The Foundary

One of my favorite stores to visit when I’m in the Portland area. If you’re looking for anything that can be described as cool or vintage, the foundary will have it. It should also be mentioned that the customer service is exemplary! Support small business! Buy local!

Almost all dressers here are $ 150. But you will find a cool vintage dresser here if you have that budget. The guys running the place are brothers. I’ve met all three. One of them is a smoking fox. I hung out just to stare at him for a while. I have seen amazing mid century lamps here for $ 20. They sell cheap soap and candles too. There is a giant dog here. So if you are scared of dogs don’t go in.

What a great find! I’ve been looking for a dresser for a while now but just haven’t been able to find anything I like at the right price.
I walked into this store today for the first time and they had a better dresser selection than most of the larger used furniture stores I had been to!
The gentleman working there was super friendly. I was in and out in 5 minutes and he and his brother helped put the dresser into my car for me.
I highly recommend this place and I know I’ll be back!

Very cool, interesting items. The furniture is amazing and they are always getting in new things. Aaron and Jake are friendly and not bad to look at!!!

Great store! Awesome customer service! If looking for that hard to find item or just stuff tore-​purpose this is the place to visit, definitely will be visiting on my next trip from San Diego

This is a two-​part review. Part 1 involves a visit to The Foundary on March 3, 2014, when I was killing time waiting for a nearby dinner reservation. I wandered in, and was excited to see so many cool items at very affordable prices. The owner, Nina, was fun and friendly, and agreed to hold my purchases in the shop until I relocated to Portland from Chicago. Great customer service!
Part 2: I returned to The Foundary in either late April or early May 2014 to pick up the items I had purchases from early March. That was when I met Jake, who was super friendly and who had a great customer service orientation, and who explained that his brother, Aaron, was the new owner as of April 1. Jake got my items, confirmed my ID, and I vowed to return.
And return I have! I probably visit once every two weeks on average. I soon met the owner, Aaron. Another great, super customer service man! To vouch for how awesome I think The Foundary is, let me list (to the best of my ability) the cool items acquired at very affordable prices that now adorn my home: three original works of art; one hanging lamp; one floor lamp; one vintage sisal rug; one mid-​century nightstand; assorted books; a variety of ethnic art/​artifacts; one table lamp; a dish or two or three. I’m sure I’ve forgotten some purchases.
Even if I don’t end up buying anything (which is rare), I just enjoy visiting The Foundary because Aaron, Jake and all of the staff are so damned nice! I just feel good when I’m there.

This shop has lots of neat odds ‘n’ ends. It’s a great place to poke around, though the prices are a bit high.
There’s also a bit of dodginess to the items on sale. I know when you run a curio/​antique shop you tend to get stuff where you can, and there are some items that were clearly culled from promotions/​giveaways or company parties.
What really stuck in my craw was I found Chris Ware’s Building Stories for sale. For those not hip to the jive, Building Stories is a graphic novel that comes in a box, with fourteen «books» in different sizes and formats, all coming together to tell a story nonlinearly. Someone had separated and individually priced all the complementary materials of this work, which is pretty not cool and borderline sleazy.

The Foundary is fun! They have a plethora of random found item craft supplies. Playing cards, tiles, fabric scraps, game pieces, puzzle pieces, vintage postcards, old black and white photographs, buttons, you name it. I have definitely enjoyed just spending hours looking through stuff.
The prices seem pretty cheap, but then you realize you have spent $ 30 on just a small stack of papers… yeeowch! Certain things are cheaper than others, and they do have a couple of paper items that are only 1 – 5 cents each, but the 50 cent things really add up. Scrap is a much better deal dollar-​wise, but if you need random upcyclable supplies on this side of town then the Foundry is a good bet.
The Foundry also has a selection of natural fiber only vintage clothing, jewelry, books and décor. Their found art object supplies are much more interesting than the rest of the store, but it is fun to look around through the more standard items too.

I’m surprised this place doesn’t have higher ratings. Interesting selection of odds and ends to peruse, and a small clothing area with really good prices. I snagged a lovely summer dress and a cute wool hat for $ 17. Will drop in here again when I’m in the neighborhood!

