Caio Pessotti and Ruby Pessotti, owners of Interiors Unlimited, with their son Luca inside their new showroom at 6875 Estero Boulevard on Fort Myers Beach. Photo by Nathan Mayberg
For Ruby Pessotti, making remodeling dreams come true for Fort Myers Beach families has been second nature since growing up on Fort Myers Beach as the daughter of former Interiors Unlimited owners Leslie and Carolise Gooding.
Pessotti’s parents started the business a Santini Marina Plaza in 2004 and Ruby worked with them for eight years before Pessotti and her husband Caio eventually took over the business. After years of planning to expand their store, have built a new design center and showroom in a new building they constructed for their business at 6875 Estero Boulevard on Fort Myers Beach.
On Thursday, they will hold a grand opening for their new design center and showroom at 6875 Estero Boulevard.
For years, the business was located within Santini Marina Plaza. The owners had been planning to open a new showroom when Hurricane Ian hit in 2022, Mrs. Pessotti said.
“We were in the works before Ian and then obviously, not a little bit of a setback there, but we are very excited to be opening soon. We are hoping it will be a great resource for the whole community,” Pessotti said.
“It’s going to be a full design center,” Pessotti said. “We are a general contractor so we can do full remodeling for our old customers but we also provide material for other designers and contractors. We will have all of the materials for home renovations, tiles, cabinetry, we have furniture, window treatments, and then we also have home decor items for retail.”
They have plates, glasses and pillows among other items for remodeling a home.
When Santini Marina Plaza was up for sale before Hurricane Ian, Pessotti and her husband started looking for a new location for their business. They purchased the property at 6875 Estero Boulevard before Hurricane Ian which turned out to be fortuitous. “We got eight feet of water in it (during Hurricane Ian) but we were able to put a temporary construction trailer office on the property which we wouldn’t have been able to do at Santini. It gave us a spot to operate temporarily out of,” she said.
“We went from 1,200 square feet at Santini to 500 square feet in our trailer for the last two and a half years Now, the total building is 17,000 square feet here,” Pessotti said.
They had to move off Fort Myers Beach for a while after Hurricane Ian. They lost their personal vehicles in the storm and were transported off island by the National Guard. They had stuck out the storm after spending a lot of time in the days leading up to the hurricane since they were so busy securing properties they had been working on at the time. “It was a real apocalyptic feeling,” after Ian, Pessotti said. Luckily her condo survived without much damage. All of the work vehicles she and her husband owned were lost. She and Caio spent several months living in friends houses before eventually moving back onto the island.
They spent two and a half years of operating a mini showroom and working out of a trailer. They have been working on constructing their new building for the last 18 months. They did a lot of planting on the front of their property, with more than 70% native plants including sea grapes and royal palms.
Business has changed since then. A lot of their business has been renovating condos, which didn’t return as quickly as condo buildings took time to be restored and reopened. “We are used to people coming to us because they want to do renovations. They are thrilled and excited about getting a new kitchen or a bathroom or new flooring. Whereas after Ian it was heart-wrenching, because it was people coming to us because they lost everything. They didn’t want to do this renovation. We had customers who we had just recently renovated their property and they lost everything,” Pessotti said.
“I grew up here so seeing what happened to our community was really hard for me personally. This is the community I was raised in. I saw people I have grown up with, their family homes get destroyed. That was hard.”
Pessotti said she thinks the town is starting to enter the end of the recovery. “It was hard for us to see people who have lost so much,” she said.
They are sharing the space with John R. Wood Properties. The real estate company has an office in the back.
The new Interiors Unlimited showroom includes furniture that can be custom ordered, as well as any fabric or wood finish. There are a number of samples on display. “We have all the fabrics to choose from,” Pessotti said. There are Sherwood paint samples, cabinets and hardware.
One of the keys to the success of Interiors Unlimited is its location.
“We have found over the years that our customers don’t like to leave the island,” Pessotti said.
Since Hurricane Ian, new homes and reconstruction are focused on being higher elevated, which has also led to more work for Interiors Unlimited.
“Everyone is building up bigger and stronger,” Pessotti said. “It’s nice that we still have the coastal flare to still feel inviting for people to come in.”
Pessotti is excited about the response from the community when they see the new showroom.
“We are really looking forward to it,” Pessotti said.