Remember when the lumber yard used to *give* you a pencil each time you came in? When I worked as a hod carrier we used to get whole boxes of pencils from the brickyard - I'm still using them almost 15 years later.
-- "We need to make a sacrifice to the gods, find me a young virgin... oh, and bring something to kill"
Tim Douglass
On Mon, 21 Nov 2005 22:02:51 -0600, with neither quill nor qualm, Jim Rusling quickly quoth:
Let's see, the closest HD is in Eugene, OR, 100 miles north of me. The closest Lowes is in Medford, 25 miles south of me. Two TrueValue hardware stores are 4 and 8 miles away. A large (mini-HD) store called Diamond Home Improvement is 5 miles away and an electrical/plumbing store (Grover) with GREAT prices is 4 miles away. I get by shopping for most of my necessary items at Grover and Diamond.
I order from HD via mail-order only. And I make (bi?)monthly trips to Medford, stopping at all the big stores (Costco, Target, Lowes) when I do. Now that gas is expensive, it's cheaper to order most things from HD by mail. I had a Ryobi 14.4v cordless tool set (drill, cirdc saw, charger, 2 batts, case; $99) delivered for $12, less than half what it would cost in gas and without losing half a day to drive it.
You guys are lucky. I used to have a HD within 5 miles of my old home, but I much prefer the climate (socio/politico/weather) up here, so I'm not too jealous.
I've also learned to buy multiples of whatever I get when I go. Instead of a single 1/2" nipple/ell/tee, light switches, brackets, nuts/bolts/lags/screws, etc., I'll get a handful (or 100pc box) of each. That has saved extra trips several times so far, and new hardware always beats an old crusty piece. Often, 100-piece boxes cost less than the 20 individual bolts, etc.
[snip]
That's my experience as well. There's a local mom-and-pop hardware store about a mile from my house, with a Home Depot a block or so away. I would prefer to go to the mom-and-pop store, but they close at 5:00pm on weekdays, noon or 1:00pm (I think) on Saturdays, and are closed on Sundays. In other words, whenever I'm indulging my hobby or doing home repairs they're almost always closed.
It's a shame, because I can walk in the mom-and-pop store with only a vague idea of what I need, describe my problem, and they'll say, "Oh yes, we have that right here" and lead me straight to it.
My usual (but not invariable) experience with the large chain stores is that I can walk in knowing exactly what I want, ask a store employee where it is, and they don't even know what I mean. "I don't think we carry that...."
Sometimes I am certain that they do indeed carry such an item, so I spend too much time searching until I find the paint scrapers with the doors, or the 1.25" dowels (minus 0.02" or more) right next to the toilets.
HD gave me a pretty nice black baseball cap after I spent about $6000. I colored the orange HD logo in with a black felt pen and about a year later had a HD employee tell me that they could demand the cap back because I had defaced it. I laughed in his face, and continued shopping but a few minutes later I saw a group of them pointing at me. Nothing happened, but I actually felt threatened. I had nothing against HD I just hate wearing anything with a company logo on it. I rarely go into the store anymore, preferring to drive the extra mile and go to RONA.
Factory town, maybe? Rochester NY used to have lots of businesses that closed too early, thinking that everyone worked shifts at Kodak and got out at 4:00. Not very smart. Even Boy Scout and sports leagues used to start activities at 5:30 or 6:00, not giving 9-5 workers time to get home and eat. Tell the mom & pop that 6:00 on weekdays would be a smart move.
I live in northern Kentucky, basically a suburb of Cincinnati, so yes, your guess of a factory town is pretty good, although it's not as true as it used to be decades ago.
What the... damn, and here I just finished mine in a precious taupe!
It just goes SO well with my Makita drills. Darn.
