by Dennis Dalman
A repurposed furniture and décor business dubbed Crooked Hinges will open Thursday, Oct. 11, in St. Joseph.
The shop is in an older, cozy, redesigned house, at 38 Birch St. E. (on the frontage road right across Hwy. 75 from the hardware store). Crooked Hinges will be open only four consecutive days each month – every second Thursday through Sunday. In October, the open-for-business dates will be Oct. 11 through Oct. 14.
Business hours are 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Mondays-Fridays and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Sundays. The owners of Crooked Hinges will also arrange private appointments with prospective customers for times and days not on the four-day open-for-business times.
Crooked Hinges is billed as “perfectly imperfect furniture and home décor.” It is owned by three friends – Jill Haak of St. Augusta, Marilyn Hamblin of Little Falls and Kim Reno of Sauk Rapids. The three women have an extensive background in repurposed and painted furniture. Their paths crossed after they met one another often while they were selling their creations via area repurposed-furniture venues. They began to meet many Fridays for dinners to discuss with excitement their latest plans and projects. That mutual excitement and constant creativity led to plans to open Crooked Hinges, and they discovered a perfect place for their business in the small house in St. Joseph right off the highway.
Crooked Hinges will feature objects made by Reno, Hamblin and Haak but also works by other local vendors and custom builders.
“That will give the shop a good variety of personality and style in furniture and home décor,” Hamblin said.
Hamblin described the staples of Crooked Hinges as “repurposed, restyled, repainted, reimagined, antique, vintage and more-modern furniture and home décor.
“All of which will have been altered or handmade in some way to meet the current trends and styles of furnishing and decorating homes, cabins, offices and businesses,” she said.
The shop itself has the look of a farmhouse, a mixture of French country style and what the owners call “shabby chic.” That look incorporates old barn wood and rusty-crusty objects currently popular in home-decorating trends. Most painted items will be neutral colors that fit in virtually any color schemes. Accent features will be done in a variety of muted colors.
One of Crooked Hinges’ specialties is lighting fixtures that range from hanging lamps to lamps for tables and floors. Each one is unique, and the lamps include rusty-pail lighting to charming chandeliers.
In addition, there is a wide variety of custom pieces – from barn wood furniture to unusual clocks, from original framed paintings to yard art. A decorating service will also be available for customers.
contributed photo
The creators/owners of Crooked Hinges are (left to right) Jill Haak, Kim Reno and Marilyn Hamblin.
Author: Dennis Dalman
Dalman was born and raised in South St. Cloud, graduated from St. Cloud Tech High School, then graduated from St. Cloud State University with a degree in English (emphasis on American and British literature) and mass communications (emphasis on print journalism). He studied in London, England for a year (1980-81) where he concentrated on British literature, political science, the history of Great Britain and wrote a book-length study of the British writer V.S. Naipaul. Dalman has been a reporter and weekly columnist for more than 30 years and worked for 16 of those years for the Alexandria Echo Press.
