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Village Chic will also retain its old location for a small boutique.
They’ve been renovating the space since July and plan to open their expanded retail store later this month. When it opens, the new store will include their new coffee shop, Village Cup.
The building, which dates back to 1858, has a long history in the village. McKee showed off historic photos from the building’s past, including a photo from a time when the site served as a butcher shop with hefty chunks of meat hanging from the store’s walls.
“We just knew it was a raw space we wanted to do something with,” McKee said.
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When it opens, the front of the store will provide a showroom for retail items, including furniture, handmade signs and other home decor. Most of the items have a farmhouse theme, they said, and nearly everything sold in the store was made in Ohio.
The new coffee shop will be in the back of the business, serving baked goods and muffins made from All in Flavor, a local home-based bakery. The space near the back will also serve as a studio where Village Chic will host a variety of classes teaching customers how to make their own home decor items.
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Those classes are now offered about once a month, McKee said, but will likely be offered more often once the store opens.
Ogden said it took months to rehab the storefront, and credited her husband, Tyler Ogden, with performing much of the work. The storefront retained much of the original architecture, including most of the building’s original wood floors from the 1800s.
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“We peeled back and peeled back until we got to something that shows the history of the building,” McKee said. “Everyone that’s been in has loved it.”
The new store will likely be open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., but McKee and Ogden are still working out which days it will be open.
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Ideally opening the new storefront will encourage other local businesses to renovate space in the village’s downtown, McKee said.
“There’s a love of hometown here that is really growing with people wanting to support local businesses,” McKee said.
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