LEWISTON — Someday, Linda and John Snyder were going to open an antique shop. Years from now. When time was a little less tight and they were ready.

Nine months after they began building inventory, their house near-overflowing with someday antiques, prime retail space opened on Main Street.

They went for it.

Space next door opened up last month.

They went for that, too.

It’s meant balancing shop hours at the newly expanded Heritage Collectibles with her full-time job as a social worker for teens and children and his full-time work as a newspaper post-press supervisor, but it’s been worth it, Linda Snyder said.

She’s also merged her two roles, a bit: Just around the corner at their Papa’s Thrift Store, a sister shop, they give out vouchers by caseworker referral for low-income residents.

“I’ve got that weird brain thing going on; on the one hand, I love being in business, but I’m a social worker at heart,” said Snyder, who previously owned Manic Designs on Lisbon Street. “I’ve got to somehow always make the two of them work.”

In the summer of 2014, the Auburn couple started laying the groundwork for Heritage and Papa’s. They approached garage sales at the end of the day, offering to haul everything away, bring back a receipt for anything donated to Goodwill and “what we would take for payment was anything that was worthwhile to use,” Snyder said. “It was an evolution. But pretty soon our house really did look like an episode of ‘Hoarders.'”

They opened Papa’s Thrift Store at 5 Park St. initially as a spot for storage. The space at 189 Main St. for the higher-end Heritage opened up in April.

The antiques and collectibles are an eclectic mix: A cardboard cow wearing a beanie, old-fashioned school desks, jewelry, music and lots of paintings, lithographs and reproductions. There’s also a corner for modern, local artwork. 

Snyder said she likes the idea of older pieces getting a second life: A tired frame newly outfitted with a chalkboard inside or “ugly, ugly end tables” turned into a children’s Lego bench.

In expanding next door and doubling the shop’s size to more than 2,000 square feet, she’s hoping to create classroom space that might serve as a spot for art classes, appraisals or social work classes.

Due to their other jobs, store hours are nontraditional and change by the week, but are posted in advance on the company website.

They hang an “open” flag or a Jolly Roger by the front door indicating someone’s inside. The latter is a nod to their own eclectic taste: The couple married in 2008 on International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Their wedding cake was a white pirate ship.

Snyder wrote in October on the store blog: “Good old-fashioned pirates and their loot could certainly be considered antiques, right?”

kskelton@sunjournal.com