qwerty18
Well-known member
Thanks for continuing to share. So many people start a thread and it dies within days.
That's a serious driveway!
That's a serious driveway!
Jeep Storage on the hill
- Thread starter greg
- Start date
thetastelingers
Well-known member
Oh and by the way, we BOUGHT a hardware store.
SWEET!
SWEET!
Thanks! We love being back off the road , it makes for quiet living. The negative is when I hit the road its hard to sleep in the hotels!
The driveway is 550 feet from the road to the house or 120 yards give or take including the side parking area and back garage footer/ slab.
Crazy right?!
I have been in the hardware industry since 1991 , but it was still a nerve wracking decision in these crazy times. Add in record high prices for lumber and I am seeking a sponsorship from Pepto Bismal! We will finish up the front half of the store this week , which will be a temporary relief. Sometime next week the footer is getting cut and installed for our expansion. We currently have 4000sf of retail space and are cutting our warehouse back from 33,000sf to 26,000sf which will net us 11,000sf of retail space which is about perfect for an ACE hardware not that I am naming names. The trucks start rolling in November 30th and we hope to have the store completed by New Years Eve.
Unruh
Well-known member
Wow! Great thread. I love the new cash register area. That counter turned out really nice.
M-technik-3
Well-known member
Earplugs and half a tablet of melatonian, Used that method for 25 years of hotel life flying with USAF.
Thank you on both accounts!
Few beers usually does it for me , but I cant do the ear plugs and sleep.
End caps are installed and ready to be filled.
The footer is cut out for the expansion.
casmurbax
Well-known member
The counter top looks great as does the floor.
Thank you , we have a few more tricks for the countertop shaping up this week. Til then the pictures of the new shop truck and steel beams for the addition will have to hold y'all over.
1970 Dodge 200 with a 400 big block , automatic , factory air and a Holley EFI setup. Runs decent is fairly solid and will be a good rolling billboard to park out on the main road to attract some attention .
Footer is in and the curb is poured.
Beams are up and the girts are going in this afternoon. We should have a dried in area by the end of this week .
And the lighting dilemma may be settled in my garage , but the store has reignited ( get it , sorry I love puns) the 4k vs 5 k debate. The light above is 16' off the floor and is a 5 K 20,000 lumen UFO. It makes decent light , but is incredibly harsh to look at . Not sure if I will scale back and add more lights or fabricate a diffuser of some sort.
The first new exterior wall is up which means the old walls can come down. Here you can see where we removed the steel up top and the new wall out through the hole.
And here you can see the concrete wall is down! One more to go , then polish the floor , epoxy it , hang lights , build fixtures , set plan o grams and thats it?
It only took 12 years , but the temporary 6"x6" posts are out and the black locust logs are in. And the fireplace is complete as well now.
Painted the back room at the store / new retail area .
We pulled the doors for the back from a restaurant that was being torn down. Our local glass company worked their magic and they look like new.
Trim and gutters are all thats left on this side.
We hope to have the construction wrapped up early next week and the interior remodel completed by January 22nd or so .
Painted the back room at the store / new retail area .
We pulled the doors for the back from a restaurant that was being torn down. Our local glass company worked their magic and they look like new.
Trim and gutters are all thats left on this side.
We hope to have the construction wrapped up early next week and the interior remodel completed by January 22nd or so .
Hack Fabrication
Banned
'Living the dream!'
You certainly are!
You certainly are!
jollygreengiant
Well-known member
Wow, opening up a new retail store in this current climate takes some serious fortitude! Good luck!
It's mostly a dream , other than the occasional speedbump along the way its been awesome.
Small hardware has done exceptionally well through Covid with Ace , True Value and Orgill having record years. I have been in the industry for almost 30 years so when the local store came up for sale it just made sense.
First Ace truck arrived! Our Fbook post was shared over 16,000 times , folks in town are as excited as we are .
My ugly mug wiring , and hanging 30 high bay leds for a total of 620,000 lumens in 5000 square feet! Its bright but at 4K its pleasant to look at.
Last block wall is out and you can see where we are grinding the floor for epoxy.
New dock steps being as we built a wall where the ramp came up. Most of our customers back up to the dock and we load them up before they even get out of their truck.
Picked up some pallet racking to start taking advantage of the 28' ceilings. Also needed somewhere to put all the grills until they start selling in March (depending on the weather)
Cut through the block wall on the far side so that when you come to the end of the aisle you just pass through to the next aisle. There is a wall separating the front and back half of the store that would be very difficult to remove so we hid it as best we could with fixture.
Wrapped the cabinet design desk up with some trim and a new top. Also pulled a dedicated data line and installed a TV mount so that our customers can look at the big screen while we design their kitchen on the laptop.
At this point about half the lights are up and the epoxy is going down! This store burned down in 1988 so theres lots of wild marks on the floors from where the different products exploded and permanently stained the floors . It makes for some neat character under the clear. If we had ground to the aggregate it would have cleared up , but we liked how it looks as is ...and I hate the grinder.
My brother came down for Christmas and helped with fixture building. He approves of the TV/ monitor for kitchen design.
More lights . I used a lumen meter to make sure I had a consistent 75 throughout .
I changed out all of the keyless porcelain holders to a plug for the newer style high bay lights. There were hornets in every one of them! I am very thankful it was cool in the back room and its winter!
As bright as this looks I still have more lights to add to the room.
The epoxy brought the lumens up almost 10 points!
