NBC25 NEWS - If you've ever thought about quitting your job and turning your hobby into a full-time career, you're not alone.

It might not feel like work to Curtis Kauffman, but restoring classic soda, candy and cigarette machines really is his full time job.

Curtis' hobby started 15 years ago when he began collecting Coca-Cola memorabilia.

"I couldn't find anybody to restore the things the way I wanted them done," says Kauffman.

So he started doing it himself.

"Next thing I know, everybody's asking me ‘can you restore this can you restore that,’ and one thing led to the other, and basically my hobby turned into a business," he says.

Curtis is particularly proud of a Victor Kooler grill he just finished. Fifty were made in Hagerstown in 1954. Today there are only eight known to exist.

"That's the holy grail of Coca-Cola. Every collector in the world collects Coca-Cola. That's the one piece that everybody dreams of finding," he says.

The best part he says is the work-life balance.

"It’s kind of nice. I'm able to coach my son's ball team, spend a lot more time at home with my family and I'm not running off to a 9-5 job every day," says Kauffman. "I'm not wealthy by any means, and I think I'm just the average person out there. The average person, they can follow their dreams like I did."

Curtis says it usually takes six weeks to restore a machine, and he always has four or five machines in his workshop.