* * Christiansburg’s Jack of all trades

One of our most eclectic local businesses is Travis Hauschulz’s Salvage Junkies, perched atop Christiansburg Mountain on East Roanoke Road, with his ominous driftwood dragon standing guard. The company is an outgrowth of his life partner, Christiansburg Town Councilwoman Merissa Sachs’ and his hobby of collecting all sorts of stuff. Outside, the store has a tangle of yard ornaments, lawn furniture, and novelties. But inside is where things get really interesting.

“Merissa and I were collectors of odd, unique things,” he told me when I stopped by for a visit recently. “We filled up the house to overflowing. About five years ago we decided that to get rid of some of it, we needed a store. Lots of people liked the unique things we were making. That’s how this took off.”

Sachs owns Logo Hub, another Christiansburg business. So both of them have entrepreneurial spirit in their bloodstreams. Logo Hub provides embroidery, heat pressing, screen printing, and vinyl lettering for a selection of personal items for business and corporate gifts.

“My name is really Travis Hauschulz, but everybody calls me ‘Jack,’ because I’m a jack of all trades,” Jack told me. A native North Dakotan, Jack lived around the country before settling here. “I consider myself a craftsman; I grew up in a shop. I’m a certified welder. I worked in industry with power plants, food processing plants, and towers.

“Our collection at home got too big and too vast. We added on a room at home just to house her Coca-Cola collection, memorabilia related to the corporation. Anything prior to 1953 is very collectible. There are a lot of Coca-Cola collectors! We have both rare and common things.”

Jack and Merissa were childhood sweethearts growing up in Grand Forks, North Dakota. In high school, Merissa moved eastward to Virginia and Jack moved westward to California. They met up decades later and have been together for a dozen years.

“We are constantly buying, looking for sales-worthy stuff. We buy from estate sales, barn sales, auctions, and the like, and have bought from as far away as Kansas. Sometimes a country home will be ready for destruction and we’ll go remove anything of salvage value. Old furniture. Sinks. Door knobs. Hinges. Flooring. Window frames.”

Those items are re-sold with only minor cleaning and repair. But Jack makes lots of stuff from salvaged materials like barn wood and whiskey barrels, designs he’s crafted himself.

“I buy lots of old whiskey barrels and make all sorts of things out of them. Rocking chairs. Kegerators. Ice chests. We go to the Jack Daniels factory and get a load of barrels three or four times a year. I make coffee tables out of old traffic lights. I use lots of barn wood for tables, chairs, and benches.

“I have a workshop in a repurposed tractor trailer beside the store. I have a beeper that lets me know when I’m out there if a customer has entered the store.”

I asked him what he knows now that he wished he’d known five years ago when he opened. He said, “It’s a lot more work than I expected! By the time you go to an estate sale, you go picking, then you’ve got to pay for it, load everything up, move it all back here and unload it, clean it all up, shore it up… it ends up being lots of work.

“I look for things I know I can sell for some profit. Building our own pieces from salvaged materials is our most profitable segment of the business. For example, I can build a bookshelf with salvaged barn wood and make good money. You can’t buy something like this at a furniture store.

“I have a good repeat clientele. Merissa is great with social media, so when we get something new, she can post it and inform people.

 “Our biggest clientele is kids coming to school at Tech or Radford. If they’re outfitting an apartment, they need coffee tables, chairs, dressers, and bookshelves. I’ll buy this stuff seasonally to serve them.

“The antique market has fallen off, replaced by barn wood furniture and what’s called ‘shabby-chic.’ Some people still want antique pieces, the worn look and the quality build. I bought 6 dozen streetlamps from UVA when they were installing 400 new ones, and they sold out fast. If I could get 1000 more, I’d sell them all.”