Home & Garden Show Exhibits Out-Of-The-Box Ideas

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- The 35th Pittsburgh Home and Garden show is now underway at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. The rooms are packed with appliances, plumbing products, and just about everything else you can fit into a house.

"We have nearly 1,800 exhibits," says executive director John DeSantis. "Ten acres inside the convention center. We are to the walls of the building."

He says it's a perfect place for one stop shopping.

"Everything from the house, all the way down to the heating and the insulation and the windows and the doors, every single thing that a homeowner could need is right here inside the convention center for ten days."

Kitchens alone fill two and a half acres.

The Christian Klay Winery in Chalk Hill has 19 varieties of red and white.

"I started with eight, and I try not to go over 20," says owner Sharon Klay. "I'll drop something to make something new."

It's one of eight wineries in the show. And, of course there are gardens. Planted by students at the Bidwell Center, they're called "Rooted in Pittsburgh."

For more information on the Home & Garden Show, visit their website here.

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"Right here, of course, we're with HJ Heinz, with ketchup and pickles," DeSantis says. "And throughout this area, whether it be the 18th century with Queen Aliquippa, the 19th century with George Westinghouse, or the 20th century, with Andy Warhol, you have gardens that interpret those characters."

This year, four designer showcases are built with local and sustainable materials.

Interior decorator Nancy Drew takes some of the mystery out of dining room furnishing.

"We tried to play off of things from using the cork floor, to this wonderful dining table, which is actually reclaimed barn wood," she points out.

In another new twist, women finally have the answer to the typical man cave. They're back yard escapes called "She Sheds."

Home Show executive director John DeSantis says these little huts are catching on.

"The family isn't there. She can just go do her thing. And if she wants to invite a girlfriend over and have a glass of wine while doing her thing, that's all the better. But the idea is it's an escape. In the same ways that the man cave is usually in the basement of the house, this is in the back yard. We have everything here from a book club, where a woman can go to read a magazine or read a good book, to a potting shed for someone who's into organic gardening."

It's home and garden, rolled into one.