Excerpted from “From Bench to Build-Out,” the lead feature in the upcoming March 2026 edition of INSTORE.
FOR THE BROWN FAMILY, owners of Once Upon a Diamond in Shreveport, LA, it was a full-on construction project.
Steve Brown and his sons Jordan and Nicholas, armed with construction experience from volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity, transformed a tired building into a showcase for vintage jewelry when they opened a decade ago. Jordan and Nicholas also had architecture degrees in their skills arsenal.
“We designed and built the majority of what you see with our own hands,” says Jordan Brown. The building had previously served as a corner store, fast-food restaurant, pet shop, and cubicle-divided office space, each leaving its own challenges behind.
The family’s background gave them the confidence to tackle the massive project. “If we could do it, we did it,” Jordan explains. That philosophy likely saved them hundreds of thousands of dollars in labor costs, though it came with its own price in time and unexpected discoveries.
While they hired contractors for major exterior work — adding a second story, installing a new roof, applying stucco and expanding the entrance for double doors — the Browns tackled the interior themselves. They dismantled cubicles, demolished and rebuilt a bathroom (taking turns with a jackhammer), and painstakingly leveled the floor.
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“We had to tear down 70% of the building ourselves and you don’t know what’s behind those walls,” Jordan recalls. “What you’d think would take four months took double, and the same with the cost of it. The flip side is you end up with a beautiful product.”
“You don’t know what’s behind those walls. What you’d think would take four months took double.”
Drywall proved to be their tipping point. “It took us two weeks to do 20% of it,” Jordan admits. “Then we hired a couple of guys who did the rest of the building in two DAYS. Sometimes it’s worth it to pay a professional. You have to pick and choose your battles. That drywall, I will never do that again. But when you see a professional do it right, it’s pretty cool to watch.”
The renovation consumed their lives for months, with the family working in their original leased location during the day, then putting in four to six more hours at the new space each evening.
“It’s weird to think about what we would bring to the table from architecture, but I learned Photoshop, organizational skills and structural skills, and I look at jewelry like small-scale architecture,” Jordan says.
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Using CAD — the 3D modeling program he mastered in architecture school — allowed everyone to visualize the final result before the first wall came down.
The result is a striking contrast that surprises visitors: a modern black and white exterior gives way to a bold interior rendered in shades of gold, redwood, and charcoal gray. “The burst of enthusiasm and color inside makes you want to circulate and explore,” Jordan explains. “Most people say it’s beautiful and they didn’t expect it.”
PHOTO GALLERY: ONCE UPON A DIAMOND’S REMODEL (9 IMAGES)
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