Stratford Home Hardware

There’s been a lot of change over the bridge in Stratford at Home Hardware over the last few years. After the Home Hardware is a co-op, and I’m just not a co-op kind of guy days, there was a brief flirtation with Callbeck’s, and now, staff tell me, the store is a corporate store managed by Home Hardware itself.

I hadn’t been in for a while, but as the store is helping to sponsor some painting at Prince Street School, [[Catherine]], volunteer colour consultant on the job, had to go over to immerse herself in the Beauti-Tone and [[Oliver]] and I went along for the ride.

They certainly have changed things around. The second-floor furniture section has been moved downstairs, and now takes up almost half of the retail floor area, squishing out the hardware section to the back, and moving the paint section up to the front. The co-located Radio Shack is gone. The in-store Tim Hortons has a reduced footprint. It’s essentially a brand new store inside.

The newly-expanded furniture section is a sort of mixed bag: they had several really nice and not-too-expensive dining room tables that were refreshingly simple in their design, but the balance of the living room furniture seemed to fall into “overstuffed recliner” category that you’ll find elsewhere on the Island. Which is too bad, as one of the nice things about the old era was modern, non-gingham furniture.

Staff were as pleasant as ever. Worth a visit if you haven’t been over since the upheavals.