The Local Hardware Store

[Ryan]

I have never in my life known the pleasure of a real hardware store. Not one. Where I come from, it was always the same fluorescent hellscape. Home Depot. Lowe’s. Ace. Pick your poison. They’re all basically the same miserable beast wearing a different colored vest, acres of concrete and merchandise staffed by people who seem genuinely in fear that you might ask them a question.



So when I landed in Colorado and some local mentioned McGuckin Hardware with the reverence normally reserved for churches, race tracks, and good whiskey, I had no idea what the hell he was talking about.



McGuckin?



Sounded like some dusty little screw-and-nail joint where old men wandered around smelling cedar and discussing the proper way to sharpen a hand plane.



I was wrong. Dead wrong.



Turns out Bill McGuckin opened the place in Boulder back in 1955 as a scrappy little mom-and-pop hardware store, and somewhere along the way the thing mutated into a 60,000-square-foot mechanical organism...

Continue reading...

 

[Westicles]

This sounds like my local Ace, J&W Hardware. I remember when they started out, very small and quaint. Since then, they have gone through massive growth, but have never lost that small store feel. There have been times I have found things there that HD and Lowe's didn't have. The best part is, it's less than 2 miles from the house.

 

[NightSky]

My local Ace stores are good as well. This past July fourth, it was open and had the start capacitor my A/C needed. It doesn't have a wall of Festool, however. With that in mind, I'm wondering who the primary customers of McGuckin are.

No criticism intended by my comments... an independent HW store is like walking into grandma's old kitchen.

 

[pcmeiners]

Yes it is scary walking into a big box store hoping you will find what you need.

When I moved to Bloomsburg one of the first question I had was how many big box stores and hardware stores were there in the area. In my past neighborhood there one great hardware store left, Bloomsburg has two even better hardware stores.
In one of the stores there is a guy who knows everything the store has, where it is located and what it is for. Last tuffy I asked about was a particular sized O-ring for a pitless well adapter, he knew the drawer and bin it was located in without searching for it ..... amazing

 

[Ryan]

My local Ace stores are good as well. This past July fourth, it was open and had the start capacitor my A/C needed. It doesn't have a wall of Festool, however. With that in mind, I'm wondering who the primary customers of McGuckin are.

No criticism intended by my comments... an independent HW store is like walking into grandma's old kitchen.

That Festool wall is probably doing fine for itself, when you think about it. High end professionals, wealthy hobbyists, Boulder's got no shortage of either, and none of them are finding that gear at Home Depot, Lowes, or Ace. Those places just don't stock it.

I stood there for a second just taking it in, honestly a little stunned by how much of it there was. I don't know that I've seen that much Festool in one physical spot before. But it wasn't the inventory that got me, it was the guy behind the counter. He knew more about my own sander than I did, and I'd already spent a good chunk of time googling the thing before I ever walked in.

The rest of the store keeps that same strange energy going. Some aisles feel almost like Walmart, cheap stuff from brands nobody's heard of next to expensive stuff from other brands nobody's heard of, and then your garden variety Home Depot fare mixed in wherever it lands.

It's sprawling and a little chaotic, and somehow that's exactly what makes it work.

 

[Stuart in MN]

I'm fortunate to have a couple of those places in my neighborhood, one pretty large one that has several stores in the metro area, and another one that's a small, old fashioned place still in the vintage building where they've always been. I agree, if there's such a place near you, patronize them as often as you can and help keep them in business.

 

[zimman]

My local Ace is great. Two very knowledgeable women with pocket protectors full of ink pens and micro rulers. Four men that know everything including how to remove a kidney in the forest. I'm good down here in Southern Missouri. You're very lucky to have such a store in the city of Boulder.
EDIT: The reason I said that is my late Sister worked in Boulder at a high end appliance dealer selling Wolf Stoves at $15.000 a shot. Those customers are not at the hardware store looking for a burner igniter. LMAO
Zim

 

[JohnX14]

I don't know how our local Ace store makes it, when we are surrounded by home depot and lowes, etc.

But I will say that when I brought my truck in to my local independent shop and they had an issue with the brake caliper (or some part similar) they said they could tap and fix the issue, and that they'd go to Ace as they had a great stock of grade 8 hardware. I was pleasantly surprised. I patronize the same place as much as possible.

 

[HoosierBuddy]

Hmmm....this is a review I wrote about Kleindorfers in Bloomington Indiana 13 years ago. It hasn't changed any since.

Rave - Kleindorfer's Hardware & Variety Bloomington Indiana

I'm approaching 50, and I want to tell you...I remember HARDWARE STORES. To you kids that don't know better, I'm not talking about the 6-foot wide "Hardware Aisle" at your putzy Lowes or Home Depot. I'm talking about honest to God hardware stores. These were large, dark, crowded buildings...

www.garagejournal.com

Only thing I would change is in the last paragraph where I mention various other Bloomington, Indiana landmarks that are must-sees. Strike "Assembly Hall" insert "Memorial Stadium". Somehow Indiana University became a football school since I wrote this.

