We have new exciting light bulbs in stock. They are LED accent bulbs. We have them with candelabra base for chandelier type bulbs, with a medium base for standard type bulbs or with a GU10 base. Gu10 is the two prong base that many halogen fixtures take. What is so great about these LED bulbs? Well, they use virtually no electricity. The manufactures claim that the medium base bulb pictured below replaces a 40watt bulb, while using only 1.5 watts of electricity. Yes, 1.5 watts. Wow! Now that’s a huge energy savings. They also run cool, creating almost no heat. LED bulbs have a very long life as well. The bulb pictured below has a 30,000 hour rating.

I will admit the 40 watt replacement may be a bit optimistic. Possibly because the light is a little different in color and quality, it does look different from a standard, soft-white 40 watt bulb. These would be great in fixtures where the bulbs are covered and would be especially good for accent lighting.

The best thing about these LED bulbs is that this is just the tip of the Iceberg, so to say. We have been talking to several bulb companies about LED bulbs for some time. The technology is just hitting the consumer market now, and will only get better and cheaper in the years to come. This is much like the CFL market was ten years ago. I predict that someday, before too long, if you’re not buying a CFL bulb, you’ll be buying an LED bulb. Between the two we’ll all be able to save a huge amount of electricity used in our homes every day. Keep watching for new and innovative bulbs, they’re coming soon.

So Long story short for us this year is that we owe our customers a great deal of thanks. After something like 18 years in Loveland; and the construction of new stores including Home Depot, Lowes, and (another) Super Wal-Mart in our little town; we just ended our best year ever. Our total sales were 7% from 2006.

We had some help from the weather among other things a few times but the fact of the matter of is this kind of performance just wouldn’t be possible if Loveland wasn’t a small town community where our friends like to come in and shop us year after year. We are doing everything we can to make our store better (we all know there are things we need to do better), but here at the beginning we just want to say THANK YOU for a great year.

We look forward to another great year in 2008! We’ll keep you bringing you more service, more knowledge, and more new products… hopefully it help us to get you thinking of us just a little more often. Thanks again, see you in the store!!

I use what is called a feed reader (Google Reader in my case) to keep an eye on interesting news feeds from around the internet. Well I’ll be darned if yesterday in my feed reader didn’t find an article from the Coloradoan (the Fort Collins newspaper) featuring our friends at Downtown ACE Hardware and the fact they are the last store in town to find LED Christmas lights.

You can check out the article by clicking here. Nice seeing a local business get recognized, especially our friends Tom, Jeremy, and the crew over at Downtown ACE!

I recently moved in with my girlfriend Shannon, and as a result, for the first time in my life I live in a place that actually has a touch of class. So just to show that I could contribute to our great looking townhouse (and since I have ugly but NON-STICK pots and pans that are good for cooking and she has beautiful stainless pots and pans that are terrible for actual cooking), I brought home from the store this black pot rack with silver grate that looks fantastic hanging over our island. The rack is cool product #1… it looks great and is easy to install with a few drywall anchors.

But what I was really impressed was cool product #2 I found as part of this project. That was MAAS metal polish. The old stainless pans needed a face lift going from production cooking duty to purely display and WOW did MAAS do the trick. Totally impressed, so much so I ran around the house doing all the faucets and most anything else that was shiny metal I could find. Anyway, I highly recommend it (and of course it came from ACE also). More info on it available at www.maasinc.com.

Well like everyone else, we here at Orchards Hardware are totally impressed by the recent work of our Colorado Rockies. 21 out of 22 games and a perfect post season thus far, it really is the most prolific playoff run I have ever seen in any sport. Not a lot else to say about it other than we hope the keep it up and there is a big reason to party in downtown Denver on October 28 after Game 4! (And also that I really have to figure out some way to pull off getting a World Series ticket)

Just came across this nice article in the Greeley Tribune about Bill and Chris Ruth (who own the Greeley ACE Hardware store) and their hobby of Dutch Oven cooking. Pretty cool really and it reminded of when we used to cook dutch oven stuff in Boy Scouts as a kid. Anyway, there is a nice article and a few recipes included inf interested. Of course the article also mentions that you can special order Dutch Oven cooking supplies at your ACE Hardware store!

http://www.greeleytrib.com/article/20070524/OUTDOORS/105240086

Here’s kind of a cool article to scope out on the Real Estate section of MSN about tools every home should have. You can read the entire article by CLICKING HERE but I have listed their “Essentials” and “Nice-to-Haves” below. Having spent over ten years in hardware stores and and about six years as a home-owner, I don’t think I entirely agree but still an interesting list.

