Design mockup. Holloware Hardware is an invented business. The phone number, the address, and every price, time and stock statement on this page are illustrative placeholders.
Holloware HardwareSmithville, Missouri
(816) 555-0143
Open at seven, every weekday
Bring the broken half, the worn key, the frame with the tear in it. Somebody at the counter will tell you what it is and hand you the one that replaces it. You do not need to know the name of the part.
This page is not a catalogue. It is sorted by the failure you are standing in, because that is what you actually walked in with.
Eight of them are below, in the order they come up at the counter. Each one says what to carry in, what leaves with you, and the thing the person behind the counter needs to look at before they can answer. The wait times and prices are illustrative on this mockup and would be the store's real ones on a live site.
About four minutes
Carry in
The broken half with the printing still on the side of it.
The printing is the size and the schedule. Without it we measure the outside diameter, because half inch pipe is not half an inch across and the number stamped on the shelf is not the number on your tape.
Leave with
The same fitting, and the primer and cement if you do not already have them.
Fitting from $1.10. Quarter pint of primer and cement, $14. Illustrative.
About three minutes
Carry in
The key. Not the lock, and not a photograph of the key.
A worn key copies its own wear, so if there are two on the ring we cut from the one that has been in a drawer. If every copy you own is sticking, the problem is the cylinder and we will say so rather than sell you a fourth bad key.
Leave with
Two cut copies, tested in the machine before they go in your hand.
House and padlock blanks $2.50. Automotive and restricted blanks are not cut here. Illustrative.
Same day if it is in by noon
Carry in
The whole frame, cloth and spline and all. Do not strip it first.
An aluminium frame gets rescreened and comes back stiffer than it went out. Old vinyl frames go brittle and crack under the roller, and we will tell you that before we start rather than after we have broken it.
Leave with
The same frame, new cloth, new spline, corners checked square.
$18 to $34 depending on the size and whether you want the pet resistant cloth. Illustrative.
As long as it takes to find the drawer
Carry in
The bolt you are replacing, or the thing it came out of.
Thread pitch is what people get wrong, and you cannot see it. Bring the mating part and it takes ten seconds on the gauge screwed to the end of the bin wall. Bring a description over the phone and it takes three trips.
Leave with
One bolt, plus the nut and the washers that belong with it.
Priced by the piece off the wall, most between $0.14 and $0.90. Illustrative.
About six minutes on the shaker
Carry in
A chip, a lid, a switch plate, or the actual piece of trim.
A photograph off a phone is not a colour. The screen has already decided what it thinks the room looked like. Anything solid gets scanned and matched, and a painted switch plate out of the same room is the easiest thing in the house to unscrew.
Leave with
A quart, mixed and shaken and the lid hammered down, not a gallon you will store for nine years.
Quart from $19. Sample pots $5.50. Illustrative.
About ten minutes, while you wait
Carry in
The sash if it lifts out. If it does not, the opening measured twice, and take an eighth of an inch off both numbers.
Glass cut exactly to the opening will not go in, and if you force it the first cold night will crack it again. The eighth is the gap the glazing points and the putty are for.
Leave with
Single strength glass cut to size, edges seamed, plus points and glazing compound.
Cut glass by the square foot from $7. Insulated units are ordered, not cut. Illustrative.
About twenty minutes
Carry in
The chain, or the whole saw with the bar on it, fuel tank drained.
Sawdust rather than chips means the cutters are dull. If the cut is wandering to one side, one row is shorter than the other and grinding both rows even is what fixes it, not leaning harder on the saw.
Leave with
The same chain, ground even, rakers taken down, and the bar rails dressed if it came in on the saw.
$9 a chain, $14 with the bar dressed. Illustrative.
Out and back the same afternoon
Carry in
Nothing. A card and something to haul it in.
Buying a post hole auger to set four posts is how garages fill up. Tell the counter what the job is and how far the truck has to go, and you will get told which size actually fits it.
Leave with
The tool for a half day or a full day. Augers, tillers, drain snakes, carpet stretchers, floor sanders, plate compactors.
Half day from $28, full day from $44, deposit on the card. Illustrative.
The power goes somewhere around four. By seven there is a line at the door, and it is the same line every time: generator cord, five gallon cans, kerosene, lamp oil, batteries in the sizes nobody keeps, a roof rake, and one person who needs a pipe thawed before it splits.
This is the part of the job a store four towns away cannot do for Smithville. Somebody has to be here, with the lights on, at seven, on the morning the road is a sheet. That is what an independent store on Main Street is actually for, and it is not a thing you can put in a department.
Two answers, and you get whichever one is true. If somebody in town has it, you get told who and how late they are open, including the box store down the highway. If nobody has it, it goes on the Tuesday order and it is here Thursday morning, and you get a call rather than a tracking page.
Special orders take a name and a number at the counter. Nothing is charged until the part is in your hand.