 

[tarmy]

Dale’s hardware in Fremont CA.

When we first bought a home, back when there was bidding wars and the interest rates were FOURTEEN PERCENT, I was already a handyman. We had an OSH and HD within a few miles. So I went to those.

Neighbors said no…go to Dale’s cause it was only about 1/2 mile away…but I didn’t listen. Probably thought…what the hell do these people know about hardware stuff. Finally went after maybe a year or so….WOW…a real hardware store with great staff and an incredible selection of EVERYTHING. Never came home empty handed again.

I still go there 40 years later even though we live in a different city…it is that good.

 

[Ryan]

You're very lucky to have such a store in the city of Boulder.

My first impression of Boulder was Hippy City, some granola commune with a zip code. Turns out that's wrong on both counts. It's a town, not a city, and what it actually runs on is Hipster, not Hippy. Both corrections suit me fine.

Hipsters take a beating in the cultural conversation, always have, always will, but strip away the mockery and what you're left with is a set of values worth respecting. They'll overpay and abandon all rational math to keep a small, privately held business alive, and Boulder wears that on its sleeve. Chain restaurants are scarce here. Fast food chains practically don't exist. What fills the gap instead is overpriced cafes, one man diner operations, little joints you keep alive by choosing to pay their inflated menu prices instead of walking two blocks to something cheaper. Because there isn't any real corporate alternative.

Hell, there are even independent grocery stores here selling actual food... and not organic grain of some type or another.

There's no Lowes anywhere in this town. There is a Home Depot, and it sits there most days looking like a ghost town, while McGuckin, a block away, stays busy enough that you'd think there was a sale nobody told you about.

I'm still new here, still riding the high of discovery, everything still has that new coat of paint on it. But so far, I like what I'm seeing.

 

[Tarantula]

I'm quite fortunate to live near a little family-owned store that's been around since 1942. It's not a huge place, and is actually pretty easy to miss because they don't have a flashy sign and the space outside usually has a wall of stuff set up. They've never me down whenever I've gone in for some one-off project item, needed keys made, or I stumble in with a handful of random fasteners I need matches for to rebuild the jigsaw puzzle of furniture I just found on a curb somewhere.

They also have shop cats, make cabinets, and refuse to raise the price on propane. Haven't seen it in a while but there used to be a huge bin of old power tools people had traded in toward new Dewalt stuff. A drill graveyard.

 

[tool_scrounge]

I’m So Cal, there are still some independent hardware stores. The critical item is they usually own the property and do not rent.

Example:


I did see a lot of small independent hardware stores in London. I wonder if they have larger “big box” type stores in the outskirts where land is a bit cheaper. Example below:

 

[FJ 432]

I'm glad you love Boulder. It lost its' appeal to me for about 15 years however the best thing left in Boulder is McGuckin. A wonderful place to go.

 

[NUTTSGT]

...Walter Payton in an orange apron.....2 things there @Ryan ....you're showing your age and being a Chicago Bear, orange would be an appropriate color for the late great Sweetness.


Might have to put that place on the bucket list for traveling west.

 

[Ryan]

...Walter Payton in an orange apron.....2 things there @Ryan ....you're showing your age and being a Chicago Bear, orange would be an appropriate color for the late great Sweetness.


Might have to put that place on the bucket list for traveling west.

When I was like 7 or 8 years old, my dad flew from Texas to Michigan to help his mentor operate on Walter Payton's knee. He got me a signed jersey... Prized possession even though I'm actually a Packers fan. Walter was a generational man bigger than rivalries.

 

[zimman]

A favorite pic.
Zim

 

[APEowner]

We had a family owned hardware and building supply store in the town where I grew up (to the extent that I grew up). They had a smaller inventory than McGuckin but it too was staffed by friendly knowledgeable people.

I stopped by there once to grab something for my house while I was visiting family and the guy at the counter, who recognized me even though I didn't know who he was asked if I wanted to charge the item to my Dad's account or my Father-in-laws. This was 25+ years after I had moved away.

 

[Squankum]

"Sounded like some dusty little screw-and-nail joint where old men wandered around smelling cedar and discussing the proper way to sharpen a hand plane."

You say that like it's a bad thing!

 

[Ryan]

"Sounded like some dusty little screw-and-nail joint where old men wandered around smelling cedar and discussing the proper way to sharpen a hand plane."

You say that like it's a bad thing!

The exact thing I was thinking when I wrote it... I almost rewrote it... cuz who doesn't like to talk about hand planes?