The Essentials:
1. Toolbox: $30
2. Hammer: $15
3. Pry bar: $15
4. Vise-grips: $10
5. Needle-nose pliers: $8
6. Screwdrivers (mixed set): $20
7. Wire cutter/stripper: $10
8. Tape measure (16-foot): $4
9. Electrical tester: $2
10. Reversible drill with bit set: $40
11. 1/2-inch steel chisel: $10
12. Utility knife: $4
13. Handsaw: $15
14. 9-inch torpedo level: $9
15. Safety glasses: $6

The Nice-to-Haves:
1. 7-1/4-inch circular saw: $80
2. Electronic stud finder: $10
3. Carpenter’s square: $6
4. Random orbital sander: $55
5. Staple gun: $17
6. Clamps: $2-$40

Not a bad starter set I suppose overall, we do have a lot more we could add to that item #1 above

Well, somewhat against my better judgement, I have decided to post this video about the use of bump keys. It’s against my better judgement for two reasons actually… first, this guy bought his file at Home Depot instead of ACE and second, passing along information on ways to breech security is considered to many to be irresponsible. I spend my day job these days however testing information security at very large companies and have found that as it turns out, the more publicly vulnerabilities are disclosed, the more likely the good guys do something about the problem and the less likely it is that only the bad guys are aware of the vulnerability.

Given all of that, I present to you bump keys. Bump keys are relatively easy way to “pick” most home door locksets, particularly deadbolts. And, as you can see videos on how to execute this attack are freely floating the internet. What does this mean? Again, two things. First, you should be aware of this security vulnerability to your home and two, you should consider buying a better lockset with more pins to make this attack harder to execute. Check out the bump key HOW TO below…

I hope you will share this information with your family friends… and that you will come see us when you are ready to upgrade from that super cheap lockset on your front door. For the record, its not as easy as it looks in the video but this did in fact on the front door of the one home I tested on, kinda scary.

Landmann Fire Starter packs have now become one of my favorite things. They are a great example of an item that is new, a little different and you’re not really certain if they’ll work well or just be another gadget type thing that you can do without. At least that’s what I thought. I must admit we’ve had these in the store for a long time and I’ve only tried them about a month ago. I’ve tried several fire starters, some work better than others, some aren’t any better than good old-fashioned newspaper.

Since I don’t subscribe to any newspaper I am reliant on these types of things to start a fire. Since I have an older home and cannot just click the remote to my gas fireplace I am also reliant on these things. We love to have fires, but if starting them is too much of a pain, we just don’t get to it.

So I got my wood together, placed the little packet in place and lit it. Damn! These work great! That was first reaction, and is still my reaction after many times. I don’t ever want to be without these now. I will always have some around the house, take them camping, use them on my charcoal grill and keep some in my emergency kits as well.

They’re simple little wrapped packets of something Napalm-ish. No, there’s no Napalm in them, in fact there are no petroleum based chemicals in them, and they are non-toxic and environmentally safe. You just place a packet or two (I find that one goes a long way with good dry kindling) on your wood, light it and enjoy the fire. They light very easily, burn long and do a great job of starting a fire. Compared to other type of fire starters I’ve used Landmann Fire Starters work much faster and better. They light when wet, are small and easily carried around and are safe to pack away. There are 24 packs in a bag, making them very cheap to use as well.

I you haven’t tried them yet, I highly recommend that you do so. They may become one of your favorite things as well!

In case you haven’t heard about this crazy contest to own an ACE Hardware store yet, I thought I would drop a post about it. I doubt that myself, despite this being my 10th year of ACE Hardware experience, I could win the skills contest. But, if you take on this “Apprentice” style contest maybe you could get your own ACE store. Here’s the commercial:

I know it is a funny thought but if you want more info check out http://www.dreamacehardware.com/. I love the name, “The Dream ACE Contest”. It implies that owning an ACE Hardware store is a dream… haha. Well, at least somedays it is.