Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
You wouldn’t realize this was previously a heavily oak paneled medical suite in the color scheme of Brown. Nor would you think that the space was reincarnated into this design fever dream by someone who worked in the corporate world straight out of high school.
Nickole grew up in Dayton, attended Trotwood High School, and immediately entered into corporate jobs at Bank One and Ameritech.
She was 30 before she went to cosmetology school. Her first job doing hair was at Derailed in the Oregon District.
In 2008, Nickole moved to Seattle to strike out on her own, opening the salon Bang, which successfully expanded to multiple locations.
“I emptied everything I had — my 401K from the bank and phone company, my savings — and I started Bang. I opened four shops in five years.”
In Spring 2020, COVID-19 shut down salons for three months, and they wouldn’t be allowed to operate at full capacity for another nine.
That difficult time coincided with the Capitol Hill Occupied Protest in downtown Seattle. The self-declared autonomous zone was established by people protesting the May 2020 killing of George Floyd by a police office in Minneapolis. Nickole had two shops in the middle of the protest area.
“It was awful. It was bizarre to watch the police militarize against people so quickly. The National Guard was outside with tanks and helicopters. We set up a makeshift triage. We were volunteering and feeding protestors and washing teargas out of kids’ eyes in shampoo bowls. I can just now talk about it without sobbing.”
“In the middle of the protests I had to come home to Dayton for a funeral. I got back to Seattle to smashed windows and I just thought, I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“Seattle is such a grind. You can never slow down because you just have to keep up. COVID was the first time that I realized I was burned out.”
Nickole hired an operations manager for her salons and returned to Dayton. She sold the last Bang location just months ago.
She decided to channel her creativity into her new Dayton home. Perhaps you have noticed the unusually large triple lot with black house and inground pool on Patterson Road while driving downtown, and wondered who was behind it. The answer is Casey Nickole. The house was built around 1880 but had been used as a commercial office building with many of its original interior features stripped away.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
“I found old maps from Sanborn Insurance Company. There used to be a church next to the house. Back then, when you tore something down, you just dumped it and covered it. So when we went to dig for the pool, they found silverware, glasses, cups. All the limestone I landscaped with I found in the ground — it was the foundation from the church.”
“Every detail of that house was so meticulously executed. I picked every piece of tile, every piece of wallpaper, every color. I designed a kitchen for a short person — I’m 5 feet — that’s why there were no high cabinets.”
Nickole struggled with what she experienced as a disconnect between Permitting and Landmarks in downtown Dayton, and after three years of perfecting and inhabiting Patterson House, she decided to put it up for sale.
Credit: Contributed
Credit: Contributed
The listing got picked up by the popular @ZillowGoneWild Instagram account, which is now an HGTV show — a “celebration of America’s weirdest, wildest and wackiest homes for sale”, according to the channel.
While the post generated both praise and criticism for her style and renovations, she had to turn her phone off because of the amount of inquiries from near and far.
“When you design things with a certain amount of consciousness in it, but then you get people who are just being critical for the sake of the social currency attached to the internet, that response is so icky.”
“The commentary on Zillow Gone Wild was bonkers. A lot of people who don’t know what they’re talking about. It was such a surreal experience, being judged so harshly. That to me was a turning point for the internet. It was a funny gut check — the internet’s not real, and just because someone says something on the internet doesn’t mean it’s true.”
It sold on first offer at more than $1 million.
Nickole, 48, now lives in a peach-colored Mid-Century split-level in Kettering with 13-year-old Bird, whom she affectionately calls “The Kid(™)”.
DIY DAYTON
“Dayton has always been very DIY. The music scene was pivotal for me. In the 90s it was unparalleled to anywhere else. I started going to shows at New Space and raves at Brookwood Hall, off of Rip Rap Road, when I was 12. Green Day and Fugazi played here. I was around when Brainiac was around. Network was a record store on North Main in the Santa Clara District. There used be a music festival here called the Northern Music Festival, tons of great hardcore bands.”
“There was a lot of DIY creativity that came from people that did not grow up in privilege or have access to entertainment, so they just did it.”
“There are still great bands here. I love the renaissance of making zines and putting on shows. I think that we’re on the beginning of a backlash to the internet, or at least I’m hoping. My kid, who is thirteen, told me that Instagram is toxic. I think that real, live music, engaging with people, will become more important. I really love when people put their phones down and do a thing, rather than just watching a thing.”