 

[elvee]

We had that kind of independent hardware store near my house. I think it lasted about 60 years. Unfortunately it closed down about two years ago. Not sure why - the land certainly went up in value, and the building was in rough shape. One of the things that worked against them were their hours - they weren't open on Sundays, and they closed at 1 on Saturday. For the hobbyist that cuts into the project hours. They did save me on a few projects over the years though.

I've been lucky to be a customer of a few good shops over the years. In Las Vegas there is McFadden-Dale. They have a bunch of locations, but the stuff they carry...they've saved me on more than a couple of trade shows when the shop guys didn't pack all the hardware for a job. The pic of the hardware store in London reminds me of some of the little places that you used to find in Manhattan. There was a shop like that around the corner from a client's offices in Hell's Kitchen. Again, saved me when I was demoing gear and the shop didn't send the right bolts for the gear.

 

[Smilodon]

In my neck of the woods in Florida there is S.W.Travis Hardware which surprisingly, in a region with little history preservation, has been around since the 1800's (that's really old for Florida).



https://travishardware.com/

 

[Squankum]

I stopped by there once to grab something for my house while I was visiting family and the guy at the counter, who recognized me even though I didn't know who he was asked if I wanted to charge the item to my Dad's account or my Father-in-laws. This was 25+ years after I had moved away.

We were once walking down the boardwalk on the New Jersey shore, when my mother saw a teenaged girl behind the counter of an ice cream shop. She had to go up and ask her if she was related to somebody she knew from the old neighborhood (50 miles away.) She was correct.

 

[Ryan]

Back in college, I made a run at Austin with a buddy of mine, the two of us armed with fake IDs and worse intentions, and we landed at a bar called The Cloakroom. The drinking went the way college drinking goes, which is to say badly, and by the end of the night we'd gotten rowdy enough that the place tossed us out onto the street like a couple of stray dogs.

Twenty five years slide by, and I find myself walking back through that same door with a good pal at my side, half expecting nostalgia and nothing more. Instead the bartender's eyes landed on me before I'd even cleared the threshold, and he pointed straight at the door and told me to get the hell out, no hesitation... like he'd been waiting twenty five years for the chance.

I stood there stunned, absolutely floored. Turned out my buddy was tight with the owner and had called ahead to set the whole thing up.

 

[kngelv]

What a great find. I've never seen a Wera endcap anywhere in the States and that place has more Festool than all the dealers in metro Detroit combined.

James

 

[67CarGuy]

McGuckin's is great! I try to stop in there whenever visiting my BIL in Boulder. Great for stocking stuffers, too.

For about a year I worked at one of these small hardware stores in the midwest. It was a great learning experience. Cutting glass and reglazing windows, cutting keys and rekeying locks, mixing paint, the joys of the hardware aisle (put those loose screws back in the right bin if you're not going to buy them!), threading pipe, etc. And that heady mix of wood shavings, oiled metal, bird seed, wooden handled tools, and dust that's been accumulating in corners and crevices for generations...

 

[Ryan]

What a great find. I've never seen a Wera endcap anywhere in the States and that place has more Festool than all the dealers in metro Detroit combined.

James

They carry a ton of Wera... Not just that end cap. And that's gonna be very, very dangerous for me...

 

[NightSky]

Hardware stores and bakeries seem to share the same plane of existence. I'll raise my cup of coffee to them both.

 

[Tchicken]

We had one back home - Dover Center Hardware if I recall, or maybe that was the nearby Street name .. you could walk in with somethingoranother in your hand, busted, and they had one .. or more importantly knew of a workaround so you wouldn't be dragging the same thing in again. Had a couple like that around here when I first moved, the little Ma & Pa hardwares are all gone now. There used to be 3 lumberyards nearby, same fate.

Still got one nearby bakery that isn't a chain, but Maria seems to lack an heir ..

 

[theoldwizard1]

When I vacation "up north", the town has a "Gil-Roy's Got it" hardware store. Not big, but they do have it ! Chain saws, hunting and fishing gear, kitchen gadgets, plumbing, electrical ... It is fun just wandering through it !

 

[bwringer]

A good farm store scratches much the same itch.

A few years back we were in Rapid City, SD doing some dual-sport riding in the Black Hills. Let's just say we bit off a little more than we could chew the first day, on a boulder-strewn goat path up and down a volcano or whatever that was.

Anyway, we needed some supplies to effect various plastic and metal repairs, including a parking lot carb rebuild (when you fail so hard you end up sucking dirt into the bike's carb) and the Runnings farm store near the hotel had everything we needed, plus The People Who Know Stuff. I still have most of that set of Felo screwdrivers.

Later in the week, after we had gotten our "sea legs" a bit, the bouldery goat paths were no problem. We should have taken it a little easier the first day in the mountains after the long journey from the flatlands.

