NATCHEZ — To some, it was just an old fruit stand.

To Jan Shell, it was an opportunity to put her philosophy of reusing everything into good practice.

Shell recently opened Shabby Chic and Unique Emporium, an antiques and hand-made goods shop, but just as unique as the eclectic collection inside is the shop itself.

For 40 years, Shell’s mother, Gay Sullivan, had operated in the same 548 U.S. 61 North location as Shabby Chic, running the open air Gay’s Fruit Stand, which closed in 2010 after 40 years at that address.

Shell knew she wanted to have a shop where she could sell antiques and hand-made items, but the open-air setup wasn’t exactly conducive to an antiques-shop atmosphere.

But everything was there to make it right.

The fruit stand had a small antiques shop in the back from Sullivan’s days, but it was much too small for what Shell had in mind. It had a rusty tin roof that needed re-placing, and a separate building that at one time housed the fruit stand’s cooler.

“The stand originally started on D’Evereux Drive, and then they moved it out to Liberty Road before moving it here in 1970,” Shell said. “That cooler has moved to every location the fruit stand went to.”

Shell and her husband went to work two years ago, taking the walls out of the antiques shop and bringing them into the open-air portion of the fruit stand, replacing the chain-link fencing across the structure with walls that were both new and yet original to the structure.

They replaced the tin roof with a new one, taking the old tin and bringing it inside, in-stalling it as a ceiling.

The cooler building was painted and outfitted with shelves, and flooring was installed over most of the stand’s concrete pad. The front part of the stand had been uncovered, so Shell had the porch roof of an old service station from downtown Roxie installed over it.

“It’s still the same building, but we kind of moved everything around and reorganized it,” she said. “I wanted that rusty tin ceiling, the rustic look — that’s why I settled on the name ‘Shabby Chic and Unique,’ because we are kind of shabby here, but we are unique.”

Those who knew the fruit stand when it was operational come in and are amazed at what they find, Shell said.

“I have had tons of people come in who were customers of my mom’s forever at the fruit stand who have said, ‘I would have never dreamed it would

look like this, that it was the same place,’” she said.

“Other people say how much character it has got be-cause we recycled, and used all the stuff of the old fruit stand — it is still here.”

The building itself may be the largest single, repurposed thing at the business, but it’s hardly alone. While Shell offers lots of items one will find in a typical antiques shop, she’s also stocked it with items she has creatively helped give new life.

“I love recycling and making different things out of old things,” she said. “If it is a broken chair leg, I can make something of it.”

She’s not joking about the chair leg — in one corner, she has a little girl’s dress rack made with parts of an old chair and fence posts.

And despite its ignoble origins, the rack looks like it could be sold in a furniture store catering to clients who would be a little picky about having anything built with fence posts in their houses.

In another part of the store, Shell has a writing desk she made by repurposing an old door and an end table.

“I sold a bunch of stuff over the holidays, and so I had a big hole along the wall, so the weekend after Christmas I spent it making new things to put in here,” she said.

For the traditional antiques hunter, there are plenty of those as well.

Shabby Chic and Unique Emporium is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Thursday through Saturday.

Starting the last week of February, it will be open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

Shell said she also plans to bring some fruit stand operations back to the front porch sometime in the spring.

For more information, call 601-431-3278.