PORT GAMBLE — For antique dealer Sheila Walters, living in House 9 on Rainier Avenue is like living a fairy tale. The old home has unique features from the 1900s that provide the perfect atmosphere for someone who loves turn-of-the-century items and simple utilitarian pieces. Her 9-year-old grandson made the perfect compliment about Walters’ moving into the house in February.

“It’s nice that you have an old house to put your old things in,” she recalled with a laugh of his remark.

But Walters is not just filling her “old house” with her “old things.” She will be selling them, too, in her new shop, Best Friends Antiques. She opened the business with her sister, Martha Segerman, in March in half of the home’s first floor.

Walters has been an antique dealer for the past decade and has been sharing spaces in antique malls with friends but she’s always had the dream of opening her own place.

She came to Port Gamble last year to check out the Sunday Antique Market and thought it would be a nice place to live. Walters began the paperwork in October to rent the home on Rainier Avenue, then rented out her home in Poulsbo and moved in mid-February.

“It’s kind of like a fairy tale living in this house,” she said.

Walters is currently a counselor at North Kitsap High School but will be retiring this June and plans to focus on the business full time. While it’s her first time owning a business, she said it’s no different from being an antique dealer in a mall — she just has a bigger space to put more merchandise. Segerman helps out by watching the store while Walters is at school.

Walters has always been interested in simple, utilitarian pieces from the turn of the 20th century and has always appreciated artwork. But she knows that not everyone shares her tastes, so she keeps a diverse inventory. She also realizes that a majority of her clientele comes from the tour buses that visit Port Gamble on a routine basis during the spring and summer and they don’t want to lug home big purchases. To this end, the merchandise is primarily handheld items, including candlesticks, cake plates, jewelry, kitchen gadgets and old fashioned glass candy containers — when the candy was tasteless but the containers were figurines of famous movie stars or popular icons at the time, Segerman said.

That doesn’t mean they don’t have larger items or furniture though — there is a piece from the 1890s from Vermont made of pumpkin pine and a cabinet from the old Fredrick & Nelson building in Seattle.

“It’s kind of neat to have a little piece of the history here,” Walters said.

Her appreciation for original artwork is prevalent as it covers the walls of the shop. So not to destroy the walls with nails, Walters has taken advantage of the home’s original picture hangers — the crown molding-type piece where in which a hook is placed and pictures are hung from it on a string or wire.

“That’s the way pictures used to be hung,” she said.

A favorite piece of Walters in the store is a print of a simple farm scene in an oak frame from the period of 1890-1910 that hangs above the fireplace. She describes it as serene and peaceful, and it represents, to Walters, what her life will be like in a few months.

“It’s simple life, which soon I will have,” Walters said.