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MURFREESBORO WEATHER

Remarkable Rutherford Woman: From HGTV role to running her own business




 

 

Creative Polly Blair came back, invented and sells designer paint

Why would a successful interior designer with her own HGTV show quit her job so she could move to Murfreesboro and run her own small business?

In the case of Polly Blair, there were two answers. First – because Middle Tennessee is home. “I was raised on a farm near Manchester,” she says.

Second- fewer hours! Blair’s a hard-working, creative woman, but double or even triple shifts were wearing her thin – and she’s found a gentler pace in the ‘Boro.

She had been working in Colorado for High Noon Entertainment, doing set design. “They were filming a show called ‘What You Get for the Money’ where a host goes to a local home and films a segment comparing it to others with similar prices around the country,” she explains.

Some lucky breaks

One of Blair’s houses was chosen – then she was, too.

At the last minute, one of the houses on the schedule wasn’t ready, so the producer asked Blair if she had a house she’d designed that they could use.

Later, when the same producer was setting up a new show, he asked her to do the set design. That show – “Carter Can,” starring Carter Osterhouse – gave Blair another unexpected opportunity.

The producer and Osterhouse were auditioning people to do the program with him and asked her to do a screen test.

120-hour weeks

“It was a great career move,” Blair says about getting the role on “Carter Can.” But after a year and a half of 120-hour weeks, the show moved to California and she decided not to go.

Instead, she moved to Florida where she both wrote and hosted a show of her own, still working very long hours. “I finally decided to sell out and come home,” she recalls.

She came to Murfreesboro instead of Manchester, and took a job with Hancock Fabrics. “I came here partly because I had a job. But also it was close enough to my family, but not too close,” she says with a chuckle.

But soon she was working too many hours again, she realized. The general manager offered her a promotion – with still more hours – when Hancock moved its store to the mall, but Blair decided to open her own store instead.

About that time, Blair discovered that her friend who runs a shop called The Knaughty Knitter was also moving her store from a cute little yellow house downtown to its current, more visible site near Walmart on Old Fort Parkway.

Blackberry House is born

Blair rented the house and – about two months later – opened the Blackberry House, a vintage home dcor shop in the little yellow house.

She says she chose the name because of her love for the blackberries that grew all around the house she grew up in. “When the blackberries were ripe, Mom would dress us in haz-mat clothes and tape our sleeves and pants legs shut, and send us out to pick,” she reminisces. “I loved blackberries.”

And after she moved away, she recalls, every time she came home to visit, her mom would make blackberry cobblers and jam for her.

“So my business had to be Blackberry House,” Blair concludes. But its focus on paint was still in its future – and its focus came about as an attempt to solve a pesky problem.

“We were selling a lot of painted furniture and repurposed items,” she explains. “I was having to go to Nashville to buy boutique paint. It was a long drive, and it was very expensive.”

Quest for the perfect paint

So when Blair started a quest for the perfect paint at the perfect price, she decided to invent her own line of paints.

She didn’t want a chalk paint, but she did want one that was water-based and would dry to a hard, smooth finish.

She mixed and experimented until she developed a paint that acted the way she wanted it to – then she hired a chemist to help her find the exact formula that would turn the compound into a non-toxic paint with a low level of volatile organic chemicals.

“I do everything to the nth degree,” Blair says, and her paint quest was no exception. Finally, she found her perfect paint, and closed her vintage home dcor business, but kept the name.

She contracted with an old, reputable company to manufacture the paint and opened her own shop to distribute it – and Blackberry House Paints was born.

When it’s wet, the paint is very easy to work with, to distress and to layer, Blair says, referring to special effects employed by furniture finishers. But after the paint dries, if it’s left to cure for about a week, it seals itself to a hard, smooth finish – which is what Blair’s customers want.

Colors of the farm

From developing the unique paint, it was only a short step from Blackberry House Interior Design to Blackberry House Paints, where Blair and her staff repackage the five-gallon buckets of newly manufactured paint into retail containers.

She also recruits and trains the dealers who sell her paint. “I want to know whoever sells it will be as much a cheerleader for it as I am,” she says. “We have a personal relationship.”

Plus, Blair’s an author – of very short works: the names of her paints. She developed the final formula in 2013 and started naming the colors … Fresh Eggs, Sunflowers, Orange Marmalade, Daddy’s Tractor, Farmer’s Tan, Grape Jelly, Summer Rain, Fresh Cut Grass, Cast Iron Skillet…

You guessed it – each of the 35 colors is named for something on the farm where she was raised.

Little Red Wagon, Home Cooked Bread, Sweet Potato Pie … plus, Blair’s about to release a new line of 12 colors called Cotton Field Colors.

But Blackberry House doesn’t sell retail to the public. Instead, Blair has 54 dealers all around Tennessee and the South. Locally, her paints are sold at Hylabrook Antique Mall on Chaffin Place. The dealer is Teresa Freeman, whose mini-shop is called Tess’s Treasures.

‘Take time to enjoy life’

Remarkable Rutherford woman Polly Blair finally is working only 40 hours a week, and finally she has time for a little romance in her life. She’s engaged to Randy Smotherman, who runs an antique store across North Front Street from her shop.

In keeping with the rest of her interesting and unusual lifestyle, Blair’s engagement ring is a mood ring they found in a souvenir shop on a trip to Ruby Falls. Whenever its chemicals wear out, he takes her back to buy another one.

“He’s teaching me to take time to enjoy life,” Blair says. “I’m learning to leave the stress behind.”

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