In Good Taste offers vintage furniture, collectibles

The day Jeanne and Jose Ramirez offered to buy the vacant building once known as Heiss’ Steak & Seafood House, Jeanne Ramirez visited the Nevada State Library and Archives around the corner to find out what she could about the building’s history.
Once there, she found some expert help, too.
“I ran into Guy Rocha,” Nevada’s state archivist, said Ramirez.
She and Rocha discovered that the more than century-old structure had been, among other things, a Laundromat and a resident for local Teamsters.


Originally, it was the home of George Kitzmeyer, a local businessman who ran a furniture store and an undertaker’s service next door at what is today Joe Mango’s Cafe.
Now the Telegraph Street landmark will be known as In Good Taste, a vintage collectibles shop owned and operated by the building’s new owners.
“A lot of people come in here and point over there and say ‘My table (at Heiss’) was right there,’ and a lot think it’s going to be another restaurant because it’s called In Good Taste,” said Ramirez. “But I hated to change the name.”
In Good Taste is the same name as a store that Jeanne Ramirez and her parents operated for a decade in Fallon. The original store closed in 1990 when Ramirez and her husband Jose relocated to the Carson City area, where she launched a career as a real estate agent and he went into construction work.
Keeping their day jobs
Today, Jose owns and operates Accutech Construction while Jeanne sells real estate for Coldwell Banker, which she plans to continue to do in her hours away from the shop.
That construction and real estate background proved helpful when they started to restore the building after buying it in October 2016.
“My husband was the general contractor, I was the labor and we hired several subcontractors for the carpeting (and) electricity,” said Ramirez.
The makeover took seven months. They replaced most of the electrical wiring, added air conditioning, refurbished the building’s boarded-up windows and ripped up the old shag rug and installed new carpeting everywhere except in the room that was once the kitchen. In that room, the original wood floor is waiting to be redone. They also removed five layers of paint, paneling and plaster to expose the original brick walls throughout most of the 1,800-square-foot store.
“The brick came from Minden,” said Jeanne Ramirez. “It’s called sand mold and doesn’t contain any clay.”
The remaining walls — painted black by Heiss’ operators — were re-plastered and painted Red Velvet Cake red and Rolling Pin yellow.
“A friend, who does ‘home staging,’ picked out the colors,” said Ramirez.
Shopping for merchandise
At the same time they were gutting the building, Jeanne Ramirez was busy buying furniture, vintage clothing and other collectibles to sell in the shop. She bought up the entire contents of two local estates, finding prize possessions such as the Civil War-era baby grand piano now for sale in the store.
Again her background in real estate came in handy. Ramirez said she routinely gets calls from real estate agents she knows and trustees of estates that she’s worked with in the past offering to let her peek at the contents of estates before they go on sale. If she likes what she sees, she makes an offer for the entire estate — keeping some pieces and disposing of others — or she pays a little more for just the items she wants for the store.
Ramirez likes to collect pieces from the 1920s through the 1950s, but has items from other periods, including antique dolls, fly rods, suitcases and trunks, framed Beatles’ record album covers and a 70 year-old phonograph on which she plans to play some of the vinyl LPs.
She hopes to fill the room that once served as the building’s kitchen with old kitchen collectibles such as utensils and tablecloths. She just added bookcases for her own collection of rare and collectible books.
Mostly, says Ramirez, the store is stocked with reasonably-priced furniture. A typical dresser, for example, is priced from between $50 and $500.
Auctions and flea markets
About once a month Ramirez also hits auctions and flea markets throughout California, hauling a 12-foot cargo trailer behind her Jeep Grand Cherokee to carry back her found treasures. Last week she was on her way to the Bay Area to replenish what she had sold on the store’s opening day.
“We sold a lot of furniture and some small things,” including a bedroom set, a chaise lounge and several dressers, said Ramirez.
Ramirez was pleased with the store’s opening, especially considering she hasn’t advertised. She said the local wine walk on Saturdays helped bring in foot traffic as did the new sign outside the store.
Another event — a block party being hosted by Joe Mango’s Café, the Carson City Nugget and In Good Taste on May 19 — should bring in more shoppers. But it’s probably the Ramirez’s various connections to the community that attract people.
“I’m with the hospital auxiliary and a lot of women from that want to see the shop,” said Ramirez. “And in the real estate world a lot of people want to see what happened to Heiss’s.”
Like the original store in Fallon, In Good Taste will be family owned and operated. The Ramirez’ three daughters will work there occasionally, and their grandchildren are eager to help out.
“I think our 12-year-old granddaughter cleaned every piece of furniture in here and our eight year-old grandson wants to help move everything,” sahe said.