Designer job

LeeAnn Miller's dream job didn’t exist in Jay County.

So, she created it for herself.

Two years after she started her own interior design business, Miller last week opened a showroom for Reclaiming Design in the front of Mainstream Furniture and Upholstery, 415 W. Water St., Portland.

After about a decade in commercial furniture sales in Ohio and Michigan, Miller and her family decided to move to Jay County to be closer to family. (She’s a 2001 Fort Recovery High School graduate and her husband Nathan is a 1998 Jay County High School graduate.)

Miller stayed at home with her two children and gave birth to her third before returning to the workforce at Pennville Custom Cabinetry in Portland. She enjoyed her time there but was looking to be involved in the interior design process throughout the home.

“I wanted to do all of it, meaning from the very start to the very end,” she said, mentioning rugs, flooring, decor and window coverings. “I wanted to do the design aspect of it.”

Such an opportunity wasn’t available in Jay County, so Miller launched her own interior design business in April 2019.

She had been working out of her rural Portland home, but one of her partners — Waypoint Living Spaces, a countertop provider — requires that she have a showroom. That led to her approaching Mainstream, which had done custom furniture projects for her, about the possibility of sharing space.

Miller officially opened the showroom with a ribbon-cutting ceremony last week.

She’ll take on just about any level of renovation project, from a one-hour paint consultation to a single-room renovation to a full-scale remodel or a new build. The goal, she said, is to simplify the process for the homeowner.

“It is stressful going through a renovation,” said Miller, who graduated from Ohio State University in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree in interior merchandising, adding that she wants to make the process less overwhelming by guiding homeowners through it. (She noted a kitchen remodel is a three- to six-month project.) “I really value people’s time, people’s time with family especially. Most people can relate with that.

“I’m their point person that’s going to be able to help them navigate through all of that.”

One of the projects she has worked on locally was a renovation for Dan and Theresa Lennartz of Fort Recovery. They turned what had been three rooms into an open-concept space with a kitchen, bar, nook and living area.

“I am so happy that we did this renovation for our kitchen and living space,” Dan Lennartz says in a testimonial on the Reclaiming Design website.“Now, I can sit back, relax and it feels so great being in the space.”

Miller, who has previously worked with Home Depot, King Business Interiors, Herman Miller and Knoll, starts the design process with free 60-minute consultation during which she compiles information about a project. From there she develops a design agreement.

After that, the process can begin.

Miller recommends both designs and products and has several brands she works with, including Waypoint Living Spaces and Pennville Custom Cabinetry for cabinets, Distinctive Surfaces and Cambria Natural Quartz Surfaces for countertops, Uttermost for furniture, Kalalou for decor, Loloi Rugs and Graber for window coverings.

Currently, Miller prefers to work within about a one-hour radius of Portland, though she said she’d be willing to go further for the right opportunity. And she noted that design consulting has changed significantly with greater use of Zoom and Facetime during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

And while her current showroom is in the Mainstream Furniture and Upholstery building on Water Street, Miller has already started thinking about the future.

She’s in the process of purchasing a Meridian Street building through a tax sale and is hoping to someday have her own space in the downtown area, whether that be just a design studio or a retail outlet as well.

“I like how in the five years that I’ve been here I can see people trying to rejuvenate and renovate downtown,” she said. “And I’d like to be a part of that too.”