Big Oak Restoration

It's a little chilly to enjoy backyard furniture right now unless you're visiting Big Oak Restoration in Mebben. This little shop on Play Street is a great place to shop for vintage outdoor furniture or to hang out with friends while swinging in a porch glider. Rick Sullivan takes us inside Big Oak to enjoy some metal furniture you might just remember from your childhood days. Step inside the door at Big Oak Restoration in Mebben and take a step back in time. Or better yet, take a seat in one of the colorful steel gliders that have become the store'signature pieces. Most of the gliders were made in Philadelphia from a company, Bunting Glider Works, in the 40s and 50s. This is the style gliders I have in here. Some of the gliders were as early as in the 20s. For many decades between then and now, these beauties sat in backyards wasting away. For the past several years, John Batten has been restoring them to better-than-new condition with sandblasting followed by powder coating. Well, it's exciting, very rewarding. I got before and after pictures. If you look some of the before pictures, you can really see a transformation. Until recently, John was doing pretty well at his carpentry business. But less than five years after discovering his additional talent for restoring metal, he's gone all in with the addition of this store. I'm blaming it on my wife, really, but it was her idea for the store. I was started out doing some carpentry work with a relative and they had one of the porch gliders and she wanted me to restore it for her. I took it and the old-fashioned way, I painted it with car paint. It looked nice and I took it back to her and then a friend saw hers and wanted me to do hers and I did hers. And after that another relative and eventually I bought one myself and sold it on Craigslist. And the rest is history. Now the Big Oak Restoration store is overflowing with inventory to sell and to return to customers after renovation. While the gliders are the showpieces, much of John's business involves restoring pieces and returning them to sentimental customers. I grew up on a farm in Wilkes County and my mother passed away a year and a half ago. She was 94 and we've been restoring the farmhouse and this old table was the kitchen table when I was a kid. Oftentimes new customers Then they stay to admire the Big Oak showroom and to consider the possibility of purchasing one of John's more irresistible pieces. People come through the store. They just, you know, they reminisce about so many people say my grandmother had a glider and my aunt had one and we used to play on it or, you know, we would sit out and make a freezer ice cream, you know, in the s The gliders are very popular, but we also have, John finds his restoreable material from a variety of places, but much I usually go out of town. We go on pics, Pics is that the outdoor furniture word for antiquing? I think it's a universal word for going out and hunting anything these days is going out looking for, Kind of like the pickers, So we're always looking to pick something if we have the opportunity. At Big Oak Restoration, what comes around goes around and that's a good thing. In Meb and I'm Rick Sullivan for North Carolina Weekend. Big Oak Restoration is at 117 West Clay Street in Mebben and they're open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a. m. to 6 p. m. For more information give them a call at 919-475-2375 or go online to bigoakrestoration. com