^ vintage spaces
Oh, and there are the frames, too, according to Chuck. “You could buy a whole mess of frames cheaply years ago, and now you have to buy them individually,” Chuck notes. One of her most treasured pieces, however, remains the wooden table in her dining room, featured in an earlier issue of VintageKC. “It’s still one of my favorite pieces,” Michelle beams. “It’s never going to be sold.” In addition to her full-time job and managing her store locations, Michelle somehow finds the time to help produce decorative spaces for individuals and organizations using her keen eye for design. Central to those projects, of course, is matching complementary color families. A mantle behind her living room features a variety of blue- and white-colored pieces. Both are dominant colors throughout her home.
Above: It seems that these days, just about everything can be used as a planter — in- cluding this artful bust. A cowboy bathtub in the Myers’ living room also acts as a vessel for multiple houseplants.
Michelle’s carefully color-coordinated rooms reflect a love of whites and blues, such as those featured in this mantle. When she isn’t collecting and selling vintage collectibles, Michelle has been known to help friends decorate their fireplace mantles for the holidays or special occasions.
exception to the rule. “If you go to auctions, auctioneers are pretty good at making sure there isn’t anything really valuable hidden away,” he says. Michelle nods and admits that theirs was a case of pure luck. “It doesn’t happen nearly as often as you would think.” That’s not to say, of course, that it never happens, Michelle adds. “I’m finding with this generation of kids, 30s and 40s, they may have something they don’t realize is worth something. And at garage sales, some people just don’t realize what they’ve got,” she says. Both Michelle and Chuck are heartened to find that the monetary worth of an item is of little concern to younger generations of collec- tors, who embrace the aesthetics, functionality and stories behind the treasures at Good Juju. “Antiques went out of style, and now people are appreciating them, because they’re real and functional,” Michelle says. Both Chuck and Michelle say that when they built their house more than 20 years ago, it was with their expansive collection of vintage
“I like those soft blues and teals,” Michelle says. “They blend so pretty. Anything in the blue and green family blends together so well.” Michelle admits she even learned a thing or two about pairing colors from her adult daughter, Amber. “She told me, ‘Mom, you can put reds along with blues and teals, too, and I was like, ‘Really?’” Michelle laughs. The living room mantle, meanwhile, features splashes of bright color in the form of old watering buckets for children, sitting next to a seemingly innocuous blue glass bottle. At first glance, the piece can be easy to pass over, but Michelle says she and Chuck learned the small bottle held a secret. “We found out it was worth several hundred dollars,” Michelle says. “It was in a box along with other blue glass bottles. We bought the whole box for only $5.” Though programs such as “Antiques Roadshow” highlight collectors who receive a delightful surprise when told an item they bring in for appraisal is actually worth money, Chuck says such news is usually the
18 VINTAGEKC SPRING 2017
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