About an hour into walking the RBX floor, Mackenzie Marx stopped in front of an antique wooden toilet. She had seen it before. More than once, apparently.
“Is it weird if I put a toilet in this collection?” Nope. “Can we put the wooden toilet in it?” Absolutely. “The toilet makes me so happy,” she said. And just like that, the toilet was in.
It would be easy to treat this as the funny story from the day, and it is funny. But after spending an afternoon walking the warehouse with Mackenzie, founder of Mackenzie Marx Interiors, it started to feel like a pretty good introduction to the way she sees things.
She isn't walking through a space looking for a perfectly coordinated set. She isn't particularly interested in what something was supposed to be used for. And she certainly didn't arrive at RBX with a shopping list.
She sees something interesting and starts imagining. Where could this go? What could this become? Who could I make this work for? That instinct became the foundation for Layered Over Time, Mackenzie's collection for RBX.
A room isn't built in a day
When we first started talking about the phrase Layered Over Time, we were thinking literally. Old with new. Traditional with modern. Different materials, textures and periods occupying the same room. Mackenzie saw that, too. She talked about layered lighting, textiles, styling and the dimension that makes your eye move around a space.
But as we walked, another interpretation started to emerge. Maybe layered over time isn't only about what goes together. Maybe it's about time itself. “Good design does take time,” Mackenzie told us. “Think about when you move into a new house. It takes so long to get settled and really feel situated.”
That's increasingly at odds with the way we're encouraged to furnish our homes. See room. Choose aesthetic. Click. Order. Done. Mackenzie isn't opposed to buying something new, or to the convenience of getting exactly what you need when you need it. But trying to manufacture the appearance of a collected home all at once is something else.
She laughed about clients searching Amazon for “antique brass frames.” Her response? Go to a thrift store (though we might suggest coming to RBX ;). “It takes time to find stuff like that and to give a room soul.”
So, what gives a room soul?
We asked her that directly. “Layers,” she said. But not just layers of furniture. It’s about personal history. Mackenzie talked about old family photographs, including one she has of her great-grandmother singing on the radio. A postcard from a meaningful trip might sit unnoticed in a drawer for years. Frame it, put it on a shelf next to a silver tray and a candle, and suddenly it's doing something entirely different.
The object doesn't have to be expensive. It has to mean something. “You can find really cool stuff all day long,” she said. “But there's an added layer when it's something that's personal to you.” That's also why a room doesn't necessarily need to subscribe to one recognizable aesthetic.
Traditional can live with modern. Something ornate can sit next to something simple. The thing you fell in love with five years ago doesn't have to be replaced because you fell in love with something completely different yesterday. In fact, that's where it gets interesting.
The best question might be: What else could it be?
Spend enough time walking RBX with Mackenzie and you'll notice that objects rarely remain whatever their tag says they are. An old radio console? Maybe it's a bar. Maybe a bookshelf. Maybe office storage.
A massive cabinet? China, sure. But maybe it's a collection of silver. Books. Objects gathered while traveling. A Scotch collection.
A punch bowl? One of Mackenzie's cousins recently introduced her to the idea of a “purse bowl”: a bowl near the door where you can empty your keys, wallet and other essentials when switching bags. Suddenly, the punch bowl had another life.
And, according to Mackenzie, almost anything can become a bar if you want it badly enough. This is where her approach to old things gets particularly interesting. She appreciates provenance and craftsmanship, but she isn't interested in turning a home into a museum. The history matters. It just doesn't have to dictate the future.
Pictured: RBX owner Jessica Davis telling the story of this beautiful hand-painted Italian tile to Mackenzie
A little kiss
One of the pieces Mackenzie kept returning to was a group of hand-painted Italian tiles stamped NAPOLI. She began moving them around, studying the pattern and imagining where they could go: a backsplash, a foyer, a breezeway, maybe one wall of a shower. But then her mind moved beyond the tile itself.
If she were designing a room around them, she explained, she might start thinking about Naples and the surrounding region. Perhaps an old photograph from that part of Italy finds its way onto a nearby wall. Not an Italian-themed room. Not something obvious. Just a small thread connecting one object to another. “A little kiss,” she called it. “If you know, you know.”
That phrase might explain Mackenzie's work better than any design label could. Her own three pillars are telling stories, curating over time and elevating every day. Not decorating for the sake of decorating. Finding the small connections that make a space feel like somebody actually lives there.
She grew up around people who made things
Mackenzie's relationship with homes started long before she became a designer. She grew up in Youngstown in a construction family. Her father is a concrete contractor, and she still works with him part-time. Her mother was the person who painted, tiled and tackled projects herself.
Mackenzie remembers going to Home Depot as a kid, stuffing paint swatches into her little purse and taking them home to play with. Years later, she and her mom bought a house in Ohio City and renovated it themselves as a short-term rental. It became their opportunity to experiment. Colors. Textures. Patterns. Things they might have been afraid to try in their own homes.
Guests began asking who had designed it. Mackenzie's answer was essentially, I did. Eventually, after hearing the question enough times, she decided to take it seriously. She studied, took courses, became certified and launched Mackenzie Marx Interiors.
She still credits her mom. “I blame my mom,” she joked.
Why salvage?
This was one question Mackenzie didn't have to think very hard about. Salvage is interesting. It's difficult to replicate. Often, it's one of a kind. But then she got to the part that matters more.
“There are so many really cool, really good things that people have already made,” she said. “Craftsmen have spent so much time building or making or honing.” Why should those things end up in a dump? “It's gorgeous. Let's put it somewhere. Let's make it a focal point. Let's use it.” That's the distinction. Use it. Not save it because it's old. Not preserve it behind glass. Put it back into the world.
How Mackenzie found RBX
Mackenzie's first RBX trip was with her husband, Dillon, who had discovered us online. They came during the winter and stayed for hours. “We kind of looked at it like a museum, not just a salvage shop.” And then, on their way out, they saw a dining table. They did not need a dining table. They bought it anyway.
Mackenzie spent months refinishing it around everything else happening in their lives, and eventually it found its place in their home. “That table is when we totally fell in love with this place.” It wasn't something they had set out to find. Which, by this point in our afternoon together, sounded about right.
Layered over time
Mackenzie's finished collection doesn't look like a room ordered from a catalog. It's not supposed to. There's the wooden toilet she couldn't resist. The Italian tile. Wool rugs. Lighting. Furniture. Architectural pieces. Hardware. Objects with obvious purposes and objects begging for a new one.
Some are quiet. Some are weird. Some need imagination. Together, they're less a prescription for what your home should look like than an invitation to pay attention to what catches your eye. Because perhaps the point isn't to find everything today. Find one thing. Live with it. Find another. Bring home the thing you can't stop thinking about even though you don't know where it's going yet. Let your travels, your family, your tastes and the different versions of yourself add something along the way.
A home with character isn't finished. It's collected.
Explore the Layered Over Time Collection, curated by Mackenzie Marx.
Rebuilders Xchange is open to the public Thursday-Saturday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information on Rebuilders Xchange you can visit our website or our Instagram. For more information about Mackenzie you can visit her website or her Instagram.