Anyway, here in Indy, there's Hedlund's Hardware. They're more on the "chaos" end of the scale. What you need is likely in there, somewhere, under a pile of something else, but you won't find it by wandering around. You will need professional help. Very few prices are marked on anything, so you sort of just have to trust. I like to wander and ponder, so it's not really the place for me. But for most people who need a solution to a problem, they're great.

There are a couple of Ace stores around Indy as well, but we've lost a few too.

 

[Stuart in MN]

While I have a couple good hardware stores nearby, there's also a couple departed ones that I miss...

Rex Hardware was a tiny place just a few blocks away, I could walk there. It dated back to around world war 1. A veteran came home from WWII and bought it in 1945, and he and his wife ran it for the rest of their lives. He passed away in his 80s, his wife finally closed the door when she was in her 90s. The place was a time warp. Worn wood floors that creaked as you walked around. Nuts and bolts were sold by the each from ancient wood drawers, nails were in one of those rotating metal bin things with a scoop you would use to fill a paper bag with what you needed. Various kinds of rope and chain extended up through holes in the floor from reels on the basement. The building was torn down, there's an Aldi there now.

At the other end of the spectrum was Seven Corners Hardware in St. Paul. It was a huge multi story building that had been there for 80 years, crammed full of every tool you could imagine. Besides being the place where every contractor in town shopped they also had a strong nation wide mail order business. Being located right downtown, eventually the land the building sat on became too valuable, and they sold to a developer who tore it down and built a hotel and apartment building.

 

[Stuart in MN]

And of course, most everyone here knows about Harry J. Epstein in Kansas City. While ordering tools from their website is fun, you really need to visit in person if you're ever in the area. It's an awesome store.

 

[nadogail]

My city, Coronado, has two hardware stores, one has a very large selection of fasteners and plumbing supplies, the other has a lot of garden ornaments and things that would be taken o the beach.

 

[NightSky]

At the other end of the spectrum was Seven Corners Hardware in St. Paul. It was a huge multi story building that had been there for 80 years, crammed full of every tool you could imagine. Besides being the place where every contractor in town shopped they also had a strong nation wide mail order business. Being located right downtown, eventually the land the building sat on became too valuable, and they sold to a developer who tore it down and built a hotel and apartment building.

I placed a couple of mail orders with Seven Corners Ace about 30 or more years ago. I think one order was for 3 or 4 foot long heavy duty F-clamps with 6 inch throat depth.

 

[Two Door]

I'm unjustifiably proud to say I have unknown relatives in the Brinkley family with a hardware store in Elk Park, North Carolina. Old line bulk nails and screws (weighed by the pound on the beam scales) horshoes and tack, ranch supplies, guns and hunting gear, pullies and belts, knives, stoves and refrigerators, and kids toys, bicycles, etc. It was a real joy of discovery to see the diversity of stock. Essentially a rural/small town Walmart for men.

 

[Jim_No_Garage]

There were 2 "crusty" hardware stores in the area when I was growing up.

The local one (McGrath's) was smaller with wood plank floors and a trap door that opened to get to the basement storage area. The family sold it and it moved around the corner in the mid 80's and lasted another 30 years before closing and becoming a paint store.

The further one (Berkeley Hardware) was much larger and had a lot more merchandise. They specialized in plumbing parts and you could walk in and get most everything you needed at a slightly higher price. They lasted till about 2020 before they closed. The family got diversified and lost a lot in the real estate market.

Cheers

Jim

 

[scooterbum46]

Vet's Hardware on N East Street in Lansing... Consolidation about thirty years ago of a couple of stores into one. Narrow aisles packed with every imaginable hardware store need. They know where it all is and help retrieve it because if they gave you directions, you still wouldn't find it. I love to just browse there when it's not too busy (narrow aisles mean traffic jams).

I was lucky enough to work in a hardware in the mid-60's, although a 135 pound 18 year old had problems with the old large softener salt bags we delivered. Trade off was learning plumbing parts (and cutting and threading pipe). Looking back, they were ahead of the times, they had a side section with yard ornaments, outdoor toys and were a Lawn Boy dealer. I bought my first hot melt glue gun there (that was a revolutionary device at the time). Also Bridgeport screwdrivers and my first set of 3/8" drive sockets (S-K Wayne, still have and use 'em). The old guy that owned the store was crotchety, but his wife was there as a buffer and they had a FTE who was great with kids like me - he eventually bought the store and ran it for another 30 or so years.

 

[nafets47]

They carry a ton of Wera... Not just that end cap. And that's gonna be very, very dangerous for me...

I am very jealous. I wish anywhere in the Tampa Bay area had a store which stocked Wera or items that actually are good. A local HVAC shops stocks Knipex pliers and Malco bits, but that is about it. Big brands only...

 

[minke]

It was my wife who called McGuckin my church. My baby who we'd
visit there now lives in Austin (of all places!). McG... doesn't look like
the hardware store in Brighton Beach (Brooklyn) in the '50s but it serves.