Weird is My Language: A Home Stager and Former Visual Director’s Advice for Creating a Curated, Eclectic, and Harmonious Home
Written by
Pam Dewey
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Michelle is a bold, fun decorator. In their record room, her boyfriend Toby suggested the gold paint for the fireplace, and she attached faux fur to her mantle.
Michelle Havens likes weird shit. Her nephew, Ron, gifted her a taxidermy raccoon paw with a fake diamond ring and painted nails. She has a bronze sculpture sitting on the grand piano, which she affectionately refers to as pig turtle. The sculpture has a pig head sprouting out of the turtle’s shell and was made by Minneapolis artist Allen Christian. She covered her fireplace mantle in faux fur.
“I like when someone calls, and says, ‘I’ve got a really weird project.’ Weird is my language,” says Michelle.
The great room is home to a grand piano, and an eclectic mix of art and furniture.
Michelle and her boyfriend, Toby Lee Marshall, own a staging business. Michelle was previously a visual director for furniture showrooms for over 20 years. She still does store windows, along with home staging.
The creative pair bought their “dream home” in Coon Rapids, MN in 2021. The home is light-filled and joyful, with bright colors, oddities galore, striking artwork, musical equipment, and eclectic furniture. It’s about 5,000 square feet with five bedrooms and two baths, a studio for Toby, and a five-car garage. It also has a separate garage, for their staging props. Plus, the home sits on an acre of land, so they can play music as loud as they want.
The loud music is important because Toby is a musician. Toby tours about six months out of the year with the band, the Koch Marshall Trio. He is an official Hammond artist and plays the Hammond organ and the keyboard.
“We’ve had live bands in the living room and massive parties in the backyard where we invited all the neighbors,” says Michelle.
“My design style is based on what pieces feel good to me and then I make them work. Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of what we have is thrifted, antique store, found objects,” says Michelle. “I love mixing some old and new. Crazy, weird art. That’s how you build a home, when something feels good, eventually it all comes together.”
How she designs her home is completely different than her spaces for clients.
“That’s why our house is so eclectic, because no one can tell us what we can do here. With clients, I have to listen to what they want and follow their brand. But our brand, our brand is fucked up. I have skulls. I have weird art. I have matchboxes with naked women. I would have to take everything down if we were selling. But this our dream house, and you should be yourself in your house.”
-Homeowner Michelle
Throughout Michelle and Toby’s house, there is an expertly curated collection of random weirdness to delight the eye. Here’s a few things in Michelle’s dressing room.
People who frequent thrift and antique stores are often tempted to snap up every amazing find.
“Back when I was younger, it was important to me hoard good stuff. I thought, I’ll never find it again because it’s vintage. It’s this designer, it’s that style,” says Michelle. “But now, everything has a place and it’s thoughtful. When I’m out at an estate sale, I’ve trained my eye to notice the perfect little nuance or special moment, which allows me to create a more curated space. My house is vignetted.”
A vignette is a carefully constructed visual display, typically a small cluster of items alike in color, shape, or another connecting element. Michelle points to a collection of green items on a gorgeous mid-century modern buffet in their dining room.
The mcm buffet with a colorblocked collection of green items.
“On the buffet, we’ve colorblocked that, but then brought in a crazy mix of items. But it works because there is height, scale, and weight. There is weight in color, not just in mass. There are some light moments and negative space. Clean lines and then chaos lines,” says Michelle. “It’s really a delicate balance.”
In their great room, a group of glass vases creates another vignette, atop a turquoise console table, and below a colorful, oversize drip painting. The vases match the primary colors in the painting, though are different heights, shapes, and opacities. The console is flanked by two yellow lamps, which match the painting and perfectly contrast the turquoise of the table.
Colorblocking a vignette doesn’t have to mean all one color; you just have to find that unifying element.
The vases pull colors from the splatter painting. The matching yellow lamps also pop beautifully off the turquoise console table.
The record room is where their styles and interests really converge. The room is dark, moody, and delightfully kitschy. Tigers, lions, and panthers peer out from all walls. Even the record-listening equipment is beautiful. But the focal point is the fireplace—hand-painted by Michelle and Toby—which looks like it’s made out of gold bricks and accented with the faux fur mantle.
The furniture holding the record player matches the black and gold color scheme.
“We were talking about painting the bricks, and I’m like, I don’t want to do black, I don’t want to white. And Toby says, ‘What about if we did it gold?’ I said, ‘Holy shit, I love that idea,’” says Michelle.
A closeup of the faux fur mantle. a true out-of-the-box design decision.
Behind the Shade MN 
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