Fonder Living Home Decor: Antiques and Local Art on the Gilmer Square
ETX Uncovered · Gilmer · Published October 27, 2026
Look around the store and the art does a lot of the talking. Abstract canvases in deep blues. A woman curled up in a red dress beside a vase of flowers. A big purple and pink graffiti piece with two words sprayed across the middle: Be You.
Then there are the western oils of a cowboy, a longhorn, and an old boot. Handmade soaps and jewelry. A cabinet of vintage uranium glass glowing green under a blacklight. A sitting area on its way to becoming a tea room. It's a lot to take in. It still feels like someone's living room.
That's on purpose. Courtney Buhmann opened Fonder Living Home Decor on the square in Gilmer last October, and if you ask her what drives it, she doesn't start with furniture. She starts with people.
“I really am about community, fostering new relationships, and helping people feel creative.”
It's a striking thing to hear from someone who spent more than twenty years in the furniture business without really meeting the families who lived with what she sold
A Dozen Makers Under One Roof
Roughly a dozen local artists and artisans show their work at Fonder Living
, and the number keeps shifting as new ones pop in. Juan Baldor, Kelly Gowan, and Monty Graham are among them. Painters, woodworkers, soap makers, jewelry makers. Many of them take commissions, and several give their time to local charities.
Courtney knows what that work costs. One of her painters told her a single piece took him about 30 hours. When a small painting has to sell for $500 or more, she wants people to understand why.
“We can't all be artists. So why should we devalue their craftsmanship?”
She also wants everyone to be able to own something made by hand. So the next step is artist-made home decor, starting with the holidays and growing through 2027. Her long experience with designers comes in handy here too. She'd love to put her artists in front of designers working on special projects, and she works with builders and Airbnb hosts who need a hand finding the right pieces.
A Tea Room in a Furniture Store
About three years ago, Courtney traded the pace of Dallas for small-town life. For a while she kept a little office and still drove back and forth to the city.
Then a spot opened up on the square, and she knew a chance like that might not come around twice. You either take the leap of faith, she says, or it might never happen.
She leapt. Now the store is open Wednesday through Monday, with Sundays for the steady stream of people passing through town. And a sitting area is on its way to becoming a tea room, a place for small groups to come in, sit down, and spend time together. She's still figuring out everything it will be. She already knows what it's for.
She wants Fonder Living to be one more reason people come downtown, and one more reason they stay a while.
“Our restaurants are great. We've got a busy street here.”
From the Middle to the Front Door
Courtney is third generation in furniture. Her family's business is wholesale, which put her in the middle, between the manufacturers and the designers and furniture stores who sold to homeowners. When she joined officially around 2000, being a sales rep meant hauling catalog photos stacked by hand, almost a wheelbarrow full. Later it was an iPad she flipped through at every stop. Always the fabric samples. Always bringing in the new and carrying out the old.
It taught her every style there is, and to this day she won't commit to just one. But her customers were businesses. The families on the other end were someone else's to meet.
When her kids grew up and left for college, she started asking the question a lot of parents ask in that season.
“Is this all I'm ever gonna do in my life? What's the next thing for me?”
The answer, it turned out, was the front door.
Take It Home and See
One regular drives over from Jefferson with photos of her old house on her phone, tall ceilings and all, and she and Courtney work it out together, a piece at a time. Courtney loves it when people bring pictures. A real sit-down design area is coming.
Another couple kept circling back to the same ottoman. On a Saturday, they told her they'd found one online and planned to just order that. Courtney was honest with them. It hurt her heart, she said. She's a small business, and they clearly liked what they were seeing. So she made them an offer: leave a card and an email, take it home for 24 hours, and see it in their own room, because the lighting at home is never the same as the lighting in a store.
On Monday, the wife came back and told her she was right. It worked perfectly.
Sometimes she doesn't sell you anything at all. She'll help you move your own furniture around, find the one or two pieces that make the room, and refresh the pillows or bedding. It's not just a furniture store. It's somebody who wants to know how you actually live.
Fonder Means to Love Again
Courtney picked the name for its meaning: to love again. It fits the store's mix of new furniture from brands that have lasted for decades, alongside vintage and antique finds that someone loved once already.
Her advice is simple. Spend on what you live in: the sofa, the lounge chairs, the barstools where everybody gathers, the bed frame that should outlast several mattresses. Have fun with the rest. And if you find a good antique, think twice before painting it. Often the reason it lasted this long is that nobody did.
Because a home is never really finished, she says. For Courtney, living fonder means surrounding yourself with things that tell your story.
“A beautiful home isn't created overnight or purchased from one collection. It's gathered over time, filled with memories, meaningful objects, and pieces you simply couldn't leave behind.”
It's right there in the store's tagline: Find it. Love it. Live Fonder.
Why I Interviewed Courtney
The first time I walked into Fonder Living, there was so much to look at, and somehow it still felt like walking into someone's home. I wanted to know who was behind it.
What I found was someone who left a career in the middle of the furniture business to finally sit across from the people she's helping. She lends out ottomans, makes room for a dozen local makers, and is building a tea room in a furniture store. A year in, local makers hang their work on her walls and regulars bring her photos of their living rooms.
ETX Uncovered exists to highlight the people building meaningful things in East Texas, the ones you might walk right past if you don't slow down and look closer.
Know a business owner building something meaningful in East Texas? I'd love to hear about them.
Fonder Living is a home decor, furniture, antique, and local art shop on the square in Gilmer, open Wednesday through Monday. Find them in the ETX Directory
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