Port Huron resident breathes new life into old furniture, Damaged Goods Refurbished

Photo Courtesy of Debbie Dare

Debbie Dare, owner of Damaged Goods Refurbished. Photo Courtesy of Debbie Dare

Debbie Dare, owner of Damaged Goods Refurbished.These days, Port Huron resident Debbie Dare can usually be found in overalls and paint-splattered, knee-high work boots digging into a project with her catchphrase, “Let’s get messy!”

Dare is the owner of Damaged Goods Refurbished and is well-known throughout the local antique community for her skills in restoring furniture, but she says the spark for her business and creative venture didn’t happen until about 2015.

After nearly two decades as a stay-at-home mom, Dare — who had a career in advertising and design prior to raising her family — wondered about returning to art and what that could look like. At the time, her daughter Charlie was exploring art colleges to pursue a degree in illustration while Dare’s then 14-year-old son Michael expressed an interest in attending college to study furniture design.

For fun, Dare’s son suggested they find some artistic projects to work on together so they began thrifting, frequenting garage sales and finding roadside furniture that had been tossed aside. She says they’ve enjoyed spending time together restoring the furniture, sharing skills with her son that she learned from her father who was quite handy and made a living as a racecar driver.

One of the first projects Dare and her son worked on was a box of teak wood pieces. After some research, they learned that it was a mid-century modern shelving unit from the 1960s — worth much more than the $15 they paid for it. Once it was restored, they negotiated with the owner of an antique store in St. Clair who agreed to display it with plans to sell it on consignment. The piece sold that week for over $900.

After that, Dare and her son became well acquainted with the local antique shop owners, offering them refurbished pieces on consignment.

"We would literally fill up the van with whatever we had, go place to place asking to put things on consignment, and not once were we ever told no,” Dare says. “We had furniture everywhere from Algonac to Port Huron.”

Eventually, she came across Trezure Hunt, a thrift and consignment store located on Gratiot Boulevard in Marysville. After several pieces of her work sold there, she accepted a job in the store as a painter and now works as the Director of Sales and Marketing with a shop in the back to work on refurbishing more pieces.

“I hadn’t worked in almost 20 years but found a job doing something I loved,” Dare says. “It’s funny, we set out to inspire our kids but sometimes they inspire us; my daughter by her spark and fearlessness and my son by his curiosity and sense of self.”

Dare says what she enjoys most about her work is that it doesn’t feel like work, describing her shop as more of a getaway and a place where she can get to know members of the community.

“My shop is my happy place,” she says. “It’s where I can just turn up the music and get lost in creativity!”

Michael continues to work in his mother's shop on random projects during his free time and is currently building guitars from cigar boxes and starting a vintage clothing store on Etsy. Charlie now has a career selling her creations in her online store Space Pumpkin Studios.

Dare says what she is enjoying about this season of life is focusing on herself and what she loves doing — making things beautiful. To follow along with more of Dare’s restoration projects, visit facebook.com/damagedgoodsrefurb.

Port Huron resident breathes new life into old furniture, Damaged Goods Refurbished

Read more articles by Rita MacDonald.

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