Former event planner Tim Yanko and retired interior designer Dwight Kaczmarek turned water damage into brick and mortar by purchasing a former Tremont funeral home and converting it into the latest iteration of their antique and collectibles shop, All Things For You. The store opened in early June after the business and life partners spent 10 months readying, staging and “zhuzhing” the space into a four-story antiques paradise to house third-party vendors and estate sale leftovers as All Things prepares for its tenth anniversary in 2025.
Just south of the intersection joining Clark Avenue to West 14th Street in Tremont’s southwest corner, an interior designer and event planner have combined their experience to reorient a former funeral home into a tower of antiques and ambiance. All Things For You owners Dwight Kaczmarek and Tim Yanko left their previous storefront on Lorain Avenue due to a water leak in August of 2023, but they pivoted strongly and in early June reopened their antiques and collectibles shop at the former Kolodiy Sobczyk funeral home at 3136 West 14th Street.
The reopening came 10 months after the upstairs leak forced Kaczmarek and Yanko to reevaluate their business for the second time in three years, coming on the heels of All Things’ busiest year since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. A text from a pedestrian who noticed cascading water while passing by All Things’ former space on Lorain Avenue, Yanko said, initially alerted the married business partners to the leak back in August of 2023.
“What’s been happening is people have been coming in and we had forgotten how much of an impact we’ve had on people who enjoy going to places like this,” Kaczmarek said while seated at a wooden table in the central parlor of the 1907-built house. Stationed across from him at the Skovmand and Andersen dining set (an imported Danish piece retailing for $3,295 with four chairs – pieces range from high prices like that all the way down to $5) rests Yanko.
“They come in and say, ‘This feels like home,’ ” Kaczmarek continued. “And I say ‘It was a home, for one. And two, we like to make it feel like that.’ ”
Most Things considered
Prior to landing in Kaczmarek’s and Yanko’s laps, the house of over 10,000 square feet belonged to the Kolodiy and Sobczyk families, who converted it into a funeral home in 1957. Friends and family of loved ones used to dine in the home’s basement. That vinyl-floored space (those with ‘90s nostalgia may appreciate the sheen on the years-yellowed tiles) is now a vessel for vinyl record racks, stuffed bookshelves and coffee tables.
After hosting plenty of caskets and weeping widows in the living room, the first floor has been staged to resemble a familiar and lively domicile. Nearly every piece of furniture, glassware, clothing, cookware, carpeting and art is hooked to a price tag. One could imagine spending several hours at the new All Things, navigating the cozy staircases and elaborate room setups that make the place feel inhabited. And stock is always rotating, pipelined to the store from store-sponsored estate sales and purchases the owners make in their travels.
“I’ve already had six calls today and two emails from people selling furniture,” Kaczmarek said. “A lot of time it’s not for us, so I recommend people to… Flower Child and Sweet Lorain and Table for 2. And why not? I want those other places, when someone says to them ‘Where should I go?’ I hope they would send them here to All Things For You.”
Situated among the top two floors are the store’s 20-plus third-party vintage and antiques vendors; area outfits including Laura Lea’s finely curated Black Kitten Vintage plus Dan Miller and Paul Forthofer’s upcycled PDA Antiques display products.
For the dealers as well as Kaczmarek and Yanko, who charge rent to sublease the upper rooms in three-month intervals on top of a small commission from items sold, the benefits are mutual.
“People keep asking, ‘Why don’t you live here?’ ” store manager Suzy Walborn, who also vends upstairs as Suzy Q’s Redos, said. “Well, we wouldn’t have space for dealers upstairs if we lived here.”
Walborn originally began fixing and repainting antiques for aftermarket sales in 2014 and has been in charge of general operations at All Things since 2018, when the store was located inside a commercial storefront at 3910 Lorain Ave.
Now, she’s typically in the retail outlet during all open hours (11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday) ringing customers up behind the desk in the store’s foyer and communicating with vendors. She serves as a “professional zhuzher,” a German term meaning to make “a small improvement, adjustment, or addition” to improve the look of something. Walborn describes the art of zhuzhing as “placing things, pricing things, things like that.”
Walborn’s zhuzhing experience and judging eye are on full display from the time shoppers enter the boutique to when they step outside; the store manager and individual vendors have immaculately arranged furniture items to make rooms resemble lived-in structures.
