JB Knacker - Gilbert, IA

123 Main Street, Gilbert, IA 50105

http://www.jbknacker.blogspot.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JBKnacker

After eight years as a pediatric nurse, Brenda Schwager and her friend Julie Adams were looking to start their own business. As Schwager describes, they wanted, “something that two moms could do.” They took a trip north to Buffalo, Minnesota, and saw a store with vintage items that were painted and brought back to life. That trip inspired them.

In 2001, the weekend before 9/11, the two women opened their shop in a barn just south of Gilbert, Iowa. It was filled with old things they’d found and fixed up. “These were not grand things,” Schwager says, “they were nice vintage pieces.”  To name the business, they took their first initials and put it before the word “knacker,” which means a person who buys and dismembers old houses and salvages the usable parts.

When they had to move from the barn, they looked around and found 123 Main Street. It was occupied by a family who ran their plumbing business from the front of the building while living in the back. Their family was outgrowing the space and happy to sell.

Schwager and Adams took two weeks to rehab the interior themselves before moving in November 2015. “Julie would say, ‘no, that’s not a load-bearing wall’ and we’d knock it down to open up the space,” says Schwager.

Schwager calls Gilbert “small town Iowa.” Located exactly in the middle of the state and with a population of 1,069, JB Knacker is just feet from the post office and across the street from large grain silos and a co-op.  123 Main Street has seen many businesses since the building was erected in the 1870s.  Somewhere in the 1910s, it was a music store that sold pianos. By the 1930s, a physician was in the space. “I’ve been told that Doc Rose built the sun porch because his wife suffered from TB and that’s the way you treated TB back then,” Schwager said. Many of the older men in town also tell her they remember the building as Doc Dickerson’s Barber Shop. They got their haircuts there from 1940 through 1969. His wife, Helen, ran the post office.

While Adams moved on to new adventures in 2008 and later relocated to Colorado, Schwager has continued with the business. “I sell a lot of functional things,” she says, “I call it a vintage home store with furniture, linens and dishes.”

She sometimes hits the auctions to find pieces, but says, “I like to be the lowest price around and auction items go for more than I would sell them.” Instead, she spends many of her weekdays at estate sales, church sales or school closings. It’s there she often gets items like globes, maps, shelving and letter boxes. She picks up items wherever she sees them; it’s a practice she’s done for years. “I have six kids and we used to travel around to various sporting events. They all knew we’d end up somewhere in another town and someone would have to hold [one of her vintage finds] on their lap on the way home.”

In addition to being open every Friday and Saturday, Schwager has teamed up with other vintage vendors in nearby communities. She started the Central Iowa Junk Jaunt in 2009. It’s an event that happens a few times a year where multiple shops showcase their best stuff and offer sale items.

When Schwager and Adams began, they were told to incorporate their type of business in the name, something along the lines of “antique” or “vintage.” They instead came up with something more catchy. And when they looked at 123 Main Street, Schwager said she thought, “We may not have the best business name, but we’ve got a great address.” She further adds that even though it’s not a big structure or very grand in any sense, “this house has been good to me.”