Hidden treasure: A manufacturer’s outlet is a candy store for do-it-yourselfers
Home do-it-yourselfers liken Overhauser’s Manufacturers Outlet to a candy store. A candy store that doesn’t advertise and can be a challenge to find, but a sweet deal once you’re inside. High-quality doors and windows at discounted prices. Architectural collectibles salvaged when old buildings were torn down or renovated. Antique furniture here and there. Even a moose head or two.
Overhauser’s is in the old Crescent Service Center at 152 S. Lincoln. Its entrance is an unmarked door on the loading dock midway down the alley. “We’ve been around long enough our business comes from word of mouth,” owner Dan Overhauser says.
Overhauser stocks vinyl, wood and aluminum doors and windows from many manufacturers. He explains that high quality at low cost is possible because of industry practices. Manufacturers don’t stock products and wait for orders, he says, they only fill existing orders. So if they get the size or color of an order wrong, rather than trashing that product, they sell to Overhauser – with deep discounts.
South Hill resident Helen Hansen began her home makeover a year and a half ago. Buying from Overhauser, she says, has made it possible for her to incorporate things she didn’t think she could afford. Like the double set of Andersen 8-foot tall French doors that lead to the sun room where Hansen plans to raise orchids.
“Retail, those doors would have been about $3,000, plus freight,” she says. She paid a lot less.
Hansen says she now plans her renovations with an eye to Overhauser’s inventory. Currently, she has her eye on sliders to put between her kitchen and dining room. After that she’ll put windows supplied by Overhauser on the north end of her home to look out on a new hydrangea garden. “I’m going to do it,” she says. “Dan’s got the windows.”
“I go crazy in there,” Hansen says. “I call it the candy store. It’s like a dream. New things and old things.” She recollects that while shopping for doors and windows at Overhauser’s, she’s also been surprised to see antique china cabinets with “beautiful carvings of animals and birds,” marble-topped Victorian plant stands, ‘20s-era chandeliers, and vintage leaded-glass windows.
Overhauser, one of 11 children, started delivering newspapers after school when he was just 7. Along the way, he began to collect “junk.” That predilection led to a passion for antiques. “I always upgraded,” he says. “I like quality.”
As a collector, Overhauser says he most admires antiques from the mid- to late-19th century, especially those created by Herter Brothers, a New York interior design firm. Their furniture designs apply classical geometry in harmonious patterns, employing an eclectic combination of Anglo and Japanese motifs. Herter Brothers clients included the Vanderbilts, J.P. Morgan, and President Ulysses S. Grant.
“It was an era when everyone was trying to outdo each other,” Overhauser says. “The cabinetry had a lot of inlay work, exceptional craftsmanship. I like the quality of that period.”
It’s because of Overhauser’s active involvement in the antiques market that, in his showroom one finds, amid doors and windows, the occasional iron fireplace mantel, armoire or Horner mahogany bedroom set.
“I could wander around in there for hours,” says Jim Crouch, who lives north of Spokane. Crouch and his wife Alanna enjoy remodeling and came to Overhauser’s for base molding (2,240 linear feet) and chair molding (1,600 linear feet) to make double-molding “picture frames” around windows that look out on their Little Spokane River panorama.
“Getting the molding from Dan, I figure we saved over 60 percent,” Crouch says. Alanna Crouch says she and Jim were excited, too, to find some Davenport Hotel collectibles at Overhauser’s – a chandelier and wall sconces – to use in their home.
“We love The Davenport because that’s where our 1971 North Central senior prom was,” she says. “We have a picture of us standing by the second floor balcony railing near the Marie Antoinette Room. Now we have something from there.”