Meet Josh Ashley of Office Environment!
How do you like to spend your off time?
I like building things, anything from art to furniture to legos. Recently, I just helped a friend build a deck for his pool.
Have you always wanted to be in the furniture business?
Not particularly. I dropped out of high school and joined a carpentry crew. While working there, my friend convinced me to take the ACT and apply to college. When I applied, the University of Montevallo’s Theatre Department gave me a full presidential scholarship because they needed me to help make all their sets. The skills I gained there helped me look at an alternative to standard carpentry and helped me create atypical art in my free time. Later on, I was at Montevallo and needed a part time job. I went to an employment service in Shelby County and filled out forms, and first job that came up was line cook at Waffle House. I declined that job and the next job was a warehouse employee at furniture employee in Pelham. I accepted that job and have been in the furniture business ever since. Everyone has a Waffle House story, and this one is mine.
What drew you to the Container Yard?
I took my current job a little over three years ago and was working out of my basement at the time. I came to the grand opening of Container Yard and thought it was a really cool environment. I told my boss about it and he said we got to get you in here and the rest is history.
What was your favorite part of helping design the new space with furniture and art?
I enjoy watching Stacy’s process of inspiration from images to space planning (which I was happy to help with) and seeing it all come together. It’s so much nicer from where we were before. It made me want to help it be as much as it could be. We lucked into some good deals on some furniture.
As for the art, we had a handful of large pieces that fit the scale of the space, but we had small stuff on Marine Street. So, Stacy gave me free range of the small stuff and I was able to create the art wall from that.