Prop shop opens in Winter Garden

WINTER GARDEN Spotlights once used in a theme park, a bright pink saddle, a turquoise chair and a stool Justin Timberlake once sat on. 

These are all items you could stumble upon when visiting Central Florida Furniture/Props/Sets and Staging. 

The store, which opened Jan. 15, is the latest project of Tim and Joyce Fake of Fake Productions. 

“We have everything,” Tim Fake said. “We have leftover Halloween props. We have items that were in some movies.”

Fake Productions is a production support company that works with shows and other productions, often working for clients such as theme parks. When production is complete, Fake Productions often receives the props and other supplies used in production back from the client.

After years of productions, the number of leftover props has created a storage problem. So the Fakes saw opening a store as a way to do something meaningful with props they no longer need.

The shop is a collision of passions and talents.

The range of products in the store come from the various projects the Fakes have worked on through the years of owning Fake Productions, as well as furniture and other collectible items the Fakes have gathered throughout the years. 

“We have everything. We have leftover Halloween props. We have items that were in some movies.” — Tim Fake

Several years ago, Joyce Fake became interested in refinishing and repurposing furniture, and she picked up the hobby.

“I always had the thought in my mind I would like to have a store someday,” she said. 

Store manager and longtime friend Robin Groves is helping to make that thought a reality. Groves also shared a similar passion for decorating furniture. 

In recent years, Joyce Fake’s passion for furniture has somewhat faded to make way for a new passion — Burundi Christian Ministries. But the store is keeping both passions alive, with a portion of the proceeds benefiting the ministry and the Fakes’ own Fort Barachel Foundation. That aspect of the business is what Groves calls “the heart and soul of the store.” 

The building the store is housed in used to be a skate park. Although most of the skate park closed, the Fakes maintained the Fort Barachel ministry, which allows children, specifically those who are involved in sports played at a skate park, to have a safe place to skate. The group participates in Bible studies, serves and skates together.  

Joyce Fake’s passion for Burundi stemmed out of a mission trip at her church, First Baptist Church Windermere. For several years, a friend asked her to go on a trip to Burundi, and finally Joyce agreed to go in 2014.

“I just fell in love with the country,” she said. 

The ministry runs an orphanage and church in the country, which is one of the poorest and hungriest countries in the world and is currently embroiled in a political crisis. 

Joyce continues to volunteer with Burundi Christian Ministries and keeps up relationships she made in Burundi. 

Contact Jennifer Nesslar at [email protected].