LUCAS, Ohio – Getting a business up and running can be bone-breaking work – literally.
Just ask Barb Mullins, who broke both of her wrists about eight weeks ago while preparing to reopen Lucas Hair Designs, a beauty salon she has been a part of for 30 years.
But the journey to the grand re-opening started well before her injury. It started not long after Mullins came to an agreement to purchase the shop from previous owner Sharyn Hoffman last June.
With the building in need of a facelift, Mullins hired a contractor to make changes to her new business, which she said had a lot of water damage because of a flat roof.
The roof was one of the major replacements.
“They had to do the roof in sections, and they started at the back of the building, which the entire building back there had sunk 8 to 10 inches in the ground,” Mullins said. “So I had them raise up the entire floor and redo all the structural stuff back there.”
More problems arose during the remodeling phase.
“When [the contractors] took the weight of the roof off, the west and the east walls fell,” she said. “I come in and they had them propped up, and if you touched them they wiggled.
“So I said, ‘well, push them over – you can’t repair them and they’re in such bad shape – just push them over with your hand,’ and that’s what they did.”
Replacing the walls caused the re-opening to be delayed. What was supposed to take two months to remodel took almost seven.
The hair salon officially re-opened in late September.
“All last winter, the shop didn’t have any insulation or anything – it was pretty cold, but we kept working the whole time,” she said. “Then when I got the go-ahead [to start], we worked in the morning and in the afternoon. After we closed, I started ripping walls down.”
Most of the demolition was done internally by Mullins and a few others.
“I’m pretty good with a sledgehammer,” she said.
During that time, Mullins and her staff worked temporarily out of her mother’s in-home salon on Hastings East Road – near Malabar Farm. Mullins said she and her stylists did everything they could to make their customers happy and often picked them up or met them in Lucas to get them to the shop.
Mullins’ mother, Sue Kurtz, has owned the in-home salon since 1972, and it is where Mullins first found her passion for cosmetology.
“I never dreamt growing up what I was going to do,” Mullins said. “I just knew I was going to do hair – I don’t know why.”
As a teenager, she studied cosmetology at Pioneer Career and Technology Center, where she now substitute teaches. She did her internship at Lucas Hair Designs and started working at the salon in May of 1985.
She has also recently attended North Central State College, where she earned her associate’s degree in business.
“I grew up in Lucas, my family was from here, and I never really wanted to go to a big town,” she said. “I love what I do, I love the people I work with, and I love my customers.”
As things began to settle down and much of the major structural work to the building completed, a setback again struck Mullins as she went to the building to do some cleanup.
“I was putting rubble in the dumpster, and I fell and broke both my wrists,” she said.
The injury left her unable to complete the work necessary to open the shop – including painting the interior.
Mullins said she used Facebook to ask her friends for help, which, she added, was not easy.
“I cried when I did it, but I said, ‘Please, anybody who wants to help me paint, we’re having a painting party tomorrow so we can get the shop open,” she said.
Several friends and customers came to her aid – even when they didn’t know what they were doing.
“A couple of them were like, ‘I’ve never painted before in my life,’” she said. “And I was like, ‘Oh, here have a paintbrush.’”
With the support of the community and her family, Mullins said she is finally back at her second home.
“This has been a struggle, but you’ve got to live by faith that God’s going to get you there,” she said. “I mean you’ve got to help yourself, but at the same time, you’ve got to have faith that He’s going to get you there.”
Lucas Hair Designs, 9 N. Union St. in Lucas, is open every day but Sunday and has four stylists – Mullins, Susie Davis, Karen Nolen, and previous owner Hoffman.
The business provides hairstyling for children, women, and men. Mullins and her crew also do bridal parties, coloring, perms, sets, face waxing, pedicures, acrylics, gel nails, and many different kinds of manicures.
“We can also do facials if they want a facial,” Mullins said. “Anything they want and we’re licensed to do, we’re willing to do it. And if we don’t know how to do it, we’ll go somewhere and learn how to do it.”
For information on the business or to schedule an appointment, call 419-892-2022.
“I would love to see more businesses come here. I think we’re a great hub – I mean we have [Interstate] 71 out here now, which I know they talked about for years and years, and nobody thought it would come,” she said. “Well, it’s here now, and we have easy access to that, and we’re kind of in the middle of Mansfield, Perrysville, Bellville, Loudonville, and Ashland; and we get a lot of people from there.”
