It’s a common dilemma for antique and treasure hunters in the Hudson Valley: You’ve found the dresser of your dreams but the drawer is broken and the top has water marks. Sometimes you pass it by, other times you take it home with the excitement and energy to refinish it yourself—only to have it nagging you from the back of the garage. The solution: Found & Fixed, a repair shop and showroom in Highland.
Started in 2022 by a couple of friends with a knack for DIY projects and a mission to reduce furniture waste—a whopping 12 million tons of furniture wind up in landfills each year, according to the EPA—Found & Fixed will take your “new” antiques and much-loved furniture and restore, refinish, and even reimagine it to pretty much whatever your heart desires.
“New furniture can be very low quality, and it’s usually not made of real wood,” says Justine Porter of Poughkeepsie, who started the business with high school buddy Gabriel Jasmin of Newburgh, back when the pandemic had her doing too much on Zoom and not enough with her hands. “Furniture is also about more than just function—it’s a statement about you, your personality and lifestyle.” Most importantly, she adds, “furniture waste is such a huge problem in America.”
Porter, who has an MBA in sustainability in business from Bard College, had been experimenting with DIY projects for years, often picking up discarded and usually damaged furniture on the side of the road and refurbishing it to fit the vibe of her 1860 home. “I live in this old house in this cool historic neighborhood,” she explains. “Furniture from Wayfair just doesn’t cut it.” Her partner Jasmin is a hobbyist and skilled in woodworking, making tables and other pieces from scratch as a pastime. Together, with their handful of co-workers, Porter and Jasmin work mainly with furnishings made of wood.
There are three ways to make use of the services offered at Found & Fixed: bring in a piece of your own that needs repair or redesigning; let the team source and refinish a pre-loved item for you; or shop the showroom that opened in July and features furniture they’ve already reinvigorated in their adjacent repair shop.
Found & Fixed will take your “new” antiques and much-loved furniture and restore, refinish, and even reimagine it.
“We really believe that the product we are putting out is great,” says Porter. “With every project we run into challenges, but we’ve been learning as we go and have slowly accumulated a solid knowledge base to deal with just about anything.”
Found & Fixed began as an S Corp, and a year in, became a worker-owned cooperative; there’s no CEO, and decision-making hinges on how much each employee (six of them, at press time) buys into the company. “We wanted to create good jobs for ourselves, while continuing to grow to the point of becoming mainstream in the Hudson Valley,” says Porter.
Lofty goals, but with new antique stores popping up nearly every day in the region, coupled with an ever-increasing commitment to reuse, reduce, and recycle, the crafty, ecologically conscious crew at Found & Fixed just might do it… themselves.
