Tim Green’s passion is finding unique antiques to buy and sell, while his bread and butter is restoring those owned by other people.

After eight years in the antique restoration business in Fairhope, Alabama, Green has moved back home and recently purchased the old Greyhound bus stop building on North Jackson and West Court streets. He’s calling the new business The Old Bus Stop Trading Post and Antique Restorers.

Friday, he’ll officially open his doors at 1:30 p.m. for a ribbon-cutting reception.

Green has been working long days and late into the night to get the building, which was most recently a gift store and pawn shop, ready for customers. He’s cleaned, painted and spruced. The white tile floors were stained black with just enough scuffs and scratches to give it a distressed look.

He’s been staging areas of the showroom in the 3,000-square-foot building, which has a 600-square-foot shop for restoration work in the back.

Green’s plan is to offer antique and contemporary furniture and home decor with artwork for sale. He’s filled the showrooms with many of his treasures, like the 1903 Edison Amberton, which plays wax cylinders much like a phonograph.

Green cranked the handle and it finally started playing a brass band instrumental.

“I’ve never seen one of these, I mean never. I don’t know how rare it is. I haven’t gone online to look,” he said. “Everybody who has seen it has never seen one. I didn’t even know they made these things. It’s similar to the player piano.”

He hopes to attract antiques vendors who will want to lease space to sell their own items in his store. He’s offering everything from large spaces in the showroom to a shelf area in a book case. One of the unique areas to become a vendor space will be the stalls in the bus stop’s pay toilets. The doors still have the locks, which cost 10 cents for passengers to use when the bus stop was in operation. He’s donating one of the doors to Lincoln County Historical Museum. The toilets will be removed and the spaces set up for vendors’ merchandise.

Green loves to shop for antiques so one of the services he’ll offer is a search for customers. Looking for something unique for a collection? Green might can find it. If he does, he said he’ll negotiate a price that will be mutually beneficial to both himself and his customer.

Two of the glass cases in the store are already leased and one will soon be filled with war memorabilia, while the other will hold glasswear, he said.

Green wants to be involved in the community, and is hosting a reception for the inaugural Jimmy Moreton Mardi Gras 5K Saturday. The 5K Run/Walk and fun run, sponsored by the Mississippi State University Alumni Association, will begin and end at the Old Bus Stop. For more information about the 5K, call Will Thibodeaux at 601-757-8880.

Green will open the shop to customers Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.