20 years ago I would have not believed that I would ever be interested in hardware stores. I would grudgingly go off with my then soon-to-be husband and mope about while he looked around. I was interested in many other things, sewing, (I hadn’t started knitting yet), cooking, reading quite a bit and so forth, but I did not want to use hammers or build things or fix things. I left that all up to the man in the house.
Well things have changed. As the DH gets older he does less around the place. Truthfully he was never interested in building things the way I want them to be, "too much bother" he would tell me. And so I reluctantly came to accept that I would have to do some things myself. That list has grown, as DH finds things more and more confusing, and I never wanted to be the main handiperson around the house, but well life rarely considers wishes when doling out our obligations.
As I get better at using hammers and drills and saws, I am getting more and more intrigued by the hardware store. It is such a fascinating place. How could I have missed this before?
The local hardware store is going out of business. The owner wants to retire, no one wants the store, there is a local lumberyard and home center 10 miles away and the big box stores take a lot of business too, although truthfully the quality of the hardware at Home Depot and Loewe’s does not always compare. Such is the future though.
We joined the throngs at the GoingOutOfBusiness sale:
I got a new drill, a 1/2" hammer drill, which I think will prove very useful over time. Now it has been a godsend drilling screws through my landscape timbers, what would take 15 minutes of hard straining work with my old 3/8" drill, through stacks of cedar 4x4S now goes quickly and easily. It is still hard on the back, drilling and stabilizing down hear the ground, but I get so much more done in the same amount of time and back strain.
Happiness is having the right power tool for the job.
Who would have thought I would ever end up saying something like that?