WAUPUN — Local antiques and vintage store Blue Heron Antiques is getting a makeover this summer for its downtown shopfront.
Blue Heron Antiques, also known as Bh Home, is located at 309 and 311 E Main St in Waupun. The business is run by Melanie Williams, who sells vintage and antique items of many types, as well as vintage-style home goods and homemade honey.
Williams has owned the building since 2000, at times renting the space to other businesses, and has long sought to update the design of the building—in particular the facade which has not been updated since the 1960’s, currently in a commercial office style.
While at an event earlier this year about the Wisconsin Main Street Program, she heard about the WEDC Main Street Makeover Content, where the winning contestant would receive a cash prize of $10,000 and professional design services to be used to upgrade the facade of the building. After working with City Administrator Kathy Schlieve, she put in an application for the content and was announced as one of three finalists in February.
Then, at the Waupun Business Alliance Banquet held on March 10 this year, City Administrator Schlieve announced that Blue Heron Antiques was the winning finalist for the Main Street Makeover Contest, and the winner of the $10,000 and professional design services.
“I had been thinking about this for years—and I knew what the building needed,” Williams said in a statement the week after the win was announced. “I’m all about preserving history, restoring history, and I’m really about the whole mission of the Main Street program because they also appreciate history. They want to restore, preserve, enhance all of that. So, I really like it that there is an organization, and we are on the same page with the same mindset.”
Williams is also taking this time to do much-needed renovations to the rooms in the first floor of 311 E Main, which is the east side of the business. The rooms have already been cleared in preparation for the renovations—carpeting has been torn out to reveal the original hardwood floors and some wall panels will be removed to expose the stone brick walls.
“The facade is what I’ll use the money for, and that is the first thing,” Williams said. “What goes along with that is because there’s replacement of the windows up top. I also had to rip out a ceiling in an upper apartment in order to expose a cavity for the windows to be put into. So, there is lots of repair and rewiring that has to be done with the apartment, which won’t be until winter.”
Photos and videos of the progress in the first floor have been posted to the Blue Heron Facebook page, along with sketches of the plans for the building facade.
Exterior work is planned to start late spring or early summer and should be completed by this fall. The business will be open in the meantime as allowed by the state of renovations on the entrance.