LET THEM EAT CAKE
“I get up at 6 every morning, about an hour before I get the kid up so I can have coffee, do dog stuff, dry my face out via the fireplace. I have two dogs — Lucy and Chicken, English Bulldog and Pug.”
“I eat cake for breakfast. I buy a slice every week at DLM and eat a few bites with my coffee every morning and it makes me so happy. Truly I am a fascinating woman.”
“I get the kid up. Pack lunch, drop the kid off at school. They go to Stivers for theatre.”
OAK CENTRAL
“And then I come here. We have nails, skin, hair, so many tattoo artists. I am either with clients doing hair, or creating spaces for people who have rented them. I pick every paint color, every swatch of fabric, every piece of furniture, every piece of tile. I did this whole thing.”
“Design has been a passion out of necessity. When I started renting apartments in Dayton, Ohio in the mid-90s, they were all garbage. I always wanted to make things better than I found them. I would describe my style as chaotic and kind of retro-inspired.”
“I had driven past this building a million times. It was brown, an old medical building. What attracted me to it was every night when I drove by, I could see through the glass into the foyer. I could tell it was a Mid-Century split level and I was very charmed by the idea of the grand entryway. I love this 1960 building and wanted to keep a lot of the Mid-Century vibes.”
The interior was demolished down to the concrete floors, and redone in Nickole’s Maximalist style. She has added back in Mid-Century Modern details, such as fluted tile on the walls and glass pocket doors to the private studios.
“This was oak door central, baby! Doctors offices that hadn’t been renovated since the 80s. Tons of carpet. Windows had been dry-walled over.”
PLAYING PING PONG
Her office is outfitted with an orange tweed built-in booth from ReStore, Dayton’s Habitat for Humanities donation shop, and the walls are painted salmon pink. The upstairs studios are 80% occupied, and Nickole spends every day adding to the interior design.
“Last Friday I had three hair appointments. I would do a hair appointment and then run back to painting a mural in Studio 7, and just ping pong between both.”
“I did an hour and a half of bookkeeping, and then I went home.”
“I do the Instagram, all the promotion. I’m currently trying to learn how to use Canva. It’s just me. I do all of the back end, all of the front end, and everything in between. My goal for 2025 is better work-life boundaries.”
WORK IN PROGRESS
On the labyrinthine downstairs level, some studios are in progress and some are used to store Nickole’s furnishings and fixtures that lay in wait. The former medical building’s footprint is still noticeable down here, a maze of one small room leading into another. In one sits an old cage for pharmaceuticals and floor-to-ceiling filing cabinet that glide on casters, both original to the medical center.
One room is simply full of toilets waiting to be painted to match specific tile, like the fire engine red bathroom a few doors down.
“There are one billion bathrooms,” said Nickole as she led the way through a powder room coated in silver glitter epoxy.
“The reason that I’m independently employed is because I do not like being told no and I don’t compromise very well. I tend to think that more is more, in a good way. My brain is chaos.”
BACK HOME
“It’s total kid time. Unless I go see live music I really don’t go out. Right now we’re blowing through Gilmore Girls.”
“It’s also house renovation time still. I have a million unfinished projects there. I just finished tiling the mudroom off of the garage. I’m very invested in restoring that property back to all Mid-Century details. Sadly they had painted everything gray and put down LVP floors. I would have bought the house exactly as-is. I annihilated it.”
“If I’m lucky I’m in bed at 9:30 after lots of skincare. Getting old is hard. My go-to-bed ritual is making sure all the dishes are in the dishwasher, wiping down all the counters, grinding coffee and setting up the coffeepot for the next day. And then I go to bed.”
STARTING OVER
“My therapist talked me into this circle once, and she said why did you go to hair school? I said I wanted to get out of the corporate world and be responsible for generating my income with my own hands. But eight years into Bang I wasn’t doing hair anymore and I relied on other people. Every shop had a manager and then they had an operations manager. I was so ambitious and successful that I was back to being in an office.”
“A lot of salon owners, their goal is to get out from behind the chair. I did that and I hated it. This is like starting over — it’s just me again.”
“I love doing hair again. I missed the one-on-one connection you have with someone and helping them be seen in the world the way they want to be seen. Even if it’s vanity, for a lot of people it’s identity.”
SHAG’s motto, from a Fleetwood Mac song, is “Go your own way”.
MORE INFO
Find out more about SHAG and schedule an appoint at www.shagdayton.com and on Instagram @shagdayton.
For a peek inside, check out the Valentine’s Day themed SHAG Dayton Open House on February 8th from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. at 1126 S Main Street in Dayton.
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