WATCH NOW: Houston store owners’ love of painting and home decor leads to Timeless Creations | Business

HOUSTON, Minn. — Their love of painting and home decor led Vicki Olson and her daughter, Kristen Collins, to open Timeless Creations in 2015 on the Olson farm on Hwy. 16 two miles west of Houston.

The business outgrew its original location in a small workshop near the Olson farmhouse, so it has moved to town. On Feb. 10, Olson and Collins opened their new, much larger store in a building they bought last summer and remodeled, at 113 W. Cedar St. in downtown Houston.

The building now houses three businesses: Timeless Creations, Evolv Fitness (a fitness center that Olson and Collins bought and renamed) and Fingers in Motion massage therapy.

“Timeless Creations is a furniture and home decor boutique,” Collins explained. She and her mother refurbish and sell furniture and curate a large range of home decor items, she said.

“We love to find old antique items and mix them with new decor,” Collins said. “We also make our own home decor items like custom wall plaques, farmhouse risers, pillows, candles and more. We have had other artisans’ handmade items (such as wooden tables and bowls) as well and will be adding more artisans from the area in our new space.”

“We want to try to get more of that type of thing (made by other artisans) in, something that is unique and has been handcrafted,” Olson said.

Collins and Olson also make their own home fragrance products such as candles, diffusers and wax melts, and they paint clients’ furniture. They also sell Fusion Mineral Paint and Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint and plan to bring back their popular painting classes, Collins said.

Store hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday and Friday and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. It’s possible the store might eventually be open on additional days. “It would be great if we could do that,” Collins said. “But we might have to hire someone” to do so.

Olson and her husband, Grant, still own the family farm, where he raises beef cattle, corn and soybeans.

Olson and Collins enjoyed painting and decorating the family’s home while Collins was growing up, and later — after Collins married — enjoyed doing the same thing at her home.

“So we’ve always had a love for painting and home decor, and creating things ourselves,” Collins said.

When she and her mother decided they wanted to start a refurbished furniture and home décor business, they opted to do it in a small workshop behind the farmhouse. “A bunch of old farm junk had been there for years,” Olson recalled. “We cleaned it all out and redid the building.”

But Timeless Creations outgrew that location and has moved to town.

“We always wanted to be in town,” Collins said. “The foot traffic is a bit better and there are different events in town that would be nice for us to participate in. And we also ran out of room” in the building on the farm.

For one thing, Olson said, “We needed more space to do our painting. And we build a lot of the home decor items that we have in the store. So we were doing sawing and sanding plus trying to paint in the same space. That didn’t work very well.” There’s plenty of room to do all of those things in the new location.