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Renee Tessier is opening LifeStyler this week in Berkshire Emporium on Main Street.

North Adams Home Shop Offers Unique, Vintage Home Decor

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff
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Renee Tessier's new shop offers a mix of new, vintage and repurposed home decor items. 
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Renee Tessier is hoping to turn what started as a hobby into a second successful business venture. 
 
"This is my passion. I love to recreate and repurpose and reuse and I love to make things look beautiful," Tessier said last week as she styled her new space in the Berkshire Emporium. "A lot of people don't see the beauty in something like a dresser or a buffet, or to take a large hutch and make it into two pieces and change things. I love home decorating and decor."
 
Tessier's new store LifeStyler is a mix of repurposed, vintage and new home decor items. She describes the shop as a mix of "home decor, refurbished furniture, and boutique items."
 
She already operates the well-known Renee's Diner, a popular eatery on Massachusetts Avenue for the past dozen years. But she's always loved styling and redecorating.
 
"People would follow me on Facebook or Instagram and look at my house and asked me if I would come decorate their house," she said. "I thought about it for a few years, opening up a space or store, and when Keith [Bona] came to the community and said, 'hey, I have an opening,' I gave him my idea and, as well as a few other people had come to him, he thought this was a good fit for him and for me."
 
Bona, proprietor of Berkshire Emporium on Main Street, has been experimenting with retail incubator spaces for more than year. Several sandwich shops/bakeries have already operated out of the antique shop, including the current Bailey's Bakery, and Bona has expanded the concept to a number of mini storefronts including LifeStyler. 
 
Tessier's storefront is on the Holden Street side but accessed through the Emporium. Her merchandise includes repainted and repurposed furniture, home decor such as baskets and bottles, vases and florals, tchotchkes and tapestries. 
 
Her style is a mix of French provincial, boho and modern farmhouse layered eclectically, and the shop offers inspiration for those hoping to achieve the same effect. 
 
"Not a lot of people know how to layer merchandise, vases, florals, beads," she said. "Not that I'm an expert by any stretch of the means but I do, you know, enjoy doing it. So I think about it a lot and I think that I've executed it well."
 
Tessier said the items are high quality and hand picked and range in price from $5 or $6 to up to $1,000, including furniture that she's repurposed and painted. 
 
"I'm not a box store. I'm not a Walmart or Target. I can't buy stuff at large quantity," she said. "So the stuff you're getting could be low to medium to high price, but it's all quality stuff. I've hand picked it all.
 
"There are some pieces in here that are one of a kind and there's some pieces that are multiples."
 
Tessier's planning a soft opening this week and a grand opening this weekend. The shop's open the same business hours as Berkshire Emporium from 11 to 5 and 11 to 4. 
 
"I'm really excited. It was a lot of work. A lot of hard work and especially, you know, running another business and having a family," Tessier said. "But I think this is something the community really needs in our town. We don't have anything like this. There's no other store like this around here."

Tags: new business,   home & garden,   

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Macksey Updates on Eagle Street Demo and Myriad City Projects

By Tammy DanielsiBerkshires Staff

The back of Moderne Studio in late January. The mayor said the city had begun planning for its removal if the owner could not address the problems. 
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The Moderne Studio building is coming down brick by brick on Eagle Street on the city's dime. 
 
Concerns over the failing structure's proximity to its neighbor — just a few feet — means the demolition underway is taking far longer than usual. It's also been delayed somewhat because of recent high winds and weather. 
 
The city had been making plans for the demolition a month ago because of the deterioration of the building, Mayor Jennifer Macksey told the City Council on Tuesday. The project was accelerated after the back of the 150-year-old structure collapsed on March 5
 
Initial estimates for demolition had been $190,000 to $210,000 and included asbestos removal. Those concerns have since been set aside after testing and the mayor believes that the demolition will be lower because it is not a hazardous site.
 
"We also had a lot of contractors who came to look at it for us to not want to touch it because of the proximity to the next building," she said. "Unfortunately time ran out on that property and we did have the building failure. 
 
"And it's an unfortunate situation. I think most of us who have lived here our whole lives and had our pictures taken there and remember being in the window so, you know, we were really hoping the building could be safe."
 
Macksey said the city had tried working with the owner, who could not find a contractor to demolish the building, "so we found one for him."
 
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