Years ago, I bought a lamp with my partner while out on a walk. We made the decision almost instantly upon seeing it. I think it was a garage sale day event in the neighborhood, but it’s been such a fixture in our lives that I can’t remember the exact scenario, just that it’s maintained a constant presence ever since. It matched another lamp we had recently found and was one of the first “larger” decorative purchases we made together. It’s since led other decorative decisions, with its warmth and natural tones serving as a base for the rest of our living room’s design. 

The sidewalk lamp purchase happened because of Rescue Vintage. I remember following the couple on Instagram after learning they’d been restoring furniture out of their apartment. Mostly, I was nosy and wanted an insight into how they can do such work from an apartment that, from the street, appeared to be as small as mine. Since that initial follow, I’ve had the pleasure of watching this pandemic project transform into a full-blown business that gives new life to the items that really make a home. 

Naturally, I reached out to Rescue Vintage to hear more about their story and see what’s been happening behind the scenes of this unique business started by Natassja Uraine and Matt Schulz. Here’s what I learned: 

SSB: Can you tell me the abridged version of your origin story? How did Rescue Vintage come to be?

RV: Rescue Vintage was a pandemic project that grew to become our full time business. We met each other during lockdown in 2020 and spent weeks meeting virtually - we moved quickly past texting and virtual movie dates to collaborating on increasingly elaborate art projects, all from a distance. By the time we met in person, weeks later, we both felt as though we’d known each other for years. 

We began taking long walks through our neighborhoods and talking late into the evenings. At the time, Natassja was in college to finish her degree and Matt was a teacher, but in hindsight it seems clear that we were both ready and eager to take on the next chapter in our lives. We ranged farther and farther on our walks, and we were inspired by the beautiful, broken furniture everyone was leaving on their curbs. Though neither of us had any background in restoration, we picked up our first dresser - a gorgeous art deco waterfall piece with flame burl veneer and bakelite handles - and began learning the steps to restore it.

 Next was a credenza, a side table, and a chair. We learned by doing, and failing - often. We had no space to keep these early restorations, so we sold them online. For us, the joy of those early days was just as much from the thrill of finding beautiful pieces and diving into learning to restore them as it was collaborating and exploring new possibilities with each other. The closer we grew in our relationship, the more we grew to understand that our side hustle was fast becoming a passion project. By January 2021, we had registered Rescue Vintage as our official business, and we were married in October of that year.

Fast forward to 2026, we have expanded the business, pushing its boundaries from resale to restoration and repair and upholstery. We have taught ourselves the skills to offer professional level services, and add to those skillsets every day. We have also grown closer as a married couple - we welcomed our first child, Oskar, into the family in October of 2025. We joke sometimes that Oskar is actually our second child - Rescue Vintage is and always will be our first.

SSB: How big is your business (employee-wise) and how would you describe the space you operate out of?

RV: Very small! It’s just the two of us, plus a very part-time contractor who works 2-3 days per month. We do pretty much everything ourselves, juggling administrative tasks, client work, emails, and now childcare for our almost 10-month-old. We also move all of our own furniture, for the most part. We’re both petite people, so that is probably one of the more hilarious parts of this work.

We operate out of three workspaces - two approximately the size of a one-car garage, and one larger one that’s about the size of a two-car garage. One of the most common things we hear from clients when they drop off their pieces is: “You need more space!” We’d love more space to work out of, but Seattle is incredibly expensive and we can’t afford a larger workspace. 

I bought a lamp from you years ago and remember you were operating out of an apartment. Now, you operate out of a workshop in Phinney. Can you speak to the evolution of your workspaces and how each shift has impacted your business?

RV (Matt): Rescue Vintage has always presented complicated problems for finding the ideal space in the city. Not only does a space need to operate as a showroom for furniture sales, it also needs to be an upholstery workshop, with ample surfaces for fabric cutting and patterning. It also needs to provide an area for a spraying finish and for stripping furniture. And, if possible, it needs to be in the city, and hopefully not too far from our home. It also needs to cost less than what we earn every month.

In our searches over the years, we have moved from working on pieces on the sidewalk outside of our apartment to neighbors’ garages to a storefront downtown to a converted shipping container by the Locks to a maker’s space near our home. We have consigned restored furniture in local shops, participated in fairs and collaborative sales, held garage sales, and nearly signed leases in Pioneer Square, Ballard, and Westlake. Basically, every new space comes with three of the six requirements. One may be affordable, spacious, and accommodating to spraying finishes, but is far away. The other may be near, but small and expensive. 

In our ongoing search for the ideal space, one that can operate as a showroom, workshop, spray booth, and potentially even living situation, we have come to the conclusion that no such ideal space exists - affordably - in Seattle. No matter where we have worked, we have had to compromise our vision - currently, for example, we don’t offer a showroom to view pieces. Interested customers can make an appointment for a showing in our upholstery workshop, which means they are viewing pieces surrounded by foam and fabric scraps. The conflict between ample space and cost in the city makes having a slow, bespoke project-based business like ours feel Sisyphean. 

