Vintage Touch Making
Furniture Into Art
Story by Graham Hadley
Photos by Mike Callahan
and Jamie Parker
Where you see junk, they see a table, a chair, a bench, a lamp, even a work of art.
Jamie Parker and her fiancé, Travis Reed, run Vintage Touch in Pell City’s historic downtown area — a store that carries home furnishings and décor items that are truly unique.
And by “unique,” they really do mean absolutely one-of-a-kind.
“My fiancé and I create repurposed furniture. We just sold a sofa or entry table that was made out of an old porch column and part of a gate. We built around that, added some wood, made it look like old barn wood — look old and new at the same time,” Jamie said.
“We are a store of all things. You never know what you are going to find in here.”
Vintage Touch opened Dec. 21, 2014, in the building that once housed Pell City Grocery “years and years” ago.
And since then, business has been growing steadily as more people are rediscovering Pell City’s historic downtown district as a walking and shopping area.
The couple had run booths in other places around Birmingham, but picked Pell City for their first store.
“We decided to open here because we live here, and I love this downtown area,” Jamie said.
“We have truly been blessed. We were a little worried, coming from places like Vestavia to a little town, but sales have been increasing every month. Pell City has really showed us a lot of love. People are so friendly.
“Our customers want to see downtown make it; they want to see downtown rise back up, and I want to see that, too.”
That walking-and-shopping atmosphere is proving to be almost a perfect combination for the kind of business Vintage Touch does. Much of what is sold in the store is made in the store, and customers can see the process of turning junk into treasures firsthand.
“They see that we are in here doing the work. When people see you putting your time into something, it makes it that much more special to them,” she said.
It’s a process Jamie and Travis love — all of it — from “picking” items from old barns and yards, combing flea markets and similar venues, even finding discarded furniture set by the street, to rebuilding it into something new.
Their designs cover the spread. They have an old tractor steering wheel made into a lamp hanging in the window and have made a bench they created from an old truck tailgate that was sold for more than they paid for the truck. It now sits in an office entrance at a firm in Birmingham.
“We can look at something that someone else thinks is trash and turn it into something that is so beautiful, so unique, that people just fall in love with it,” Jamie said.
“It’s something my fiancé and I can do together, he has a full time job, and this is a lot of hard work, but it is fun.”
Travis’ full-time job is as a farrier — a horseshoer — and a blacksmith (“He’s really good at it,” Jamie interjected), and along the way, working on farms, he has found all sorts of treasures for the shop, including old watering troughs that get repurposed into things like benches to chairs.
“Those are some of our most popular items. We have people waiting for furniture made from old watering troughs,” Jamie said.
The prices in the shop are as varied as their designs — you can always find something you can afford.
“We strive to be extremely affordable,” Jamie said. “We even sell to other stores to resell for more, and we all make money. We want people to be able to walk in here and see what we have that they want and be able to afford something,” Jamie said.
In addition to selling their artistic furniture, the store sells some accessories Jamie and Travis have found along the way, vintage items like lunch boxes and advertising signs and promotional materials.
The couple will also take on special-order jobs, but say things turn out the best when they still have some room to be creative with their designs.
Vintage Touch does sell merchandise for a few select vendors, but what they sell has to follow the business rules of being unique and special, just like the store.
Follow Vintage Touch on Facebook.
