still supporting entertaining,” she said from her expansive Oakmont garden, which might be straight out of Victoria Magazine with scads of blooming roses and flower covered arbors. “My store is full of housewares to make the home nice enough to come over and share food with friends and family,” Hall said.

With the price of eating out skyrocketing, Hall predicts a resurgence in home entertaining and nesting, even among the millennials who are now settling into their 30s and 40s and want nice serving plates and tableware, even if it’s just for takeout.

A committed environmentalist since she was an Environmental Studies major at UC Santa Cruz in the 1970s, she relies on bamboo and other sustainable resources. That gels with her commitment to reusing and upcycling with nontoxic finishes.

“If it’s not too in your face I just have things that were in the past somewhere and it makes people feel at home. I’ve always had luck with that,“ said Hall, who switched from landscape design to interior design after she was recruited to re-imagine the old Phoenix Hotel in San Francisco in the 1980s.

Summoning the skills she learned from her mother, who painted trompe l’oil rugs on the floor and turned a hollow core door into a cool couch with legs and cushions, Hall made The Phoenix rise again into a hip urban oasis frequented by stars such as, Keanu Reeves and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Details like painting the bottom of the pool with squiggly question marks got people talking and Hall’s interior design career took off.

Another hallmark of her design is curating space for comfort.

Furniture to Hall, is not just for looks but to sit in and use; objects and art are evocative but not provocative. Lighting is warm and soft. Don’t get her started about the exposed bulbs and balls that cast harsh unfiltered light and are so trendy in fixtures today.

Her formula continues to work decades later because it’s practical, affordable and preserves memories.

Her own home is hidden on a flag lot behind another house and adjoins a horse farm, so it has a quiet country feel. The huge garden planted by the original occupant and now tended by Hall, boasts three different areas to dine or share drinks.

“My friends laugh. They say you could have one of those progressive parties in your own house,” she said.

Hall’s own home is filled with her favorite things, like the worn shutters with original chipped paint and iron window grills from Tunisia she sources through a Tunisian friend. Her television sits over a wine rack made of shutters. A tower of worn suitcases and trunks – an homage to her love of travel — occupies a prominent corner of her living room.

She loves dress forms, a reminder of her mother who also sewed. She’s turned one into a whimsical sculpture with a photo she took in Europe of a phrenological head printed on it. A small cabinet is filled with colorful pottery: Moroccan tagine cooking pots, Mexican Talavera pottery, china from a grandmother and stacks of vintage Fiestaware.

She can make any home her happy place by filling it with things that make her happy or spark happy memories, something she strives to do for clients, as well.

“I’ve basically become my mother and I’m proud to say,” she declared, “that it’s a fun life.”

Read the article on the Press Democrat website

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at 707-521-5204 or meg.mcconahey@pressdemocrat.com

Who knew my new home goods store in Kenwood would bring so much joy.  Having my new gathering space for friends and locals to drop by and chat has been so fun.  We are doing a Mayacamas Backyard Makers Market the middle of each month as well and I have been selling my rose bouquets from my garden so its keeping me busy and happy.  And watch for tickets to go on sale for a special Backyard Concert July 22nd when my buddy Keith Greeninger comes to town.