(Natassja): It has also made us resilient and adaptable. We reuse things, we find ways to repurpose found objects and tools, we make do with the tools we have (e.g.: Matt still doesn’t have a table saw…) for longer than we probably should. This means we’re endlessly creative, though. What drew us to this work was the problem solving required for every new project; we’ve often come to curse this when a piece proves particularly difficult, but it’s also what has taught us the most. Being creative problems-solvers about a tiny workspace has made us tackle other, seemingly smaller problems with gusto.

SSB: What’s been the most effective marketing strategy for the business, and why?

RV (Matt): We have tried markets, pop-ups events, garage sales, holiday-themed parties, give aways, consigning our pieces in others’ storefronts, collaborations, paid advertisement, yard signs, community boards, networking events, and more - all in the attempt to connect with the customer in the places that they frequent - and nothing has been more effective than simply maintaining a consistent presence in our workshop and doing our work with our doors open. While it’s true that most of our business comes from search engine optimization and AI-friendly online presence, the most consistent qualified interest that we’ve gotten involves a passerby poking their head in the door and asking, “Do you fix furniture/do upholstery/do refinishing? Great! I have this chair…”

(Natassja): We also cannot dismiss the community we’ve been able to build on Instagram. We have very mixed (read: not so great) feelings about social media, but we have generous, engaged, and enthusiastic “followers” on Instagram. We get a lot of our business through folks who find us there, see the work we do, and then reach out to get a piece of their own restored. The community there is so wonderful, in fact, that when we faced a difficult time financially after the complicated birth of our son, our Instagram followers poured donations into a GoFundMe, which very literally kept us afloat for a month postpartum. Instagram has proved not only to be an important marketing tool to build rapport with current, past, and future customers, but most importantly a network with many people we now consider friends and close acquaintances.  

SSB: I assume your workflow shifts from day-to-day based on what projects you have booked. Can you walk me through a typical week of running Rescue Vintage?

RV: These days, a somewhat typical day might look like:

Natassja wakes up around 6am, takes care of our son and tries to answer emails and do admin work while he naps until Matt wakes up around 10:30am (he’s a night owl and takes the night shift in case our kiddo needs anything overnight). Matt hangs out with our kiddo while Natassja then goes to our workspace around 12 p.m., often meets with a client dropping off or picking up a piece, works on upholstery projects, then comes home around 4pm. Matt then heads to the workspace while Natassja hangs out with our kiddo. Matt works on restoration work from 4-8pm or so, comes home and has some dinner, and we both work on emails and admin tasks until 9pm or so and then we collapse into a puddle on the couch and maybe watch a little bit of TV. Rinse repeat.

Except on Saturdays and Sundays, when we have apprentices/our contractor who comes to work with us, so Natassja stays home with the kiddo and Matt works those days, often also meeting clients for pickups/drop-offs.

The projects vary so widely from week-to-week that there definitely isn’t anything typical about those, however.

SSB: Outside of the restoration itself, what’s been the biggest learning curve you’ve had regarding operating this type of business?

RV (Matt): How to say no? 

(Natassja): Yeah. We’re both very bad at saying no, but have had to exercise this muscle over and over since starting our business. No to projects that aren’t a good fit, no to opportunities that aren’t aligned with our business, no to donations of furniture that won’t prove profitable, etc. 

(Matt): How to talk to a customer and convey a suggested course of action succinctly and clearly without info-dumping, condescending, or manipulating. 

(Natassja): As you might have guessed, we’re both fairly verbose in our written communication. I think we often overcommunicate in our effort to make sure our clients understand what we’re able to offer or what the best course of repair/restoration might be, in our experience. We’ve gotten better about this over time, though, and I think we’re both confident in our abilities to communicate.

SSB: How has operating in Seattle shaped your business? Are there any unique aspects to operating here that you might not get in other cities?

RV (Natassja): There are people here who are willing to invest in the furniture that they have, and are interested in having a unique and custom piece in their home. While we started out trying to resell pieces we fixed up, we’ve since found that more people are actually interested in restoring and reupholstering the pieces they have, the heirlooms they got from their parents or grandparents, or even the piece they scooped up on the side of the road or on Facebook Marketplace. There’s an interesting intersection of wealth and interest in reuse here in Seattle that has proved to be great for our business. 

SSB: Have you picked up on any Seattle-specific design trends over the years?

RV (Matt): There’s a nice potpourri here in Seattle of Scandinavian and Japanese design influences, which is great for a design-interested, restoration-focused business like ours. 

(Natassja): There’s definitely a Pacific Northwest Modern design thread that we see across a lot of the custom work we’ve done. For instance: Matt upcycled and built a custom kitchen island for a talented home cook-turned-cooking-class teacher out of a vintage desk, a staved vintage butcher block teak table, and casters. It now lives in the client’s home on Whidbey. He also restored and reimagined a handbuilt low solid redwood coffee table that had been made in the 1960s by a Sonoma Valley architect for the home he designed and built. The table had originally had cork inlaid along channels, which had been badly burned and flaked out through use and abuse. Matt chose to fill those channels with Teredo wood boards, which are very PNW - literally wood reclaimed from underwater docks where the Teredo clams have bored holes through the wood. That very special piece now lives out in Kingston. 

