Ravenswood Home Business Expands to Irving Park Storefront

By Dani Chung

What started in a Ravenswood basement and grew through the internet has now evolved into a brick and mortar storefront in Northcenter. 

Co-owners Jessie Kuhny and Keisha Bandealy refurbish furniture they find from estate sales and second-hand shops. After selling their goods on the handmade e-commerce website Etsy, the two decided it was time to open their own showroom. 

Mint Home is now ready for business at 2117 W. Irving Park Rd. in Northcenter.

The shop opened June 22, one day after Kuhny was in the hospital having a baby girl.

Kuhny and Bandealy met while working as servers at a downtown restaurant a few years ago. They both loved refurbishing pieces of furniture, and discovered they had similar tastes in style. So when the restaurant shut down, they decided to fix up old pieces of furniture and sell them full-time.

"It's been a two-women production for many years, and we've had great success on Etsy," Kuhny said.

The basement in Ravenswood will still operate as a workshop, where they sand, prime, paint and seal the pieces of furniture. Before the store opened, the workshop also doubled as an office, out of which they shipped everything.

Join Patch for more neighborhood news and follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Kuhny, with a background in visual art, and Bandealy, whose mother owned an antique shop in Georgia, work together to design the pieces.

"We love a really beautiful mix of styles and eras so that when you walk into somebody's home, it's interesting and it's not just cookie-cutter or all of those big name stores. We always think, 'What would we want in our homes?'" Kuhny said.

But sometimes that makes it difficult for the owner to part with some of her favorite creations. 

"I'm fortunate enough that if I really love a piece, I can just keep it," she said.

Recently, Kuhny has noticed parents purchasing low dressers to use as baby-changing tables: "We use low-VOC paints to keep things safe for kids. It's crazy, but it's cool because changing tables are usually ugly, but these kids will have really kick-ass bedrooms with midcentury modern dressers."

One thing important to the shop owners is keeping the price point affordable.

"We want to make things for the demographic that we are. We were restaurant servers, so we want to create stuff that, while beautiful, might otherwise have been overlooked," Kuhny said. "We've sold things to everyone from college students to 60-year-old grandmothers."

Kuhny and Bandealy create six to 10 pieces of furniture a week and sell usually 10 pieces in the same time. Through their Etsy page, they have access to a national marketplace, and people have ordered from New York, Washington D.C. and even California.

But now, owners want to see their product in their neighbors' homes. 

"Opening the store has been great for the local market and getting to meet the people who are purchasing what I create," Kuhny said.

Mint Home Store Hours: 

• Thursday through Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. 
• Monday through Wednesday, by appointment