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The Hardware Store — A Love Story

05.02.13

The Hardware Store -- A Love Story | Jade and Fern

In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m THAT girl. The one who goes into the hardware store at least once a week with a half-baked DIY idea, no vocabulary for the tools I need, and detailed questions communicated primarily through hand gestures and crude drawings on the backs of receipts fished out of my purse.

I drool over the tools. I ogle the work goggles. I faint when I see the paint. Literally every quick dash into any hardware store for just a [insert small useful item here] turns into an hour-long perusal of all the cool copper plumbing thingies and the circular saws and some neat grates that I don’t know what they are but surely if I buy one I’ll find a way to use it.

love the hardware store. I love the hardware store so much that a 20-something male employee recently mistook my enthusiasm for flirting and gave me his number.

(I, in turn, mistook the number and accompanying comment of “We could talk about this idea over coffee sometime,” for a genuine interest in how to rig up a retractable laundry line for under twenty dollars, replied “That sounds great!” thinking I had just scored a knowledgeable DIY friend, and got all the way out of the store before I realized what had just happened. Apparently my social skills are even less developed than my DIY ones.)

But I gotta say, guys, there’s nothing like an involved project to make me love the hardware store just a little bit less. Too many trips and too many dollars spent, and not very much to show for it just yet. Here’s waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel.

What great fiascos have you been through at the hardware store?

Author: Marlene @ Idle Hands Awake

Maker, baker, cat momma, total nerd, perpetually covered in glitter/sawdust/paint. Blogging DIY and design for modern creatives.

4 comments on “The Hardware Store — A Love Story”

  1. Oy vey! You and your uncle need to spend a Saturday together! The locally-owned hardware store HE goes to has free, freshly popped popcorn…and an old-timey candy section. ‘Cause you need a snack after three hours of looking at screws and picture hangers and replacement toilet seats and window screening, etc.

  2. Just found your blog via CraftGossip and your guest post on Kittenhood re: lighting with a fan remake, redo, or reinvent… Gotta say… if you are ever in Missouri, between Kansas City and ST LOUIS you will find me at the hardware store, old timey one in Wright City off HWY 70.

    I LUV hardward stores… my hubby actually stopped at one when I was way way pregnant… and left me sitting on an end cap display of something, because of my swelling ankles…

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