LISBON FALLS — Ethan Brewer moved to Virginia after high school and became a barber apprentice after his landscape work dried up.

Amanda barbered at another shop in a nearby town.

Her mom split her time barbering at both.

“She was just like, ‘There’s this guy that just started apprenticing there,'” said Amanda, 30. “‘You guys have a lot in common, I just feel like you would really hit it off, but . . . he’s engaged.'”

Ethan’s relationship eventually broke up. He and Amanda became friends.

“It was just like all right, this is it,” she said.

They married a year later, and in whirlwind few years, moved back to Maine, had two kids and opened Brewer’s Barber Co. in downtown Lisbon Falls.

It’s 24/7 togetherness, and great, they said.

“Here, it’s like this is our relaxing time where we get to hang out instead,” Amanda said sitting in the shop last week. “We get along really well. Probably we get along better at work than we do at home just because the kids make us crazy.”

Ethan grew up locally, graduating from Lisbon High School in 2010. He’d watched his mom cut hair as a kid.

“I didn’t want to do perms and stuff,” he said. “They look great, but the smell . . .”

Amanda, too, had grown up watching her mom and became a barber right after high school.

When the couple arrived in Maine in 2018, both found jobs at Gentleman’s Quarters barbershop at 9 Union St. Last year, when that owner decided to move his shop out of Lisbon Falls to Lewiston down the road, Amanda said it didn’t make sense to make the move with him.

They’d always wanted to open their own shop. They looked and looked for space and finally found it — the former Gentleman’s Quarters spot was still available.

“It was really just meant to be, it was really weird,” Amanda said.

Brewer’s Barber Co. opened last July, during Moxie Festival weekend.

There’s an official ribbon cutting planned Feb. 19.

“We just wanted to make sure we would still be here in a few months,” joked Ethan, 27, about not having a grand opening sooner.

He’s known for his skin fades and having fun with lightning bolts or logos, along with classic cuts. Amanda does all types of men’s and boys’ cuts.

“When you can tell somebody feels better about themselves after a haircut, that’s amazing,” Ethan said.

They’ve decorated the large shop space, lined with tin ceilings and walls, with mismatched antique bureaus for cutting stations and new but old fashioned-looking black leather chairs.

Even with Sundays and Mondays off, they are on the clock, to a degree, all the time, she said.

“When we leave here, work follows us home,” Amanda said. “We’re thinking this, this or this, even booking appointments. But we knew that signing up.

“I’ve definitely been in those situations where it’s like walking on eggshells when you work for somebody else,” she added. “With this, you don’t have that. The stresses pay off.”

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