Hello and welcome back. It’s been a while since we have posted an update and for that, we apologize. Before we get into the journey, we would like to start off with expressing our thanks. First, thank you to everyone that is following our journey, supporting us, and helping with the house. And last, but definitely not least, thank you to our landlord for being patient and working with us to make our dreams become a reality.
This post will be longer than the others, but there has been a lot that has happened from the time of the last blog entry until now. Things never seem to go as planned; however, we are going with the flow to the best of our abilities. We’ve been working extremely hard to bring our hopes and dreams to fruition, as well as, doing justice to this beautiful house. We are so excited about everything that is going on and we can’t wait to share it with everyone.
Since we started off this blog with all the history of the house we could find, we thought it was only fair to get everyone up to speed on our beloved Midnight Star Collierville. We first opened our doors in August of 2021 at 122 N. Main St. with the idea of having one place for people to come and renew their body and mind and leave with confidence. We offered services, such as, spa, salon, and photography, and a small bazaar for those who just wanted to shop. It didn’t take long for us to add more services and products. And the ideas kept flowing.
In the beginning of 2022, we realized that we needed more space, so that we could add additional services. We decided that the space next door could help us in the next step of growth. We talked to the landlords and we were to expand into that space. We were excited about the new possibilities and discussed new ideas, new products, new services, etc. Then in the autumn of 2022, our plans unfortunately fell through. We were heartbroken to say the least. We needed to expand in order for our business to grow.
In November of 2022, we embarked on a journey to find a place that would allow our business to grow towards, no with our dreams. Since there wasn’t a place in Collierville’s Historic Town Square that fit our needs, we decided to look at locations close to the Square. We (there were 3 of us) started by looking at the J.A. Campbell House, located at 215 S. Center St.
This beautiful, 2-story, light yellow Queen Anne Cottage style house was built circa 1886, and once housed Gus’s World Famous Fried Chicken. We looked in the windows and around the property. We even stood back and looked at the whole of the house itself. As we stood in front of this house, we realized that it had more issues than we could handle. However, as we turned to head back to the car and continue our search, we notice a beautiful 2-story, white house across the street.
We drove over to investigate. Once again, we looked in the windows, around the property, and scooped out the outside of the house itself. We fell in love! We sat on the porch looking out across the yard and talked. We talk about what we physically could see as in the terms of the work that would need to be done and the massive potential that this house and property had. We drove back to our office filled with excitement. Now we just needed to find out about the property and who owned it.
Needless to say, it really didn’t take us too long to find out what we needed to know. As one of us worked on finding out about the house, the other worked on finding out who owned it. We will say this, finding out the information about the house was the more difficult of the two tasks. As stated before, there has been multiple addresses and different dates relating to some of the owners of the property.
The final address for the house is 269 S. Center St. It is known as the J.W. Houston House and it was built in 1884 in the Central Hall Plan architectural style according to https://www.memphisheritage.org/j-w-houston-house/. We also found out that this beauty was on the endangered list according to the same source. Now we not only felt the need to make this our new home, but to help save it if we could.
After finding out who owned the property, contact was made, and we arranged a meeting at the house. This meeting was held between the 3 of us and the landlord. We were shown the inside of the house and we talked. Once again, we left the property excited about the future. The plan was to stay at our location and to work on the house to get it ready.
We have met some hurdles already, some expected and some not; very, very cold temps, bad weather, busted pipes, newly broken windows are just a few. Needless to say, we started off slow with the house, but we did what we could, when we could. Windows and pipes were fixed and we even found someone to take over our old lease. We did not have a move out date, but at least we found someone and that was a big load off our minds. Then we went on a girl’s trip to Disney World that was planned a year ago.
Time didn’t stop just because we were on vacation. Things at home were moving forward without our knowledge. And when we returned back to our business we had to start moving and do it fast. So, the last week of January 2023 was spent packing, moving, cleaning, and repainting the old location. Yes, we had help from a few friends and employees and it still was very stressful, but we made the deadline! We were completely moved out, the place cleaned and painted by January 30th.
The first few days in February 2023, didn’t help us at all. Mother Nature decided we needed to rest by sending us some icy conditions and low temps. We didn’t agree with her, but she wasn’t hearing anything we had to say on the subject. So, we waited. Once we were able to get to the house, we discovered that more pipes had busted.
Now we are basically up-to-date. Fix windows. Check. Fix pipes. Check (we hope). Start work on the inside. Still in progress. We aren’t going to write about what we have done this past week and that is because this blog is long enough and we need to have something to write for the next part. We thank you for taking the time to read about our journey. We have a lot of work to do to this old house and we are up for the work. If you would like to help you can contact us in the ways listed below. Thank you, Collierville, our friends, our family, and our employees for your time, your support, and your love!
or if you would like to help with a donation:https://www.spotfund.com/story/5dfade47-dc05-493c-91b2-e45356b9a24d?fbclid=IwAR10zSj5PoDijNSZO8Tz1ScdSAUxt3nculDSGeVVLaaDY461G3P42dWed5c&SFID=HoustonHouse