Kathleen Hackett - Home from the Hardware Store: Transform Everyday Materials into Fabulous Home Furnishings

I love hardware stores and universities. Both offer an array of tools that reveal problems you didnt realize needed fixing until you went there.

K EN G OLDBERG , U NIVERSITY P ROFESSOR

I like the smell, and the infinite variety in a small space, the experience of finding things you actually need that will solve real problems, unlike, say, shopping for clothes, where you end up spending a lot of money but not necessarily feeling any better off.

T RISH H ALL , E DITOR

Its ability to inspire I would rate alongside the library and church.

J OSEPH F RATESI , I NDUSTRIAL D ESIGNER

Give me a wet afternoon and a trip to the hardware store and anything is possible.

S ARAH B UNE , I NTERIOR D ESIGNER

The Dublin Hardware Store in Dublin, Michigan. I love this place . Its a hardware store/fishing and hunting outfitter/liquor store and grocery store in one. But their big thing is jerky. They make mountains of jerky for fishermen and hunters. When Im in other countries, I always look for mousetraps in hardware stores. The variety and inventiveness is incredible.

J OHN S CHWARZ , I NDUSTRIAL D ESIGNER

Breakfast at the counter at Main Street Bistro in New Paltz followed by a trip to the True Value was my Sunday ritual for the nearly five years of fixing up my house. They once had a box of dental instruments at the counterfor like a buck apieceperfect for stripping the tiny ogee and cove details of window and door frames. I never saw them there again, but they were the right thing at the right time, which is sort of the perfect metaphor for the hardware store experience.

A NDREW G RAY , C REATIVE D IRECTOR

Theyre the equivalent of a museum for ingenious inventions .

J OSH M ARGOLIS , M USICIAN

A hardware store is the ultimate laboratory for the creative mind.

C ARLO A LESSI , A RTIST /E NTREPRENEUR

Mostly? I like the way they smell. It makes me feel nostalgic . Like Im running an errand with my dad and we find the very specific bolt or nut that we need. And probably, we get some penny candy at the counter, too.

L AUREN H OLDEN , C REATIVE S TRATEGIST

Its where you go when you know exactly what you need and when you dont know what you need.

T AD H ILLS , A RTIST AND A UTHOR

Great hardware is always an enlightening transition from our body.

M ICHAEL G REY , A RTIST

Do something, do something to that, and then do something to that.

J ASPER J OHNS

In those twelve words, Jasper Johns provided our credo for Home from the Hardware Store. But the truth is, wed been following the contemporary artists simple directive ever since weve known each other (and individually, ever since we were born!).

Its been almost a decade since the day I mentioned in passing to Stephen that my apartment needed a chandelier. I was living in Paris at the time, and he had been logging a pile of miles on Air France. His night flight routinely landed just in time for us to head to Porte de Vanves, where one of Pariss renowned flea markets is held every Saturday. We spent hours there, seduced by the shapes, textures, and patinas (not to mention the fabulously eccentric vendors) that distinguish French flea markets from all others. The mere mention of a chandelier on one of those jaunts was all it took to set Stephens left-brained wheels in motion and, while I was away at French class, he snuck off to the BHV.

Ahhhh, the BHV: Conjure up the dreamiest, quirkiest, most storied hardware store on earth, and you might hit upon an image of the Bazar de lHtel de Ville. Stretched over hundreds of thousands of square feet, it offers everything you could possibly need to make, fix, or repair just about anything on earth. At this spectacular emporium, Stephen bought only a spool of baling wire, small chain, pliers, and a screw eye. Back in my tiny space, he fiddled with the wire, twisting, turning, clipping, and winding it until two hours later, when I returned to find a flickering lumire hanging over the dinner table. The room was transformed and I was transfixed. The rest, as they say, is history. You might say that Stephen had me at, well, baling wire.

Ten years later, we still consult the hardware store firstbefore the lighting shop, furniture store, or home boutique. Browsing there gives us the same adrenaline rush as treasure hunting in an antiques shop or eyeing the gleaming furniture at a specialty retailer might. If you think of this most utilitarian of places only as a store filled with objects expressly for keeping a home alivenails to connect a joint, polystyrene to warm the wallsthen its time to look at it again. Actually, its time to look at it as if youre seeing it for the first time. The best hardware stores are crammed with personality, and that doesnt necessarily mean the customers or the department managers are (though it certainly can!). The characters are on the shelves: the type-A pegboard, the flashy copper roofing, the mysterious matte insulation. When you hit the hardware store just to look around and see whats there, the HVAC pieces, piping, tubing, and rope begin to register as shapes, textures, and finishes rather than as heating and cooling systems, plumbing parts, or ductwork.

Indeed, Alexander Calder sums up our guiding design principle. I paint with shapes, he famously said. As in a beginners drawing course, start with lines, circles, squares, and rectangles, and go from there. Forget that cylindrical concrete molds are used to pour foundations; the tubes make for great storage. Chop one up, cover the pieces with decorative paper, and hang them, grouped together, on the wall. Ignore the fact that plumbing bushings are supposed to connect pipes; screw the graduated connectors into one another to make handsome candlesticks. Mason line may not bring out the bricklayer in you, but when wrapped around a drab lamp base, the bleached cotton ropes soft hue and organic texture are transformative. And that reflective insulation? Theres no better material for swiftly turning a 6-year-old into a knight in shining armor.

The infinite variety. The smell. The paint-shaker-in-the-back-of-the-store sound. Nostalgia plays a big role in the lure of the hardware store. Our hope is that as you turn the following pages, youll begin to see the place anewand with that, the promise it holds for creating lovely things for your home.

Design addresses itself to the need, said Charles Eames, one half of one of the 20th centurys foremost design duos. He and his wife, Ray, espoused a philosophygood design at minimal cost with prefabricated partsthat we adopted as we surveyed the hardware store for the furniture ideas in this chapter. Whether we needed the pieces that follow or not, they compel us for the same reasons the Eameses turned plywood into their iconic lounge chair.