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We’ve all fallen prey to the fast-moving home-decor trends that permeate Pinterest and get churned out by big-box stores (read: gray-washed everything). “I, too, love furniture from the chain stores like CB2 or West Elm,” says Hannah Becker, one of three siblings who own Kin Furniture Co., a new antiques restoration and refinishing shop in Denver’s Elyria-Swansea neighborhood. “But just think how many ‘affordable’ IKEA dressers and television consoles are piled in landfills because they’ve fallen out of style or are not valuable enough to fix.”
Alongside her younger brothers, Sam and Jake, Hannah runs the company with a mission to help people find value and beauty in antique, vintage, heirloom, or secondhand pieces they already own. This respect for furniture relics was instilled in the siblings at an early age: Growing up in Greeley, the trio watched their father, a master furniture-upholsterer, breathe new life into tired pieces out of the family home’s garage. Sam and Jake eventually followed in their father’s footsteps by working in restoration shops in Greeley and Fort Collins before launching Kin in 2017 and then teaming up with their sister and moving to Denver in 2018.
Now, Hannah handles marketing and advertising while Jake and Sam do the meticulous work of sanding, staining, spraying, re-caning, and restoring beloved pieces in their 2,500-square-foot warehouse that formerly operated as a cabinetmaker’s workshop. At any given moment, the shop brims with furnishings in various stages of restoration—recent projects include an original English Hepplewhite accent chair; a circa-1870 French marriage cabinet; a turn-of-the-century, copper-lined Japanese hibachi tea chest; and a leather-upholstered, first-series Eames lounge chair.
Antique and vintage furniture, the Kin team insists, is not only made better—it has a better story to tell than its contemporary counterparts. “We honor the
history of each piece, as well as its original craftsmanship,” Jake says. Hannah continues: “Everyone has that story—pulling the china out of the hutch on the holidays, dropping the needle on the turntable in the record-player cabinet. There is something mystical about [furniture]: Blood, sweat, and tears become embedded into the wood and transferred from generation to generation, giving you a sense of identity and a connection to your past.”