-jav
the granite place i stop in every now and then usually has pallets full of sink cutouts that get hauled to the dump every week. i get them for free just for asking. they are cut out with a diamond tipped cnc controlled router, so frequently, if not always, come out as one piece with a very rough edge.
note: home depot doesn't do the cutting. you should go to the actual fabricators if you want the cutout.
regards, charlie
Our biggest business around here is IBM, but there are a lot of other things, universities, etc. The old fasioned hardware stores tend to close at 6:00, Boy Scouts and stuff like that tend to 7:00. I don't know if that's your Kodak Park effect shifted by an hour,though..
Banty (former daughter of Great Yellow Father)
It takes forever to change. I don't expect my local hardware store to be open till 9 every night, but they received applause when they changed from
5:30 to 6:30 on weeknights. I thanked them and the owner said "Yeah....everyone's telling us that".If you are speaking of the one in Florence, Ky....and I assume you are...Lowe's is less than 1/4 mile from there. Did they apologize to your satisfaction...if not, you know our newspapers around here are more than happy to slander any business that screws over the customer....contact Howard Ain or Michelle Hopkins.
Well, like I said, it's changing here. Kid activities, especially, took a long time because so often, they're run by little committees (and I say that with the utmost in derogatory intent). We had a Boy Scout troop run by women who thought "everyone should be able to get here by 5:00 if they're really committed". Nonsense. When hardly anyone showed up, they interpreted it to mean nobody was interested. When they moved the hours later, the meetings were packed, which they interpreted as unrelated to the time change. Duh. :-) These ladies were later made to go away and never come back, except to drop off and pick up their kids.
mac
Please remove splinters before emailing
I remember when I was a kid, the hardware store gave customers yard sticks (remember those?) with their name/phone/etc. printed on them...
I still have a couple around, somewhere..
mac
Please remove splinters before emailing
Yep, we have a few of those type organizers too. The "everyone in the troop/pack must (in the head of the organizer) go by my family's work schedule, and they must all (again in the head of the organizer) belong to the same parish too". So, they'll insist that xxx time is the *only* time things can happen, this weekend in May can't have plans because of their confirmations (and insist on a date which coflicts with another parish's confirmations).
But we've had various luck as far as making them go away :)
Banty
On Tue, 22 Nov 2005 07:49:45 -0800, with neither quill nor qualm, "Theodore A. Kaldis" quickly quoth:
Podunk isn't in Bama, Theo. It's just outside West BF, Egypt.
Ooh, nice mamasan pic!
-------------------------------------------------------------------- I sent in my $5, so *
OK, I missed the OP, and also generally avoid OT convesation, but this is a good one, and well ...it does have to do with wood, sort of... unless they now have high tech pencils.
Anyhow, [and this is to do with this general topic, but not wood?] I won't shop at Consumers Distributing. They not only will inspect your baggage [shame on them increasing costs that way. Let people steal, I say!], they also make oyu pay for the privilege of shoppingthere, and even worse, won' recognise jus any old credit card. It AHS TO be American Express!
The nerve of them. I won't shop there.
OK, seriously, I avoid HD at all costs [pun intended.] I wanted a present for a large family of kids for a visit in the summer. Why buy a ton when you need only one? So I settled on a Milkshake maker with the works [ice-cream etc.] Cutting it short, after some dialogue with a 12 yr old clerk who knew as much about the store as my pet dog [I haven't any idea where we would have gone if I'd wanted woodworking tools] , we decided I'd take the demo that had been sitting out on display, being handled by God knows who or how many for the past month or so. I said I'd take it with a demo discount. "Oh, I'll have to ask the manager." Guess what? No discount. No sense complaining to the manager either, I guess. I left without, and haven't been back since. My money, my choice.
Ok, it's been fun, now back to serious woodworking. I need to know what colour to paint my workbench ...No, I'm just kidding. I know everybody here paints theirs pink.
OK, typing lessons next Tuesday. :(
Podunk is in CT,MI,NY, VT and OH.
Nearest Depot is eighty-five from me. Got Menards only forty north or south. I'm 230 miles from Podunk, though.
actually, it will do a great job cutting it. i cut small granite pieces with a tile saw frequently. the problem is the size of the table. the machine to cut these large slabs starts around $2 million, and they're about as large as a 3 car garage.
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