The Painted Plank opens new store in Perry Village to offer customers more variety – News-Herald

For the past two years, Lauren Kowalewski has used Facebook to display numerous examples of furniture and cabinets that she refinished, and wooden signs she created, as owner of a home-based business called The Painted Plank.

Recently, though, Kowalewski transformed The Painted Plank into a store, where customers can walk in and view her products, as well the creations of many other local crafters.

The new store opened Dec. 4 at 3759 Center Road, Unit E, in Perry Village. Kowalewski said she prefers this traditional business location, versus operating it in the Perry Township home she shares with her husband and six children.

“I feel like it gives a bigger variety to our customers,” she said.

The Painted Plank will continue to perform its core services: refinishing furniture, kitchen cabinets and the interior of recreational vehicles; and producing custom wood signs. While some of these jobs require Kowalewski to travel to a customer’s site, she also has set up space in the new store to work on projects.

Initially, when she was considering moving The Painted Plank outside of her home, she had thought of securing space for a basic workshop. But she changed her mind after conversations she had with friends who launched creative endeavors of their own.

“They were starting businesses out of their homes, making different craft items and products and were just selling them on Facebook and having people stop by their house,” she said.

Based on that trend, Kowalewski came up with an idea to enhance The Painted Plank’s future non-residential location.

“So we thought if we were going to have a workshop space, we could do a retail spot and offer our location to local home-based businesses, to be able to sell their products, too,” she said.

Kowalewski turned that idea into a reality at the new Painted Plank shop. The store is filled with local crafters’ items, including jewelry, soaps and scrubs, paintings, holiday wreaths and decorated T-shirts.

It offers a consignment program in which crafters can display their items, which are promoted through the store’s Facebook page. Crafters price their own inventory and receive 70 percent of sales revenue from their items at the end of each month.

“So (the crafters) have been really excited about having a place to go,” Kowalewski said. “There’s some other local stores that do something similar, but a lot of them are seasonal and are closed during the winter. We’re going to be a year-round business.”

The Painted Plank store also hosts workshops, instructed by Kowalewski and other crafters and artists, which offer customers the opportunity to enhance their own creative talents.

She conducts workshops on wood-sign painting, and how to use the store’s line of Rethunk Junk Resin Paint to refinish furniture. Other workshops, which began at the store in mid-November, prior to the Dec. 4 grand opening, have included cake and cookie decorating, making stained glass Christmas trees and ceramic painting.

“In the next couple months, we’re planning to expand and offer more workshops,” she said.

Registration for all workshops can be completed on The Painted Plank’s website at paintedplankoh.com.

The seating section in which customers participate in programs at the store also can be rented out for private events, such as bachelorette or children’s birthday parties.

Kowalewski said she began searching in August for a store location.

“We really wanted to stay in the Perry community,” she said. “We had seen the support that other local businesses got from the community in just helping each other, and we like the small-town atmosphere.”

Kowalewski noticed a vacant space in the Perry Village Plaza.

“It’s a great location, and we knew there was a lot of traffic with (plaza tenants) the Village Pub, Embrace Nutrition and Mario’s Barber Shop,” she said.

Eventually, she signed a lease with plaza owner Loreto Iafelice, who got her unit in tip-top shape before the occupancy date of Nov. 1.

“Loreto replaced all the flooring, did all the painting, and put in new lighting for us,” she said. “So we could walk in and start setting everything up when they were finished.”

When Kowalewski initially established the Painted Plank in Perry Township around April of 2019, the business primarily focused on hosting do-it-yourself wood-sign workshops.

These events took place at venues such as area restaurants, bars and people’s homes. She also held some workshops in a small studio she rented for a while on the second floor of a Perry Township business.

However, when COVID-19 became a major health and safety threat in Ohio around March of 2020, bars and restaurants were ordered to stop indoor dining and drinking. Ohio Health Department mandates also limited mass gatherings in many other places.

As a result of these restrictions, The Painted Plank’s market for painting workshops dried up. So Kowalewski responded by shifting the focus of the business to refinishing furniture and cabinets.

“And that really picked up and took off,” she said.

Kowalewski also said it’s nice to have her own store that she can use as a regular place for workshops.

“With the mobile workshops, I had to carry all the paint and the stains and the wood,” she said. “In the middle of the winter, it was a little cumbersome.”