Wednesday

For years, Wednesday and her husband built a life around his small plumbing company in Estes Park—“a true family business,” she calls it.

“Our daughter would work for him some. I would work for him some . . . but it’s construction work. My husband [started] thinking that it might be time for us to think about, in the long term, what we’ll do.”

Besides the plumbing business, though, Wednesday’s resume listed only boutiques: she’d worked in two shops in Estes Park. She’d always imagined opening her own but never seriously pursued the dream.

“I was pretty happy and content with what we were doing, but my husband was like, ‘What if I invest in your dream, and then one day I come work for you when I can’t do construction work anymore?’” 

Wednesday opened Tarnish Boutique, which used to be nestled along downtown Loveland’s North Cleveland Avenue, in 2024.

She chose her shop’s unique name for two reasons:

“When I was working towards building it, I was 49 going on 50, so . . . I was feeling a little bit tarnished in life, you know? I have a little more age on me, a little more time on me.  . . . And then my husband; he’s a plumber. He works with copper pipe and stuff. . . . He pulls out the old pipe to put in new—and that’s just the job and obviously necessary—but I would always look at that pipe and be like, ‘Oh, that’s so beautiful. The tarnish on it is so pretty.’”

“And so the name is just kind of relating, I think, the fact that a plumber was going to be helping me build this—and that was our livelihood and supported us before . . . and then also my stage of life, not that it’s a derogatory thing. [I’m] focusing on the beauty of tarnish and not the negatives, not the throwaway of it.”

Now, as Tarnish has moved into Pilar Boutique’s former space on East Fourth Street, Wednesday is optimistic. The new spot should bring in more foot traffic. And she’s grateful to Pilar’s owner, Ana, who kindly advocated for Tarnish—an example of small business collaboration that Wednesday believes sets a good tone for the city. 

“Like Pearl Street or Old Town, Fort Collins, people shop where you can go from store to store.”

She envisions East Fourth Street transforming into a similar hotspot one day.

“In the boutique world, I think the best way to have a good community isn’t to compete with each other but to complement each other and have, ‘What you can’t find at my boutique, maybe you can find at Cloz to Home, or The Collab, or Vintage Willows,’ and vice versa.”