An old table isn’t just an old table at Salvaged with Style—it can be anything, because the possibilities are endless. Salvaging old items and transforming them into renewed, beautiful objects and furniture has become a trend in the past few years and is something that Margaret Ryan, owner of Salvaged with Style in Hudson, is doing every day.
“We take old pieces we find—myself and vendors and the few co-signers I have—like stuff from old houses, and we kind of repurpose anything,” she says. “A lot of other vendors take old furniture and fix it, turn them into other pieces—just re-create them. We get old, solid pieces of furniture and make them new.”
Ryan originally worked out of her home with one of her neighbors, but saw the opportunity for a new space after another local shop was going out of business. “Our first spot where we actually got to sell our pieces was at Farmhouse Inspired, also in Hudson,” Ryan says. “She was moving and, by chance I asked what she was going to do with the space and … she wasn’t going to do anything with it. Things kind of snowballed from there, and I took over. Then we just moved up the street, because space was available.”
Since opening in April 2016, it’s clear that Salvaged with Style is meant to stick around.
The unique store fixes up and sells a variety of items, including table and chair sets, home décor items and coffee tables. “Accent pieces are huge. People like the industrial or the repurposed stuff, but sometimes they just want a piece of it,” Ryan says. “Our paint line is a huge thing, because people like trying to do some of the work themselves as well. So we provide the classes and the paint.”
Fixing up items to make them look brand-new is something Salvaged with Style takes pride in. “We just take the old tables that people are ready to get rid of and clean them up and get them in shape again. If they need any repairs, that happens. And then we paint it with our fusion paint and update it,” Ryan says. “That way it doesn’t look like you have your grandma’s table in your grandma’s style. You might have your grandma’s table, but now it looks really nice for a 2017 home.”
But along with fixing them up, Salvaged with Style also repurposes these items. Recently Ryan turned an old grill into a prep stand. She says that the most popular items are table sets and bars. “Whenever I can get a bar in here, it sells fairly fast,” Ryan says.
If you’re looking for something in particular that Ryan doesn’t sell, she also does custom work.
Ryan and her vendors have a variety of ways of finding the items for the store. “We all kind of do our different thing,” Ryan says. “We do flea markets, we do garage sales. I’ve Dumpster-dove more than once. So when you drive by a Dumpster, I could be in it. You just take things, and it’s kind of the vision you have. When you see something, you’re like, “Oh, that shouldn’t be this, it should be this.’”
The passion shines through in Ryan’s work. “It’s seeing the piece done. It’s seeing it transform. To me, it’s still a huge rush that people want to buy something I did. I do it, because I love doing it. And then when someone comes around and says, ‘Wow, I want that,’ it still shocks me. I love it.”
