PAGE 14 //THURSDAY. MARCH 15, 2012
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The shop is located in the heart of
downtown Burlington’s historic district.
CLAIRE ESPARROS | Photo Editor
Nest, a quaint shop in downtown Burlington, sells a variety of novelty items from vintage furniture to homemade candles to dresses and jewelry.
From ‘just stuff’ to ‘truly something,’ Nest
revitalizes old things into new treasures
Kassondra Cloos
Producer of The Swing
If she wouldn’t buy it, she won’t sell
it.
That’s Heather Mize’s No. 1 rule for
her downtown Burlington vintage store,
Nest. It may only be open Fridays and
Saturdays, but according to Mize, the 10
a.m. to 4 p.m. workday is the easy part.
The rest of the week is when she and
her sister, Hannah Linares, really get
to work, traveling to antique and thrift
shops around the state to scavenge for
old pieces of furniture — and sometimes
even junk — that they can beautify for
modern homes.
“It’s a full time job, for sure, but I
love everything in here,” Mize said. “It
makes it a lot easier when you just say, ‘I
don’t care if this thing is two bucks and I
could sell it for $300. If I don’t like it, it’s
not going in the shop.’”
Nest isn’t the typical antique store,
as it sells things both old and new,
refinished and repurposed. Some of the
top-selling items include abundantly
fragrant soaps and soy candles,
handmade in North Carolina. Each
different scent is nestled into its own
corner of the store, which is organized
with extreme care to give customers
ideas for decorating their own homes,
as well as to inspire them to make their
own creations.
There are many people who peruse
the store week after week without buying
anything, feeding off Nest’s carefully
decorated atmosphere, but Mize said it
doesn’t bother her. In fact, it flatters her.
“We never got into this for the
money,” she said. “That’s a nice bonus,
but to take something that was going
to be thrown away and turn it into
something that someone who makes a
six-figure income is going to put in their
house, it makes me excited. So it’s totally
OK when people come in here and take
the ideas and make things themselves."
Even though Mize has been antiquing,
thrifting and yard-sale-ing since she
was a small child, owning a vintage
store was never part of her plan. It was
definitely something she had thought
of and dreamed about, but in the end, it
sort of just happened, she said.
CLAIRE ESPARROS 1 P(K)to Editor
Nest sells many crafting items, such as burlap.
The real inspiration came shortly
after her daughter, now 11, was born
with cerebral palsy. While she was
pregnant, Mize had bought an old,
rough-looking cabinet at a yard sale for
$20, and giving it a new life pushed her
to make a profession out of her passion
for vintage.
“(My daughter) was a very unhappy
baby,” Mize said. “She would cry and
cry and I would look at that cabinet, and
that piece — it made me plan. It made
me dream about something, it gave me
something to look forward to, and that
was the big spark for me. I think ever
since then, it just never quite stopped.”
Mize fixed up the cabinet and sold
it, although she now regrets letting
go of something that became such a
meaningful memory. Three Alamance
County locations later, she’s found
herself in the midst of a growing
downtown area amid other antique and
thrift stores. Nest has countless loyal
customers, some who have followed
Mize since she sold her first pieces from
the display window of a friend’s beauty
parlor, and several of the other store
owners around the block urge their own
customers to stop by while they’re in
town.
"They're really good people, they’re
very talented," said Fran Billings, who
works at Mary Katherine’s, a gift shop
around the corner from Nest. "We just
love the store, it's beautiful. It's like a
dream when you walk in the front door."
Billings said she and Mary Smith, who
owns the store, have a great relationship
with Mize and Linares and are always
happy to tell people to stop by their
store when it's open. Billings said she
has bought many of Mize's creations
and loves the shabby-chic style that
permeates the store.
“We encourage people to shop at the
other stores all the time,” Mize said.
“There’s no competitiveness at all. It
thrills me that there are so many stores
down here, because people can park and
walk around, and the more stores down
here, the better."
Mize repaints many of the pieces
she finds for Nest, but occasionally
she’ll stumble upon a treasure with its
original paint, chipping, but beautiful to
her nonetheless.
“It’s a history, all the different layers
of paint that just kind of tell a story
about the age of the stuff is wonderful,"
she said. "(We’re) giving it a new purpose
— this was just garbage going into a
landfill, and now it will go into a modern,
beautiful home, and be loved again.”
Visit Nest at 346 Worth St. in
Burlington from 10 a.m. to 4
p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
MORE ONLINEia
See Nest, downtown
Burlington's chic re-store
and meet the owners.
http://pend.lu/nest
KASSONDRA CLOOS |
Producer of The Swing
CLAIRE ESPARROS [ Photo Edrtof
Fresh grains of lavender are sold for just
$1 per scoop, a token scent of the shop.
thfi Swing
Watch The Swing at
ElonPendulum.com/Th6
Head online to check out The Swing,
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This Thursday on The Swi
The Edge
Kate Riley talks about the importance of having a
student-produced magazine on campus.
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and gives you his thoughts on Hursey’s Bar-B-Q.
Get out of town
Julia Boyd finds out how often you venture past Alamance Crossing.
The 60-Second Newsdesk
Don’t have time to read the whole paper? Kassondra Cloos,
producer of The Swing, runs through this week’s paper in a
minute.