PITTSBURG, Kan. — For more than 26 years, the McNair family has been helping clients remodel or furnish spaces that fit their needs.  

“Our main goal is to make your house feel like a home, not just a house,” Timbrelee McNair, the original owners’ daughter, said. “I would say that's what we focus on most. We never want a customer to buy something if they don't absolutely love it.” 

Pittsburg Interiors draws both residential and commercial customers from all over the region as it carries items like large area rugs that are difficult to find in the four-state area. The business sells and installs flooring, as well as furniture for living rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms and offices.  

With contract flooring installers and an in-house interior designer, Pittsburg Interiors’ work can be seen all over the area. They recently completed a job with the Frontenac Public Library and are currently working on the Kelce College of Business and the Besse Hotel. The business regularly contracts with Pittsburg State University as well as USD 250, St. Mary’s Colgan, Crossland, USD 247 and many more.  

Pittsburg Interiors’ original owners, Patty and Tim McNair, are now “semi-retired,” and their children, Timbrelee and Macon, are running the business.  

Since they first opened the doors at 818 KS-171 in 1999, Patty and Tim say they have been focused not on sales, but on people.  

“I feel like our salespeople are really good about trying to draw out from the person the style they want,” Patty said. “We're not trying to sell them a trend, but something that they're going to be happy with, but also that's cohesive and looks good.” 

Patty took an interest in woodworking in high school, when she and her cousin were the first girls to take the Woodshop class at Southeast High School. She knew that when she graduated, she didn’t want to attend a four-year college nor did she want to become a teacher, nurse or beautician, which were the career choices for women back then, Patty said.  

In 1978, she started a 2-year cabinet and furniture making vo-tech program at Pittsburg State University, where she met Tim. The couple eventually married and opened an upholstery and refurbishing shop, Recover Room, inside the Stilwell Hotel. After a year of running the business, Patty and Tim moved to Montana where they rented half of Tim’s father’s garage for their upholstery business.  

After three years, Patty and Tim moved into a building in Rudyard, Montana, which allowed them to have a showroom and sell furniture. During this time, they partnered with a man who installed flooring, allowing them to expand their business into selling flooring 

“We sold so much he couldn't keep up with installing so he trained my husband, so he started doing all of our installations, and I ran the store,” Patty said.  

Together, the couple ran McNair Furniture and Upholstery for 17 years before selling the business to employees and moving back to Southeast Kansas. McNair Furniture and Upholstery is still open and operating in Montana. 

In 1999, they built two buildings at 818 KS-171 in Pittsburg, added a third building in 2004 and then a fourth in 2022.  

As their children grew, Patty said her children showed no interest in running the business as they both went on to obtain their own college degrees. Macon received a degree in manufacturing engineering from Pittsburg State University and went on to work for AGCO and Timbrelee finished a marketing degree in Colorado Springs and started a job at Watco. She traveled all over for the company, and after three years, she became homesick.  

Timbrelee and Macon decided to help their parents run Pittsburg Interiors. Now, Macon runs the flooring side of the business and Timberlee does the administrative side.  

“I loved Watco and it, to me, felt like a family business as well, and they pride themselves on that,” Timbrelee said. “I've always been really close with my family, and they started to get really busy during COVID, and it was an absolute blessing, but I just felt like that's where God was calling me, and so I took that leap, and I'm so glad I did.” 

While other businesses struggled and many closed permanently during the COVID-19 pandemic, Pittsburg Interiors thrived. Because it was considered essential due to the flooring installation side of the business, they were allowed to stay open. Prior to the shutdown, Tim had the foresight to order as much inventory they could, which paid off. When other retailers were closed or couldn’t get merchandise, Pittsburg Interiors did.  

Throughout the years, the family has given back to the community in many ways and donated to countless fundraisers. Recently, just before Thanksgiving, they gave away a dining table and chairs to a young family with children. 

“We were just really excited that we were able to give them that type of an experience during the holidays,” Timbrelee said. “It was something that we plan to do more of as well, because you never really think that a dining table can mean that much, but to a lot of people, it does, and it's just the vessel for so much good conversation and family being together.” 

Pittsburg Interiors employs 15 to 20 people, and several of them are Pittsburg State University students who work in the warehouse. One employee, Michael Marshallick started when he was a student and has worked at Pittsburg Interiors for 19 years. The in-house interior designer, Chloe Kuhel, has been with the business for 14 years. 

The family prides themselves on selling good-quality products at a lower price that matches any lifestyle. They keep themselves educated and watch the trends while still keeping true to what people in the area want and need.  

This past fall, Pittsburg Interiors was able to offer college students affordable mattress options.  

“We've really tried to figure out how we can still stay a good quality store, while also finding those lower price points, those more entry level price points,” Timbrelee said.  

Their goal is to one day celebrate Pittsburg Interiors’ 50th anniversary, Timbrelee said.   

“We want to be around for a long time, and Lord willing, we have plans to expand again here,” she said. “But a few years ago, before we added this latest showroom on, we were contemplating either buying a store somewhere else or leaving our money here and adding on. But our families are here, and this is the community that we want to be in. So, we chose to stay here and trust that our community is going to take care of us, because we want to take care of it, so, Lord willing, we do have plans to expand again here at our existing location. We want to bring people to Crawford County and to Pittsburg and to this area. So that's kind of our goal, and that's what we would love if we made it to 50 years as a family.” 

This reporting is made possible, in part, by the Support Local Journalism Project Fund. Learn more at: southeastkansas.org/Localnews.