Stoddard County: Wise Buys Antiques in Advance, Missouri, offers ‘eclectic’ items and piano restoration

Brenda Voss runs her hand along a polished cabinet door of an armoir in her showroom.

Mahogany, she explains. It's her favorite.

"But you can't get it anymore like you could," she says. "It's a wood of the past."

Now, consumers have a better chance of finding it at places like Voss's Wise Buys Antiques in Advance, Missouri.

It's not all armoirs, of course. Voss's shop offers a variety.

Brenda Voss, the owner of Advance Wise Buys, stands next to a plastic fruit basket in her store Friday, March 17, 2017 in Advance. Advance Wise Buys is an antique shop along with furniture and piano restoration.Andrew J. Whitaker

"I've just got all kinds of little things. Lots of little pretties," she says, meandering among the chaise lounges and book cases. "I believe they call it 'eclectic.' As you can see, it's kind of a conglomeration."

She says she's always liked refurbishing pieces of furniture, first to save money as a young woman and then professionally.

"I love it," she says. "If a piece has a lot of old varnish on it, I love to see what that would look like underneath."

Now her store has pieces that date back clear to the early 19th century, she says.

Among the chests and clocks and other furniture, her oldest pieces are the hand-crank Victrola record players.

Erika Hamilton puts on her gloves before she works on restoring a piano at Advance Wise Buys Friday, March 17, 2017 in Advance. Advance Wise Buys is an antique shop along with furniture and piano restoration.Andrew J. Whitaker

"Never dreamed of owning a shop," she says, patting a polished wood dresser. "But I also like to decorate."

She says most of her customers come from Poplar Bluff, Dexter and Marble Hill, Missouri, and Southern Illinois.

"I live just a few blocks from the store, so in that way I'm always here, people know," she says. "I go to church on Sunday morning. Otherwise I'm always here."

But somehow, she says, the dusting is never quite done.

But while she spruces up chests and dusts the Victrolas, her daughter and son-in-law handle a more extreme sort of renovation.

Furniture is displayed at Advance Wise Buys Friday, March 17, 2017 in Advance. Advance Wise Buys is an antique shop along with furniture and piano restoration.Andrew J. Whitaker

Erika Hamilton is working in the shop in the rear of the building. It's warm back there, with a smell that's between sawdust and shoe polish.

Hamilton is hunched over the face of a grand piano, stripping the finish with a sharp-smelling varnish remover and a plastic scraper.

"Watch her now, she's a strippin' lady, my wife," Glenn teases as he shuffles past to another part of the workshop.

"And we call him the organ man," Erika says.

Together, they keep about three grand pianos in the shop at a time, plus a few organs.

An Edison phonograph at Advance Wise Buys Friday, March 17, 2017 in Advance. Advance Wise Buys is an antique shop along with furniture and piano restoration.Andrew J. Whitaker

The instruments come in to be fixed by any means necessary; whether that's replacing dampers, hammer-heads, keys, pegboards or just about anything else.

Hamilton says she first started playing piano at age 6, and from there became interested in trying to tune the family piano herself.

She then went to Sacramento, California, and later Kansas City, Missouri, to study piano restoration before moving back to Advance.

In 1984, she began offering free piano tuning to test the market for piano technician services and soon gained a customer base.

"There's not everybody on the street who wants to do this business," she says, adding she and her husband are the only people doing full restoration that she knows of between St. Louis and Memphis, Tennessee.

Wood carving from a piano at Advance Wise Buys Friday, March 17, 2017 in Advance. Advance Wise Buys is an antique shop along with furniture and piano restoration.Andrew J. Whitaker

"Whatever the customers want, that's what we do," she says, showing off another piano.

Stripped of its strings, dampers and finish, she says for the time being it's in a state of "preliminary nothingness."

But the intricacy of the carved winged lions on the side face of the keyboard, the ivory keys, the dark rosewood -- she says it's worth every bit of the six months it will take to restore.

"Look at that," Voss says, pointing to the rosewood. "It's a wood of the past."

And like the mahogany she likes in the front room, some things just can't be replaced.

Pianos are on display at Advance Wise Buys Friday, March 17, 2017 in Advance. Advance Wise Buys is an antique shop along with furniture and piano restoration.Andrew J. Whitaker