Reuse, recycle—ReStore!

JEFFERSONVILLE, NY — Jeffersonville’s ReStore is many things to many people, according to its owner, Lauren Seikaly. 

To a visitor in downtown Jeffersonville, it’s a place to browse furniture and to spend time in, part of an economic revival Seikaly and her husband are trying to spark in the village. To Catskills residents looking to furnish their homes, it’s a place where they can find vintage pieces with a local connection. To those who’ve found themselves with more furniture than they know what to do with, or the task of disposing with a deceased relative’s belongings, it’s a landfill alternative, taking pieces that would otherwise end up in the trash and finding them new, loving homes. 

And for Seikaly?

“This is my creative outlet,” she says—it gives her a chance to take pieces of local history and make them into something new.

Steamer trunks took off in the late 1800s as a means of conveying personal possessions on trips via railroad or steam boat, until their replacement with the lighter suitcase in the early 20th century, according to theantiquesalmanac.com. "Think about traveling, and how we have these roller bags, now, at the airport," said Seikaly, gesturing at a steamer trunk on the ReStore floor. "Can you imagine traveling like this?"

Vintage pieces of furniture can help connect the present to specific periods of history past, such as with vintage vanities. The rise of the vanity dates back to the 1930s, says Seikaly. "As soon as people were going to the movies, and Hollywood became a thing, like in the 30s, they made these things, these vanities, as a way of people being able to experience their own Hollywood."

This chair was Seikaly's favorite piece on the ReStore floor at the time of this interview. The wife of the family she got it from considered it the ugliest chair she'd ever seen in her life, said Seikaly. "I have been trying to design a family room in my house around this chair, and I've kind of been waiting for someone else to walk in and love it as much as me, [but] it's been here since the summer, and no one gets it."

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From basement to buyer

The concept of ReStore started with a friend of Seikaly’s who does clean outs of peoples houses. 

A lot of the furniture from those clean-outs would just end up in the trash, regardless of what condition it was in. That didn’t sit well with Seikaly.

“I’m an environmentalist,” says Seikaly. “I was crying my eyes out when he told me that he had this dumpster full of [furniture].”

With ReStore, Seikaly diverts pieces from those clean-outs from their otherwise inevitable path to the landfill. What happens next depends on what shape they’re in. If a piece is in reasonably good condition, Seikaly and her team can do whatever restoration work is necessary and get it on the showroom floor. If a piece is worse-for-wear, it may still have a future with ReStore, just perhaps not in its original form. 

“I can’t say no to anything, and part of it is that I see the potential in it,” says Seikaly. 

A chair that’s thoroughly uninteresting in its original form might be a gorgeous piece with some new upholstery. An upright piano might be too far gone to ever have its ivories tickles again—but strip out its guts, and it could be a flowerbox on a street corner. 

Even if a piece is entirely unsalvageable, it can still be stripped for parts, with vintage lamp-pulls and marble bases ending up as the raw materials for the restoration of other pieces. 

It’s fun thinking of ways to reuse the pieces that come in to the store, says Seikaly; it’s “fun to just let your brain go and think about those things.”

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More than just a chair

Keeping vintage pieces in circulation has environmental benefits. The more existing tables, chairs and bedframes stay in use, the fewer new pieces will need to be created to take their places, and the fewer objects will wind up taking up space in landfills. 

“If you reduce the market for [new goods], then they don’t have to build all these things in China and ship them over here,” says Seikaly. “There’s actually a market for the things that already exist.”

It’s also a boon for the people who end up with these objects in their homes. 

A lot of young couples coming up from the city wind up at ReStore seeking furniture for their upstate second homes, says Seikaly. “Instead of going on Pottery Barn and buying something super boring, they can come in here and buy something that’s really interesting and actually has some history to it and is actually from the area.”

The history and the location of the Catskills means the area has a plethora of interesting pieces waiting in people’s homes. 

Because of the region’s proximity to New York City, a lot of urbanite collectors and world travelers retire up to the Catskills, bringing their collections and their furniture with them, says Seikaly. The region has a lot of really old furniture of its own, as well, with houses that have kept their original furnishings for decades. 

Seikaly remembers one house in particular where a woman passed away, and her daughter was left to clear out the home. When Seikaly got to the house, called there by her friends who was assisting with the cleanout, she found a whole home’s worth of vintage 1950s furnishings, headed for the dump.

“A lot of people don’t realize what they have,” says Seikaly. It’s a service that ReStore provides to step in and to help people identify what their furnishings might be worth.