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Diana Ross despised the eclectic secondhand furniture that filled her childhood home, but in retrospect she realizes it was beautiful. The Toronto resident now helps customers create inviting, relaxing homes through her consignment shop, A Changing Nest
“Our home was really eclectic,” shop proprietor Diana Ross says of the house she grew up in. It was filled with secondhand furniture that her parents found by hunting through newspaper classified ads.
Diana’s friends admired the place when they visited, calling it beautiful. “No, it’s not. It’s just full of junk,” she always told them. “In hindsight, I can tell you it was beautiful. As a child, I hated it.”
When Diana got married and decorated her new home, she was determined to do things differently. “I wanted everything new,” she says. “I didn’t want to be unique or different.”
The results did not please her mom. “I hate your house,” Diana recalls her mother complaining. “It’s just so boring. I don’t feel comfortable here. I don’t even want to sit down.”
It took a while before Diana, too, became bored with sterile-looking modern furniture and decor.
That’s when she experienced her “aha” moment: while flipping through design books and magazines, she realized the most interesting pieces were vintage and repurposed, and the most appealing homes contained a mix of old and new.
The epiphany led her to redecorate — and to embark on a fulfilling career path, working in someone else’s store for a decade before eventually opening her own.
For 14 years, Diana has been running her Toronto consignment shop, A Changing Nest, stocking vintage and contemporary secondhand furniture and decor.
“For so many reasons in our lives, we change. We change our decor. We change everything we do. Things happen. People come in our lives, out of our lives. It’s constantly changing,” she says. “And our home is our nest.”
Through the revolving selection in her shop, Diana’s goal is to show people “how to make their home feel like a comfortable, warm nest, by mixing old and new.”
Her initial customers came in looking for used furniture and discovered they enjoyed the shop’s vibe. “They’d stand in the store and say, ‘I don’t know what it is, but I love being here. I feel relaxed. I feel this calmness...can you come to my home and do that for me?’”
After more and more people asked for help with interior design, home-improvement projects, and home staging for real estate sales, Diana expanded her business accordingly, and started repainting and reupholstering vintage furniture.
Diana shudders when she talks about the disposable nature of most modern furniture. “If you go around university areas on move-out day, what is sitting on the curb? It is littered — polluted — with all of that furniture.”
In contrast, older furniture was designed to last for decades, sometimes centuries. Its fabric or paint colour might look dated to some, but a well-built piece can be reimagined and rebuilt.
“When we take a vintage piece and we rip it down and we reupholster it, it just takes on such a wonderful new life,” she says.
To decide if it’s worth the cost to get a piece remade, Diana recommends asking a few key questions: “Is there any sentimental attachment to it? Do you love the shape of it? Do you love how comfy it is?”
She says if you “love everything about it, then it’s worth it to do. Is it going to be cheaper? Absolutely not.”
But, she says, “then you have this beautiful piece.” As a bonus, “you’re keeping something out of landfill, which is wonderful.”
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The best vintage furniture has been cherished and well looked after, Diana says. Sometimes it’s hard for her to let go of a truly special find, but “you let it go, because you’ve got bills to pay and things to do.”
And, she points out, “I can only fit so much into the store.” She always appreciates receiving photos later of the pieces nestled into their new homes.
A Changing Nest has become something of an oasis for busy Toronto residents. Many people stop by regularly to escape the noisy world outside, browse the pieces on offer, and chat with Diana.
“You do become a little bit of a psychologist,” she says. “People wouldn’t believe the conversations you have, the people you meet.”
Her eyes fill with tears as she describes a British couple in their 90s who often used to visit the store, always holding hands and dressed immaculately, him in a suit and tie and her in a beautiful dress and pearls.
One time they entered carrying a green garbage bag, an odd contrast to the pair’s usual elegant appearance. The husband asked Diana to turn away and hold her hands at her sides. Puzzled, she did. “I could hear the rustling of the bag,” she says. “Well, he slipped the most beautiful black mink coat on me.”
Diana recalls the wife telling her, “Diana, my dear, I have had many beautiful evenings in that coat, but those days are gone. I want you to have this. I hope you will have beautiful memories, as we have, in that coat.”
The couple died within a few weeks of each other.
Over the years, more than one friend has urged Diana to write a book about such encounters. “That’s the beautiful thing that I will miss when I’m not doing this anymore: sitting with clients and sitting with their parents and hearing all these beautiful stories.”
People often tell Diana that they’d love to run a consignment shop like hers because it looks like such fun.
Though she does adore her job, the nature of the business means a 24/7 commitment. “You go to sleep thinking about it. You wake up thinking about it. It never leaves you,” she says. “You’re balancing so many things. It does get exhausting.”
She constantly keeps an eye out for pieces that fit the requirements of individual clients: “I’m always looking.”
It takes considerable time and effort to build relationships and to offer personalized service, but Diana says those are the keys to making bricks-and-mortar shops succeed against online competitors. “You cannot have this experience online,” she says.
One thing Diana doesn’t have to stress about is rent, since she owns the building her shop is in, but she knows many small retailers have struggled over the past few years with rising rates in the city. She fears that many shops similar to hers will be forced to close.
The vintage furniture and decor market is saturated with product right now. A huge number of baby boomers are reaching an age where they are downsizing and getting rid of their old items.
Diana notes, “There are lots of beautiful pieces in the market, but the demand is not as high as the supply, so that brings your price down.”
Population decline, smaller dwellings, and rapidly changing consumer preferences all affect demand for vintage furniture, which is why reworking pieces to suit more modern needs is such a cornerstone of Diana’s business.
Sometimes, when the shop is quiet and Diana is alone, she reflects on her journey from hating the “junk” in her childhood home to finding joy in vintage pieces.
She imagines what her late mother would think if she could see Diana now.
“I’m sure I can hear her say, ‘Uh huh, Diana, all those years you complained about my bloody junk, and you’re making a business of it. Look at that.’”
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Sheri Radford is a freelance writer in Vancouver, BC.
