Warped dining room tables. Chipped desks. Busted bureaus. The more banged up, the better the challenge for Lisa Maurer, who has leveraged a passion for creativity into a career in retail as the owner of Farm Girl Finds in Waterloo. When others see a piece of furniture ready for a landfill, Lisa sees an opportunity.
“In my world, someone else’s trash is truly my treasure,” Lisa stated with a smile.
“I love retail, because it allows me to do what I love to do, which is paint furniture,” Lisa said. “And I love to meet all the people, the customers who make my business successful.”
Finding beauty in forgotten pieces
At Farm Girl Finds, every piece has a story. Lisa specializes in bedroom sets, buffets, hutches, and unique accent furniture that has been overlooked or neglected. The pieces are not necessarily antiques or rare collectibles. Instead, they are “solid, well-built pieces” that simply need someone to recognize their potential.
“The more unique pieces are what I like to go out and find for people in their homes,” she said. “They’re just pieces that have been neglected. People no longer want them. We find them. We bring them here. We spruce them up and make them into statement pieces for your home.”
The hunt is one of her favorite parts of the business.
“I love going out and picking through thrift stores, and I love going to auctions, estate sales,” she said. “I love finding furniture that just needs to have a fresh new look and feel to it.”
Over the years, that reputation has spread throughout her Metro East community.
“I have a lot of people call me now because I’ve been here so long,” Lisa said. “If they’re getting rid of a piece of furniture, they call and say, ‘Would you be interested in this?'”
She says she is especially drawn to older furniture, because of the craftsmanship of these pieces.
“I have found that the furniture of today is not as good of quality furniture as they were 20 or 30 years ago,” she said. “Good quality wood furniture. Those are the pieces that I seek out, because they will last a lifetime.”
Bringing those pieces back to life is equal parts craftsmanship and artistry, according to Lisa.
“A lot of times it just needs minor repairs,” Lisa explained. “We paint it a good, nice, trendy color. We do a lot of custom work here at Farm Girl Finds where people bring in their furniture. Maybe a family member has passed away. It’s good quality furniture, but they can’t get rid of it. It just needs new life.
“A lot of times people don’t even think it’s the same piece of furniture.”
A creative passion finds the perfect home
Long before the doors opened at Farm Girl Finds, Lisa wanted to be an interior designer and considered herself to be artistically primed for this professional challenge.
“What we are doing, some people do say it’s art because it’s creating a new product, even though it’s something old that we have transformed to make look more modern in today’s world.
“I have always been creative, and this has been the perfect outlet for me to show my creativity,” she said. “I am self-taught as a painter. It has come pretty natural for me, and I love what I do.”
A business launched by Pinterest
Farm Girl Finds began with a simple request from Lisa’s daughter before her daughter left for college. Lisa was asked to help furnish her daughter’s first apartment after her daughter had found inspiration on Pinterest and asked Lisa to recreate some of the looks using secondhand furniture.
“She asked if I could go find them at a thrift store or something and kind of recreate the pictures that she had in her mind,” Lisa recalled.
Lisa quickly discovered she loved the process.
“I kept bringing pieces home and painting them, and I had to find an outlet.”
She began selling her creations inside another local business before an unexpected opportunity arrived. When that shop closed, the mayor of Waterloo encouraged her to open her own storefront.
“He said, ‘There’s going to be a building available for you, and I want you to take a look at it.'”
Lisa and her husband started peeking through the windows of the building, imagining what it might become.
“The next thing I know, here I am. Farm Girl Finds was born.”
Retail is built on passion
Lisa did not come from a retail background, but she believes passion matters more than experience.
“Do you need retail experience to open your own place? Obviously not because I didn’t,” she said. “But you do need to have an entrepreneurial spirit, and you need to have a passion, and you need to follow your passion.”
She is also quick to point out that entrepreneurship requires total commitment.
“It is one of the hardest jobs because you are never a 9-to-5 job. You are working 24/7 for your business.”
Even after the store closes, Lisa says she is answering customer messages, planning future projects, and heading out with her husband to search for the next hidden treasure.
“For me, this job goes home with me,” she said. “I’m always answering customers online. I’m always thinking of the next thing. I’m always out picking up furniture with my husband. I love it, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Her advice for anyone dreaming of opening a brick-and-mortar business is simple.
“Follow your heart, find your passion and just go for it,” Lisa said. “It’s a lot of fun. It’s a lot of work, but you meet some great people along the way.”
Creating community beyond the store
Farm Girl Finds has become known not only for its furniture, but also for bringing together community.
To celebrate the store’s first year in business, Lisa came up with a creative idea: the Great Junk Hunt. She rented a school bus and invited 50 enthusiastic shoppers on a day-long adventure to thrift stores throughout the region.
“We play games on the bus. We hit six or seven different stores during the day,” she said. “At the end of the day, we stop at a local establishment and have a show-and-tell cocktail hour and we give away prizes.”
What started as a one-time anniversary celebration quickly became something much bigger.
“What I didn’t realize was the enthusiastic people that have enjoyed doing this trip,” Lisa said. “Now it’s grown into having multiple junk hunts throughout the year.”
The events have expanded through partnerships with local businesses and continue to strengthen community connections.
“The community really loves it, and it’s a great way we all come together.”
Giving new life to furniture and friends
One of the initiatives Lisa is most proud to discuss is the store’s partnership with Caritas Family Solutions. Every Wednesday, Caritas brings developmentally disabled volunteers to Farm Girl Finds to learn how to transform furniture from start to finish.
“We teach them just like we do in a class,” Lisa said. “When the piece is finished, we put it out on our sales floor, and when the piece sells, 100% of the proceeds goes back to the organization.
“When I tell you it is the best thing that we do, it is the best thing that we do,” she said. “Watching them come, we get so many hugs, so many high fives. They’re excited to be here. It gives them purpose, and it gives us purpose.”
She also enjoys teaching customers how to restore their own furniture. Farm Girl Finds regularly hosts painting classes where participants bring a small piece of furniture and learn every step of the process. The classes have attracted people from more than an hour away who want to learn skills they can’t find elsewhere.
“They get to pick out their color, and we teach them from start to finish on how to paint a piece of furniture.”
Seeing possibility everywhere
Perhaps no story captures Lisa’s work better than the anecdote that shared about a recent sale. After restoring a bedroom set she purchased from a family that was moving, Lisa listed the furniture for sale. The original owners recognized it.
“They called me and said, ‘Is that the furniture set that you bought from us?’ They said, ‘We want to buy it back.’ It’s not happened just one time,” Lisa said. “That’s happened several times.”
To Lisa, those moments perfectly capture what Farm Girl Finds is all about. Finding beauty where others no longer see it. By restoring solid wood furniture instead of replacing it, Farm Girl Finds has not only built a highly successful retail business, it has kept quality pieces out of landfills while giving customers furniture built to last.
“We are taking pieces that people would normally discard and giving them new life,” Lisa said. “You’re giving new life and new respect, new dignity to furniture.”
