Sep. 30—Jacksonville has welcomed Davenport Home + Design with open arms.
The new design and home furnishing store opened its doors this month and held its grand opening Friday, Sept. 8 and Saturday, Sept. 9.
The new store was opened by John Davenport and Duncan Watson.
Davenport grew up in Jacksonville, graduating from Jacksonville High School Class of 2002 before he moved to Los Angeles where he went to college.
Watson is from Houston and he moved to Los Angeles about the same time as Davenport for college as well and that is where the couple met.
They got into real estate which led to some interior design.
“We were looking for a little bit of a change and were here visiting my family and went and looked at a house and decided to buy a house here as a little get-away, or little escape from LA,” Davenport said. “Then COVID happened. Being stuck in LA for three months and not being able to leave our house was a little bit of a wake-up call for us. So we came back to Jacksonville where it sort of seemed like normal and started working on a few projects.”
After seeing the growth in the downtown area, the couple were inspired to open their own brick-and-mortar retail location to showcase their design work.
“We always had this dream of opening a store like this, a brick and mortar component to our interior design work,” Davenport said. “It represented the perfect opportunity to us.
We were fortunate enough to do very well professionally in LA selling residential properties out there. We would have never been able to have bought a building and renovated it and done all of this in LA.”
Davenport Home + Design offers an array of goods that includes furniture, home décor, seasonal items, as well as gifts.
“We run the full breadth and assortment of items and price points,” Davenport said. “We have everything from fancy $5 paper cocktail napkins you would have for a party, to artwork that’s over $6,000. We are just trying to bring good design of all price points here to Jacksonville. We feel that everybody, no matter what zip code they are in, deserves good design. And good design doesn’t always cost a lot of money.”
Davenport Home + Design also offers reupholstery services.
New furniture, not all of it is built well, but it always costs a lot of money,” Davenport said. “Not only do we have furniture, home accessories and other goods like candles and soaps, we also offer reupholstery services. So, if you have that couch, that you absolutely love, it was your grandmother’s and you don’t want to get rid of it because it’s built so well but you don’t know how to select a fabric or who to take it to. We offer that service.”
They also offer interior decorating, remodel and new construction design from the ground up. One of their recent projects was the New Fit First Gym at Family First.
“We worked with the owners and did all the interior design and finish work,” Davenport said. “That was a really good exercise for us in commercial interior design. So we can do both. We’ve done commercial and residential. So, whether it’s somebody wanting to refresh their primary bedroom or start a project from the ground up or buy a candle for your house, we have it covered.”
Davenport Home + Design is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. They are located at 113 E. Commerce St. in Jacksonville.
For more information, call 903-339-3577 or check them out on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/davenporthomedesign.