A PITTSBURGH-AREA WOMAN HAS REDONE HER LIVING SPACE USING ITEMS SHE PICKED UP FROM LOCAL GARAGE SALES AND ANTIQUE MALLS.

Visiting Oil City area antique and second-hand shops has become an award-winning venture for one Pittsburgh area woman.

Each year, Gail Gil of the North Hills pays a visit to her sister, Norma Moser in Oil City. When the two get together, they shuffle off to local garage sales and antique malls, snapping up precious gems from local family’s pasts.

A chair and a canister set here. A leaded glass window and a quilt there.

In 1997, Gil decided to brighten up her dark, 1970s vintage home, making it lighter, less imposing and finally, a showplace for local trinkets she had accumulated from the Oil Country.

“I started my remodeling with the kitchen and it just kind of evolved into redoing the living space because it was very inconvenient,” Gil said.

By the time she had finished that portion of the redecorating, she was so impressed with the before and after pictures, she decided to enter a home makeover and redecorating contest sponsored by Better Homes and Gardens magazine.

And she won.

“I decided to enter the contest as I was finishing up the remodeling project,” Gil said. “To me, the change was so dramatic that I decided to enter.”

Gil walked away with first place in the public rooms/decorating division of the magazine’s 2002 Home Improvement Contest.

A photo layout of her home, including Oil City artifacts, is featured in this month’s edition of Better Homes and Gardens.

Gil said items from a smattering of area antique shops are shown in the magazine’s six-page spread.

A red and white quilt strewn across the end of a sofa came from Used to Be New in Oil City, while a bench, acting as a sofa table, came from On the Front Porch in Pleasantville. Two other items, a red canister set tucked into a kitchen corner, and a stellar, leaded glass window, both came from Warehouse Mall Antiques in Oil City.

According to Lana Sharp of the Warehouse Mall, she met Gil in the summer of 2001 when the woman stopped in and spied the window.

“We kind of had an clue she was aiming for something like this,” Sharp said of the contest.

The rectangular window, which now hangs in a cutout space between two rooms in Gil’s home, came from a house on Bissell Avenue, Oil City. Next to the window is a chair Gil picked up at an Oil City garage sale.

Sharp said the Warehouse Mall has visitors from all over the world can be seen in the store’s visitor registry. But this is the first time items purchased at the store were featured in a national publication.

Copyright 2002 The Derrick & NewsHerald. All rights reserved.