Marni Jameson: At Habitat for Humanity's ReStores, donations and purchases help others

You will find this hard to believe. I did. You can furnish your home, or a room in your home, beautifully for one-third of what it would cost buying the same furnishings retail -- and help provide housing for others who need it, and help the planet.

Get out!

That's what I said when I learned how Habitat for Humanity ReStores work. Folks like us donate home furnishings and building materials to ReStores. The stores then resell them to other folks at incredibly low prices. Profits go back into the community in the form of decent housing for low-income residents.

Although I have donated items -- extra lumber, drywall, trim, paint and other fallout from my remodeling projects -- to Habitat ReStores, I never considered shopping in one. Was I ever wrong.

Earlier this month, to celebrate World Habitat Day, three Orlando, Fla., decorators teamed up with Steve Thomas, former host of TV's "This Old House" and "Renovation Nation," to take on a design challenge. Using only furniture acquired from local ReStores, they created a showcase room.

I was invited to help moderate the event, but I was dubious about how the room would turn out. But, hey, it was all for a good cause, so I played along. Well, my friends, I ate sawdust. Any homeowner would be proud to have the room -- in this case, a man's den -- put together by the design team. It was classy, warm, harmonious -- and inexpensive!

How did they do it? They independently

"It was like being on a treasure hunt," said Luisa Padilla, one team member, "but you had to act fast. The good stuff goes."

They delivered the furniture to a ReStore in Casselberry, Fla., where they arranged it in a three-sided, 12-by-12-foot showcase room.

Besides adding celebrity pizazz, Thomas and some volunteers assembled a wood floor, put up moldings and did the heavy lifting.

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Marni Jameson: At Habitat for Humanity's ReStores, donations and purchases help others