Walking into Irene and Carter Davis’s creek-side house in Onancock, Va., is like entering a quirky roadside antique store. Each room in their new three-story Georgian-colonial home is filled with beautiful and quirky relics.

The Davises had their architect design several rooms specifically to accommodate their vast collection of memorabilia. The sun-filled house boasts a soda fountain room, a country store room, an Eastern Shore room, and a soon-to-be-completed Coca-Cola museum. There’s even an elevator to help transport new arrivals to the upper floors and to ship out antiques for sale through Irene’s Internet business, Creek House Antiques (creekhouseantiques.com).

Irene’s fiery desire to collect antiques was lit back in 1969 when she received a Gone With the Wind lamp from her mother as a high school graduation present. Carter’s grandfather and father both sold advertising novelties, so his love of old advertising memorabilia is a natural.

To the Davises, owners of a local billboard company, collecting is not a leisurely pursuit, it’s a passion. “We planned our house around our collections—that’s been the fun part,” says Irene.

The re-created country store, displayed in a sweeping thirty-two-by-forty-two-foot second-floor room, contains genuine general store furnishings, from old wooden benches to antiquated display cases. The entire “store” is filled with the Davises’ prized 1,000-piece paint can collection, some of which date back to the late 1880s. When they started gathering them six years ago, collecting paint cans was virtually unheard of. “Nobody collected paint cans back then, but now more and more people are getting into it,” says Irene. “We started when we went to a hardware store in Chincoteague, Va., and saw this old paint can—it was old store stock. It had a schooner on it, and we thought it was neat and bought it. It just snowballed from there.”

The detailed artistry on the many vintage cans testify to the talents of bygone commercial artists. From the 1880s through the 1920s, literacy rates were low across the country, and cans needed to visually communicate what the paint was to be used for. For instance, an auto enamel paint can from the 1920s depicts a gentleman touching up the paint on his Model T Ford. A regal clipper ship in full sail graces a gallon-size can of marine paint.

Irene explains that the most desirable way to buy vintage paint cans is with the paint still in them, a weighty proposition as larger cans can tip the scales at forty-five pounds. More often than not, the paint dripped down the side of the can, spoiling the graphics. “The large cans are harder to find and cost more,” says Irene, who estimates top-notch examples can fetch as much as $500.

Her collection also holds an extensive array of paint memorabilia including clocks, color charts, and porcelain, metal, and illuminated signs that dealers used in their stores. A striking, large metal sign depicting an Indian painting his face alongside a stream, advertises “Devoe Paints & Varnishes.” It’s valued at $2,225.

Until their in-house Coca-Cola museum is completed, the Davises store their Coke merchandise in the first-floor soda fountain room. Treasures here include a cardboard Eddie Fisher cutout from the 1950s welcoming visitors to “Have a Coke.” Then there’s the circa-1900 Coca-Cola Tiffany-style lamp and a very funky art deco syrup dispenser.

The Eastern Shore guestroom is a testament to the Davises’ deep roots on the Shore. Here they exhibit memorabilia such as antique souvenir plates, including ones depicting the annual Pony Swim on Chincoteague Island, a pre-1960s Assateague Lighthouse sans its familiar stripes, and Shore landmarks that no longer exist, like defunct car dealerships and drugstores.

The room also holds artifacts from the ferries that were once the only connection between the peninsula and the rest of the state. Many items are souvenirs once sold on the boats, from pennants to a children’s felt “Indian” vest from the SS Pocahontas. Sitting on a bedside table is a 1941 menu from a ferry’s on-board restaurant, listing a breakfast of Smithfield ham with two eggs for sixty-five cents. Framed movie posters and lobby cards from the 1961 film Misty, the Chincoteague pony that put the small Eastern Shore island on the map, cover the walls.

The couple has fun when it comes to filling their bathrooms with novel pieces of the past, be it a vintage Ex-Lax thermometer or “Doe Skin” Bambi-embossed antique toilet paper promising “softer, stronger service.” A mirror in the downstairs powder room showcases the 1930s prequel to Viagra, a scantily clad woman lounging on a bed urging customers to try “Pep Up.”

So what’s the next type of collectible on the Davises’ hit list? “I’d like to find some antique paper towels,” says Irene, who combs flea markets, garage sales, and the Internet for memorabilia. “I haven’t found them yet, but I know they’re out there.” CL

Donna Bozza Rich collect mermaids in her home in Cape Charles, Va.