A woman had found a busted Sesame Street lamp just like the one her husband remembered having as a child. It wasn’t his original lamp, but she wanted to get it working again for his office. She brought it to Ashley Zaworska and David Nebert, two Seattle designers with a knack for fixing things.
The pair replaced the original plastic globe with glass, cleaned up the aging plastic parts, and added a few personal touches, including the family’s initial and a hand-painted sign in place of the original sticker. It was a pretty elaborate restoration for a Sesame Street lamp, but at their new Ballard repair shop, projects like this are fun.
The business is called We Fix Old Stuff, a straightforward name for a place where just about anything might come through the door. So far, that’s included vintage radios, a silver-plated designer candlestick, a perfume caddy, and several old toasters. They’ve also taken in a smoking table dating to around the 1930s. Some customers arrive with cherished family belongings, while others simply need an old desk lamp rewired. If a project falls outside the shop’s expertise, the founders will try to find someone who can help.
We Fix Old Stuff co-founders Ashley Zaworska and David Nebert.
Photo by Kyle Johnson
For Nebert, who has spent much of his career designing, fabricating, and restoring lighting, the variety is appealing. “I was missing getting new puzzles every day and working with old, old fixtures, antiques, vintage things,” he says. “There’s just a lot more there, a lot more freedom, more artistic license at times. It’s very meditative for me.”
Nebert grew up in Cincinnati and studied product design before finding his way into lighting. After working for a designer and fabricator in Portland, he moved to Seattle and spent six years at Harold’s Lighting, a longtime showroom with a repair shop in the back. He later joined Seattle’s Ladies & Gentlemen Studio before deciding he wanted to pursue his own designs.
Zaworska, who moved to Seattle in 2011, spent years working as an architect before establishing her own practice. The two connected over a shared interest in design and founded Moon Moon Lighting Co. in 2022, creating sculptural lighting inspired by the flora and fauna of the Pacific Northwest.
The repair business came about almost by accident. Friends and family began bringing broken objects into the Moon Moon workshop, and Nebert was happy to have the occasional restoration project again. Zaworska noticed how much he enjoyed it and began to see the possibilities.
“This actually aligns with our values, and you [Nebert] really enjoy this work, and it seems like people really need this,” she recalls thinking.
Fan restoration in progress at We Fix Old Stuff’s Seattle Restored pop-up shop, which operated earlier in 2026.
Photo by Growing Boy Media
They pitched the idea of a pop-up repair shop to Seattle Restored, a program that helps small businesses test concepts in vacant commercial spaces. They eventually secured a storefront in Lake City and opened in March 2026. By the time the pop-up closed in August, they were convinced the business was worth continuing. Earlier this month, We Fix Old Stuff reopened in their Ballard workshop, sharing a space of a little over 1,000 square feet with Moon Moon.
For Nebert, working on older objects also offers a connection to the people who made them. While taking apart chandeliers from the early 1900s, he’s discovered tiny dots and dashes left by the original craftspeople to guide assembly, marks that have remained hidden inside the fixtures for more than a century. It’s a chance to see how things were put together, right down to the smallest details.
Some of the most memorable moments have come when customers pick up their finished pieces. One mother had a childhood lamp restored as a housewarming gift for her daughter, while others have called loved ones on video to show them the results. “People are coming to you with these cherished items or things they just don’t wanna throw away,” Nebert says. “And we get all the backstory, and these can be very emotive pieces for them.”
Repairing old belongings also keeps usable things out of the landfill, though Zaworska says that customers don’t necessarily need an environmental argument to convince them. “I found that people’s attitudes have already changed,” she says. “And they just don’t know where to go or how to do it.”
Zaworska and Nebert hope to make the shop a place where people can find help with almost anything that needs fixing (the before-and-after photos of their work are pretty impressive). They’ve already hired a metalworker who teaches jewelry making at Pratt Fine Arts Center and want to bring in more specialists as the business grows. They’re also building relationships with local craftspeople who can handle repairs beyond their expertise, including furniture and upholstery work.
The response to the shop has also changed how Zaworska thinks about her own career. “I would never, in a million years, [have] predicted that it’s the most rewarding job I’ve ever had,” she says. “And I say that having designed people’s houses.”
Architecture is incredibly rewarding, too, she adds, but the repair shop allows her to help a much wider range of people—a difference she hadn’t anticipated when they first opened their doors.
We Fix Old Stuff is located at 4818 14th Ave. NW in Ballard. Drop-offs and pickups are available Friday, 10 a.m.-7 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., with a daily closure from 1:30-2:30 p.m. Weekday visits are by appointment.
