When Renee Blanchard opened the store on Black Friday, she began to share her lifelong love of antiques and vintage items with the public.

“We spent Thanksgiving in here, still getting ready, and then opened the next day,” she recalled. “We were still planing floors two days before we opened. It was an adventure.”

The interior of the shop has been stripped down to its original wood flooring and bare brick walls to give it an even more authentic feel.

Blanchard and her husband Lee are pastors at Living Hope Church in Alpena. Renee Blanchard also owns and operates her portrait studio, Sozo Studios, which is upstairs from the vintage shop, at 200 N. 2nd Ave. in downtown Alpena.

Shop dog Gunner awaits customers while hanging out by the vintage toys, scarves and purses.

She decided in July to “go for it,” and renovations took about six months before they opened. She called th prior space what looked like “an ugly ’90s office.”

“Lee and I felt really strongly that if we were going to do a vintage store we needed to cut it down to the original walls, the original floors,” Blanchard noted. “We wanted it to be as original as it could possibly be to the character of the building.”

Perhaps she was born in the wrong era, or perhaps she just has vintage in her blood.

“So I was raised by two avid antiquers,” Renee Blanchard said. “And so I’ve always wanted to have a little shop. I’ve wanted to forever.”

She loves going to estate sales, antique shops, thrift stores, auctions, flea markets — anywhere undiscovered treasures might be hiding.

Here are dishes, dresses and furniture at Alpena Vintage Company.

“It’s more vintage than antique,” Blanchard explained of the goods in her store. “Most collectors consider antique 102 years old plus; vintage being anything newer than that, and older than 20 years. That’s why I named it Alpena Vintage Company, because 95 percent of what’s in here is vintage, not antique.”

These items are priced to please, with something for everyone.

“The bulk of what is in here is from between the ’20s and the ’50s, mainly because those are my favorite decades. And any time you own a store, a lot of times you accumulate what you like.”

She collects and sells a lot of clothing, jewelry, hats and furs, and she can explain the history and stories behind just about every item in the shop.

“I have an obscene amount of knowledge of old jewelry because I love it,” she said.

Here is the huge antique mirror shop owner Renee Blanchard considers a prized possession.

Fancy hats and furs get her excited too.

“I love furs,” she added. “Old vintage furs are amazing.”

She also has linens, glass dishes and kitchen items, some furniture and a variety of men’s items.

“My favorite piece in the store is a necklace that’s from Weiss, and it is a rhinestone waterfall necklace, and it is beautiful,” she said. “It’s from the ’40s, ’50s, and it’s extremely high quality, an amazing piece.”

A set she loves is the Crown Ducal Ascot tea set and matching coffee set sitting on the counter.

“It’s over 100 years old, and just the most amazing pattern that you’ll ever see,” she noted. “And they’re really, really hard to find, the coffee sets, and they’re unique because they have the handle on the side instead of the back.”

Everything in the shop is for sale, with the exception of a giant ornate mirror she received from her husband as an anniversary gift.

Alpena Vintage Company is not a consignment shop. Blanchard finds the items she sells from estate sales, auctions and from people coming in with their vintage items.

“It’s a shop of hand-selected items of good quality and good condition … My passion in doing this is to continue promoting a world that we don’t live in anymore.”

She said a lot of women have come in and said things like, “I wish we still wore hats and fancy jewelry.”

“And I tell them, ‘Then why don’t you? Just do it! Wear the fancy hat.'”

“You can take a modern outfit, and put a pair of vintage earrings or a necklace with it, and it looks fabulous,” she said. “Even if you’re not a vintage person, there’s something in here that you can use or add to your life that is going to be just kind of a little piece of the past.”