I am on a quest to find a cool iron headboard. Full or queen sized. (for either my bed or Princess’).
I’m lusting after a $ 1600 version I saw online. (that’s for me, not Princess, duh).
It’s really, really cool.
I have expensive tastes.
Did I mention how incredibly cool that one was?
sigh.
I’m not going to buy that though, that’s like a mortgage payment plus some.
Nah, I’m out to find me a good one for a lot less.
So when the Foundary put one up on Craigslist, for $ 69, I beelined over there to look at it.
It’s a little hard to find, tucked into a strip of Division with a lot of other stuff. But there is a pile of junk outside that helped me locate it fairly easily, and I got a parking spot RIGHT IN FRONT.
Sorry, I’m still totally wowed by that.
The headboard, although admittedly interesting, was a bit more battered than I would be able to manage, given I didn’t understand how to connect the rusty post bottoms to a bedframe.
I am thrify, but not handy. This has been an issue over time. But we do what we can with that.
There are a lot of cool items in this store and out front. Given that I’m a woman with a mission, I did not allow myself to buy anything else…
but it was really tempting.

The Foundary is one of the best second hand shops I’ve ever visited. My experience was excellent!
I bought:
–a navy blue ¾ sleeve Talbots blazer
–1 cashmere scarf
–1 silk scarf
–1 original painting by a local artist
–1 sparkly hair clip
–1 felted wool side bag from Nepal
Guess how much all this was…
$ 74!!! I could not believe it. And I could have walked away buying so much more.
The owner is very nice and helpful. She does a great job selecting the goods for the store and everything was in good shape.
I was very impressed with the store, the displays, and the customer service. I used to work in a specialty gift shop selling new products and her displays of used items were very well done and cohesive.
The owner even wrapped up my picture in bubble wrap and paper for the car ride home at no extra cost. I still can’t believe I found an original painting that I really like and is my style for $ 38!
I will definitely be back when I’m in Portland. The Foundary is a gem of a shop!

This cozy shop is a treasure trove for crafty people. There are bowls of doodads, game pieces, spools of thread, fabric scraps, ribbon, lace, corks, clip-​on earrings, etc. There’s also a lot of fun local art made from found objects (notebooks, wallets, jewelry, small shrines), plus vintage mirrors, wall hangings, etc. Their vintage-​y jewelry is really cute, though their clothing selection is quite small and so-​so. (However, I like that the place is about stuff and not clothes.)
Other than the stand outs from above, it’s pretty typical SE Portland «stuff»: books, record players, old photos, games, funky boxes, etc. And, as a whole everything is pretty quality; there’s definitely a lot of treasure and very little junk.
Huge perk: The owner is very kind and lets you wander – she doesn’t make you feel bad if you’re just browsing.

Fun arts /​antique store in Southeast.
I have been to Foundary a couple of times now, and even though it’s small, something new always catches my eye. Most of the store would fall into the category of antiques or «found art» and about 25% is local art. Just about everything there is neat to look at and from what I could tell, reasonably priced.
If you’re in the mood to browse for antiques or some inexpensive local art, I highly recommend you put Foundary on your list of places to check out.

I was excited to come to this place, and once I was in there for a little while, I realized, it wasn’t all that great.
They have great items, for prices that I have seen better elsewhere. Most of the items I saw were for $ 6. That was great for some, not so much for most.
This place is an awesome place to go if you are really crafty. They have so many parts and pieces that would help out with just about any craft that you want to delve into. I will definitely come back when I need scrabble pieces, domino’s, corks, game pieces, stamps and jewelry pieces. For anything else, I’ll be going someplace else. Thank you.

I was raised by a treasure hunter. It wasn’t the deep-​sea diving kind, or the summer blockbuster adventure-​of-​a-​lifetime kind, but more of the «let’s take the scenic route and see what we can find» kind.
We’d stop in at every museum and every yard sale. We’d read the signs on every covered bridge we crossed. We took every ghost town tour, looked in every window and opened every drawer.
So of course when I drove up Division the other day and spied a beautiful 3-​foot tall antique water bottle amidst other goodies in the sidewalk, I had to stop. I’m very glad I did.
The Foundary is a true trove of trinkets, designed with the with the scenic-​route wanderer in mind, and priced to reward your your curiosity handsomely. If you aren’t in the market for larger items like a typewriter or antique water bottle (only $ 22!), you can still easily meander on out with a fistful of postcards or buttons or… what even is that exactly? a hair clip? an industrial widget? a kitchen gadget… for, in some cases, well under a buck.
It’s worth your while, lovers of fanciful found objects, to go get lost in the Foundary.