WHEN Jo Wallace retired from nursing and youth work five years ago, she was soon on the hunt for a project.
"I need to do something, otherwise I just go crazy," the 64-year-old grandmother of seven says with a laugh.
As fate would have it, her husband Gary was lamenting the growing mass of vintage furniture that she had collected in their Hillsborough home over decades.
"He said I was a hoarder but I wasn't, I have always been a collector," she says. "He told me we had to modernise and get rid of all of it, he said 'I am sick of living in the '20s."
Mrs Wallace began selling her haul via social channels when she saw an ad for chalk paint, something she'd never heard of.
The water-based paint is typically used on furniture to create a chalky appearance in styles often referred to as The Hamptons, Rustic and French Provincial.
"I found an old piece of furniture to try the paint on and I really enjoyed the process," she says, explaining that you can use one colour or a number of colours before sanding the furniture to create an imperfect, worn look sometimes described as "distressed".
Mrs Wallace sold the item she tricked up with paint for $200 and did a few more when her daughter Amber Bedden suggested they go into business. "I was sceptical; we've worked as nurses over the years together, but I thought it might be friend or foe in business," she said.
But start they did. Working from the Wallace matriarch's family home, things soon "got a bit out of hand".
"We were buying furniture on sites like Gumtree and we ended up with so much furniture that the house looked worse than before, and my husband started to threaten me again" Mrs Wallace jokes.
Spying an empty Gateshead shop, they signed a lease and opened Vintage Rustic. The bulk of their work is using chalk paint to upcycle old furniture for customers. They also retail chalk paint.
Soon outgrowing the shop, the business moved to a factory in Warners Bay.
"It was like a Men's Shed but it was the Women's Shed," Mrs Wallace said. "People came out to hang out and drink coffee and eat cake and just chat. It was a social hub - many of the women were lonely and had lost husbands."
The shed traded for close to four years before Vintage Rustic moved last year to a retail space in Cardiff Shopping Village.
"The Shed was too big, we ended up with too much of our own furniture that was untouched because we were too busy doing custom orders," Mrs Wallace says. "We decided to downsize to continue doing that, and just doing a few pieces of our own. So we sold all our furniture and started again. "
Before COVID-19, business was steady. When the lockdown began, things went "absolutely crazy".
"So many people were at home doing nothing they all decided to paint their furniture," Mrs Wallace said.
To meet demand, the Wallaces began a paint delivery run, travelling in the Hunter and Central Coast.
"We didn't charge delivery, we are not greedy. We just like to help people," Mrs Wallace says. "We run free community classes to teach others how to use paint and we have a group of disability ladies who come here from Denman and we give them a lovely lunch and pieces to paint. It's about giving back."
Supplies of chalk paint have been harder to buy in the pandemic with freight issues but Vintage Rustic continue to stock two brands, one local and one imported.
Chalk paint requires no priming or sanding and can be used on most surfaces.
"There are so many things we can do with it. Sometimes we use one colour, or we use three and sand it back so other colours come up underneath," Mrs Wallace says. "Chalk paint is very forgiving and the beauty of it is you can't really make a mistake. You can do it one way and then re-decide, sand it back and do it again. It's very addictive."
Self-taught via trial and error and watching You Tube, she is happy to help others use chalk paint. "With our free lessons we've taught people who've gone out to create their own businesses, single mums now making lots of money," she says.
Mrs Wallace says her work is a "labour of love", adding that she prices competitively so stock moves quickly.
Some customers leave furniture that belonged to their parents or elderly relatives, seeking a modern look.
"Many say that the furniture you buy today is not made as well and it's more expensive, so this is a cost effective way of keeping heirlooms," she says.