Hanging more lights while my son throws electrical fittings to us .
Walls are painted and the fixture is going up .
More lights and more fixture. Seeing a pattern yet?
More lighting.
Had to hand grind the bathroom floor . It was one of the worst jobs ever. I wore a tyvek suit and a respirator. Somehow I still came out looking like I was rocking a lab in Miami! Good news is that the Ben Moore V-440 holds up to pee great!
Time to tear out the last cut through to the back .
Fun times getting the power and water lines out of the wall.
All out and ready for the drop ceiling to go in.
Installed a hobbit door for ease of access to the water heater , plumbing and hvac.
Drop ceiling is going in . I used to hang them for my uncles company 30 years ago , I was a little rusty but it turned out ok.
Finished until I start replacing the bad tiles from where the ceiling had a leak .
Closing in hobbit land.
Pulled a new circuit to the dock for the Radio Armed saw ( customer called it that last week)
Framed up a deck for the nuts and bolts . It was fun scribing it to the floor and accounting for the drop in the concrete as this used to be the outside dock and it was sloped to keep the rain off of it .
Painted , decked and ready to go for Monday's install . We are going from 32' of nuts and bolts to 108'. We will have the largest selection outside of Automotive Fasteners in Greensboro. This is for me as much as our customers as I got tired of hunting for nuts and bolts when I needed them.
Broke some flat bar to attach the fixtures to the girts for a little added safety.
I tapped the lower hole and used a 1/4 20 bolt to attach it to each upright around the perimeter. I had to make over a hundred of these.
And this brings us up to date. The back of the store is mostly set and sometime next week we will start stocking everything . It has been a little hectic at times as I am still working a full time travel job in addition to working in the store Friday evening to Monday morning each week . The light is at the end of the tunnel and I finally think it might not be a train...
Wow!! All of this in your spare time? Outstanding! Wait till you can go full bore on it.
Really looks great, congrats on making the very big step towards the figurative employment door. You know what what they say, the boss is always right, or is it the customer? No matter, leading the charge, plotting the course, taking care of the folks who work for you is where it's at.
No doubt you'll continue to find great success! Congrats!
Really looks great, congrats on making the very big step towards the figurative employment door. You know what what they say, the boss is always right, or is it the customer? No matter, leading the charge, plotting the course, taking care of the folks who work for you is where it's at.
No doubt you'll continue to find great success! Congrats!
jollygreengiant
Well-known member
Looks great! Nice to see a small hardware store instead of all the big box stores. And I love the look of your storefront, it has a bit of that old time hardware store look to it.
Christmas vacation helped a lot with the progress and my wife owns a merchandising company so her people are stocking the bulk of the product. I handle the construction , fabrication and building maintenance. My wife handles the day to day and her merchandising company. We are also blessed with a great staff who can run the store without us which is unusual in this industry. The end goal is to work at the stores in the near future and exit the corporate life. And yes I said stores , we are negotiating the purchase of an empty building in the next town over.
Ahh the store front , its a love hate thing for us! We are updating the front end starting next month once the weather starts to break. We like the old look but its been 35 years since its changed and the white wood is pretty shot.
And I am glad to see small hardware thriving as well . It was rough in the early 2000's with all the big boxes popping up but the growth from 2010 on has been great .
Love how it's turning out! I wish I had a well stocked hardware store to shop at here....just haven't found one yet. Gave a lot of money to the local Ace at the last house but just haven't found one here that has any stock...but I keep looking!
Sent from The Garage Journal mobile app
Sent from The Garage Journal mobile app
Standard Plumbing just bought a chain located in Nebraska and is adding a full True Value line into the different locations. I am not sure exactly where they are located , but they are coming to Nebraska.
The store continues on , more pictures after this weekend.
Ten thousand square feet sounds like a lot of room , but I still found myself filling every corner. This corner was an odd size and the beam did not allow for traditional fixture to be installed. I made a wooden frame and cut the peg to fit. The rack also needed to be cut down to fit the space which didnt take terribly long.
We had a spot out back where the slab stepped down as it used to be outside. Rather than pour concrete that would have to be drilled and glued down I made a simple ramp.
New sign is up and the store is well past 90% complete inside.
Started the process of removing the old signage. The window graphics also went up the same day.
And the stone going up this week brings this thread up to date.
Still trying to get a parking lot installed before our grand reopening May 21st and 22nd. Also have some paint to add above the stone and on the upper gable. Pics of the inside soon , we are down to a 2 page punch list now .
We had a spot out back where the slab stepped down as it used to be outside. Rather than pour concrete that would have to be drilled and glued down I made a simple ramp.
New sign is up and the store is well past 90% complete inside.
Started the process of removing the old signage. The window graphics also went up the same day.
And the stone going up this week brings this thread up to date.
Still trying to get a parking lot installed before our grand reopening May 21st and 22nd. Also have some paint to add above the stone and on the upper gable. Pics of the inside soon , we are down to a 2 page punch list now .
Ten thousand square feet sounds like a lot of room , but I still found myself filling every corner. This corner was an odd size and the beam did not allow for traditional fixture to be installed. I made a wooden frame and cut the peg to fit. The rack also needed to be cut down to fit the space which didnt take terribly long.
We had a spot out back where the slab stepped down as it used to be outside. Rather than pour concrete that would have to be drilled and glued down I made a simple ramp.
New sign is up and the store is well past 90% complete inside.
Started the process of removing the old signage. The window graphics also went up the same day.