And lastly, Natassja made some custom cushions for a couple’s home on Lopez Island, where they planned to have kids and grandkids watch movies and relax together. They chose a mix of fun, durable, mostly natural fabrics with lots of throw pillows, all in greens and yellows and rusty reds to pick up the colors of the landscape around their Lopez home, as well as the reclaimed fir that lines most of the interior walls and staircase of the space.

SSB: What about neighborhood specific trends?

RV (Natassja): Maybe not neighborhood-specific, but we have found that Seattle’s strong LGBTQIA+ community of folks have impeccable and widely varied styles. Some of our favorite clients to work with have been couples who are redoing pieces in their home in bold yet incredibly thoughtful ways - royal purple velvets, lush chartreuse mohair, and bold stripes. Seeing people enthusiastically choose color over beige is so fun (admittedly the beige pieces can also be beautiful, too.)

(Matt): Yes, definitely agree. Some of the coolest and most fun opportunities for creativity have come by way of our friends in the community.

Since you’re a duo running this business: What does Matt bring to the table that Natassja doesn’t. Conversely, what does Natassja bring that Matt doesn’t? 

RV (Matt): Traditional mastery vs. heretical creativity; Democratization vs. specialization; Creation vs. Maintenance

(Natassja): I technically own the business, and run all of the operational parts, like taxes, accounting, etc. If we were a corporation, I’d be the CEO and Matt would be the Chief Creative Officer, and/or probably also the people manager. :) 

Also, let me flush out Matt’s ideas above a bit…

I’m more of a perfectionist and purist when it comes to our work. I want to do things as well as I can and as true to what would have been the original way as possible (unless the original way was flawed, in which case all bets are off…!) 

I spend a lot of time carefully matching patterns, sewing cushions with perfectly rounded corners, and trying to learn and master the craft of upholstery. Matt is incredibly talented and good at the restoration work he does, especially as someone completely self-taught. He has a little more irreverence than I do, though. He’s not afraid to change or modify something he feels could be better. He dreams of breaking and shaking and creating things. He approaches our work and the teaching he does with apprentices much more democratically, whereas I aim to specialize and focus and take my work slowly. 

Matt takes time to create new things repurposing old things (for instance, he has made 10+ lamps now from reclaimed wood and found/repurposed objects). I also enjoy creating, but I find a lot of purpose in the specialisation of the craft of upholstery. This makes us a wonderful team. I am endlessly pushing him to precision (which he already is extremely good at), and he is always encouraging me to be more creative and take more chances. We both agree that our business motto is: “move slow and fix things,” a cheeky retort to the tech phrase “move fast and break things.”

SSB: How do you separate your personal and family life from the business? Has this evolved over the years?

RV (Natassja): We don’t? Ha! Or, we’ve been very bad at this in the past. We literally ran our business in our apartment for the first year or so, and there was very little separation. Now with a kiddo, though, I think we’ve begun to try to find ways to carve out time that is just ours, as a family. Our business is a huge part of our identity, though, and one of our biggest passion projects. 

We work 7 days a week, so there aren’t “weekends” or days off, to speak of. We do enjoy some slow moments at home as a family most evenings, and we take walks in our neighborhood, and sometimes take long drives to favorite locations in the area. I hope this continues to evolve, though, as our business grows and we slowly find more balance. 

SSB: Are there any favorite projects you’ve completed, and why do they stand out to you? 

RV (Natassja): I really love reupholstering vintage Eames lounge chairs from the 1950s-1960s. It requires a lot of precision to get the cushions just right, and I love working with leather. These are such iconic pieces, and especially when it's an heirloom passed down for generations, I feel honored to work on it. I’m also really enjoying working on a living room set from Denmark right now - a sofa, a lowback chair, and a highback chair. They are well-constructed pieces that are comfy and also very beautiful. The clients chose excellent fabrics, and they’ve been so much fun to reupholster.

Matt really likes the creative projects for clients, like the kitchen island and the solid redwood coffee table, or a custom tiki bar he restored for a client last year. They are often some of the most challenging work, but it’s deeply satisfying to see a customer’s face when you’ve brought to life something they imagined, or restored a beloved piece that they didn’t think could be brought back to use.

SSB: Do you have any favorite responses or feedback from people who have hired you to restore something? Why were they meaningful?

RV (Matt): We’re lucky to have amazing reviews on Google from past clients, but repeat business is the best feedback we can get. We have had many clients come back to have us restore or reupholster multiple pieces, and that is the very best stamp of approval.

(Natassja): Yes, and any time someone brings us an heirloom piece and is happy with the way it turns out, we feel deeply honored and proud. That is one of the biggest reasons we do what we do.

What’s the best way for people to get in touch to work with you?

Email! While we are very active on Instagram, and will respond there, filling out the project request form on our website gives the best chance to receive a well-tuned estimate. 

You can reach us at https://www.rescuevintage.com/contact