Another Magnolia
A new shop in Ringgold also pays homage to the film “Steel Magnolias.” Owner Melanie Pierce said she wanted the same hometown feel to be present in her salon so she named it Steel Magnolia Salon.Pierce has strong ties to the small town where her shop is now located, having grown up there and graduated from Ringgold High School. Most of her team members — two additional stylists, an assistant and a manager — are originally from Ringgold too, she added.Her first salon — Salon De Lamel, which she said means “Mel’s Salon” in French — opened amid the hustle and bustle of Gunbarrel Road 10 years ago. Three years in, she decided to change the name. Then, when scouting a second location, she decided to change the atmosphere surrounding her shop.“One day I was watching ‘Steel Magnolias’ movie … and I thought, ‘I wish I had named my salon after the movie ‘Steel Magnolias.’ It’s crazy, that day I sent in all the paperwork to change the name and it went through. I never thought I would get this business with this name,” she said.True to the movie, the salon is located in a home, which formerly belonged to well-known Ringgold resident Flora Lawrence, who served with the Catoosa County Chamber of Commerce and as a city councilwoman.According to Pierce, the late Lawrence’s house was on the market for two and a half years before it fell in her lap.“I think God kept it for me because it had a contract that fell through and I snatched it,” Pierce said.She envisions one day turning the upstairs into space for a nail tech and massage therapist.Steel Magnolia Salon is next door to the Ringgold Post Office, at 769 Lafayette St. To learn more, call 706-965-6444 or find the salon on Facebook.
In need of restored antique furniture or items for the home or body? LaFayette has a new shop for you.
Lisa Steele’s Magnolia Shoppe is newly open inside Ford Chiropractic Office on North Main Street.
“I love the movie ‘Steel Magnolias,'” said owner Lisa Steele Lee, of LaFayette. “I went through 250 names and a friend said, ‘Name it after the movie but spell it like your name.’ I liked the connection between the women and the mother and the daughter in the movie, because I have a daughter.”
The shop is the result of her and her husband’s decision to change direction in life and slow down after a bad motorcycle accident that almost claimed both of their lives over Memorial Day weekend in 2014. They opened the shop a month ago so that she could work closer to home.
“The wreck almost killed us and I got real sick and could not work and my husband [Clayton Lee] made a boutique for me,” Steele Lee said. “I could not have done it [open the shop] without him.”
Prior to their head-on with an SUV, the Lees were very active, she said, adding she was working three jobs and Clayton was working a full-time job.
The wreck left her bedridden in the hospital for two months. Even after that, she could not walk for a year, she said.
“It’s good to get back out in the real world,” said Steele Lee, who underwent six surgeries to help repair her broken wrist, ribs, hip and tibia, crushed femur and knee, collapsed lung and internal bleeding.
She and her husband now specialize in all things furniture, especially restored antiques. Clayton Lee, who built all the shelves in the store, restores antique or vintage furniture to its natural state, opting for chalk paint if the natural state can’t be achieved. Their two-car garage serves as a workspace.
While Clayton Lee enjoys making collegiate football team inspired benches out of twin headboards, his wife said she is most proud of his work on a buffet table that was brought in with a large rubber band holding it together. Clayton Lee not only restored it, he created shelving to hold plates upright. It now awaits a customer’s special holiday celebrations.
His work is not the only on display in the shop. The walls hold oil paintings by Jeremy Cain and Clayton Lee’s ticking clocks made out of cypress tree trunks.
Steele Lee’s specialty is the General Store, she said, explaining that she uses lots of coupons to keep it stocked with low-cost merchandise. The idea is to keep people from having to go to a grocery store to purchase the items, she said. The shelves are filled with home and body care items like Febreze air fresheners, Tide pods, Avon Skin-So-Soft and Speed Stick, for example.
Shoppers can also check out a jewelry section to the right of the entrance featuring new and gently used pieces.
The Lee couple frequents estate and yard sales to select unique antique and vintage pieces to restore.
Located at 1302 N. Main St., the store is open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Call Lisa Steele Lee at 423-304-1089 for more information.