The multicolored glassware adjacent to the attic’s three-bay window, for example, evokes a similar setup lining the front of fellow Cleveland antiques dealer Sweet Lorain, while a loveseat and two armchairs hold court around a dinner tray in a second-story bedroom below. The shelves that surround these items are smartly stocked with all manner of knick knacks and collectibles; enough clutter to magnetize the eye without overwhelming shoppers.
Starting at the beginning of Things
While the 10,000-square-foot funeral home feels like an ideal fit for All Things, the business traces its first sales back to May of 2015, when Yanko and Kaczmarek came into possession of a downtown warehouse that ultimately held their initial stock.
“A very good friend of ours, they needed a warehouse emptied,” Yanko explained. “It was full of antiques and rugs and stuff like that.”
“A menagerie of everything you could think of,” Kaczmarek chimed in. “Perfect to start a store.”
Kaczmarek had recently found himself unemployed from an interior design job so the couple decided to pursue a lease adjacent to the former Della’s House of Beauty on West Schaaf Road. The storefront, a former butcher shop located a short walk from the couple’s Old Brooklyn abode, provided humble beginnings for the store with a footprint that barely scratched 900 square feet and a single-window display.
For the next three years, Kaczmarek and Yanko expanded to fill all corners of their shoebox space, moving product via the now-defunct Cleveland Flea vendor markets and expanding their stock by drawing up an estate sale contract. Now, All Things has an entire division focused on evaluating personal estates and, if the collection is viable, pricing items and running sales out of family homes on weekends.
“It’s pretty amazing to go from one window to this,” Yanko said, gesturing to the West 14th store’s glassy entranceway. A world of windows first became a reality for the couple upon the closure of the Canopy Collective art dealer and gallery at 3910 Lorain Ave. in 2017. The vacancy paved the way for Yanko and Kaczmarek to blossom into the space that held over 11,000 square feet and make good on their goal of hosting third-party vendors starting in 2018.
The idea had long gestated in the minds of Yanko and Kaczmarek, both of whom had inherited an eye for antiques from their mothers while growing up in Cleveland and Columbus, respectively. That respect extends outwards into the store’s neighboring businesses.
“It’s like fertilizer”
Both Kaczmarek and Yanko agreed that the success of All Things is directly tied to the wellbeing of the surrounding businesses. Having been together for nearly 30 years after meeting via a catering company Yanko was managing, and married since 2015, the pair understands the importance of solid relationships and have leveraged existing ones since reaching Tremont.
All Things’ newest location places the business at Tremont’s southeast corner, at the opposite end of the neighborhood from the neighborhood’s main commercial artery on Professor Avenue. Alas, the shop finds itself amid a network of newer small businesses including a small strip of boutiques and an eatery next door.
“It’s been really difficult for us through stuff as trivial as road construction projects to things as abrasive as the pandemic,” Terrapin Bakery owner Jackson (who did not wish to share his last name) explained between making breakfast sandwiches. “It’s been important for us… to always find reasons to celebrate with each other in our successes and the fact that we’re still open and thriving.”
Celebrating can take many forms; going out for drinks or just popping in for a visit can be gratifying and establish solidarity, Jackson said. Prior to being interviewed, Kaczmarek visited Terrapin to grab food and coffee for a sales clerk, Tim and himself. The relationship between All Things and Tremont’s large base of locally owned businesses is most solidified through a “foodie list” that Kaczmarek drafted for any customers who want dining recommendations.
“I’d say, with Tremont business in general, regardless of the category we generally want the other stores to succeed because it means more success for all of us,” explained Rowley Inn owner Jon Oberman, whose bar-restaurant appears on Kaczmarek’s list. “(Dwight and Tim) have been coming in for years. We’ve recommended customers to them since they’ve opened… Especially post-pandemic, it’s been very interesting for all of us.”
Knowing Kaczmarek and Yanko, things will stay interesting over at All Things’ third and most recent location. For the entrepreneurial couple, Walborn and the store’s handful of other employees, the horizon holds further estate sales (they encompass roughly 40% of the store’s business, per Yanko) and outdoor pop-up sales in the store’s parking lot of over 30 spaces.
“When I was doing the Cleveland Flea, I said to my husband, if this flea ends, Suzy Q’s business ends,” Walborn added. “Because that was where my people were.… But it’s been amazing. Thank God that they had business and were able to take dealers in the old space and here. There’s nothing like this in the Cleveland area. It’s not just ‘oh, this person loves midcentury modern so that’s there.’ You have quirky, kitschy stuff. The ‘50s, ‘60s, all the way to the ‘90s.”
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