OLD TOWN — When Joe Tipre, the longtime owner of Tipre Hardware, died unexpectedly 2½ years ago, his wife, Kim, was faced with the difficult decision of either closing or moving her family's business of 37 years.
Not long after the tragedy, a real estate company made matters worse when it bought the property and gave the shop a year before it had to move out.
Unwilling to give up on the store her husband loved, Kim Tipre decided to move on — both from the personal tragedy and the legal trouble — by reopening down the street.
"If we had any sense we probably wouldn't be open. No other [hardware] store I worked at is still around, but we're giving it a shot," she said.
"If this doesn't work, because maybe it won't, I can live with that it didn't work out ... but I don't want to live with the 'What if?' and [my son] and I are still having fun."
Within a couple of weeks, Tipre Hardware will be all settled into its new home at 627 W. North Ave., which formerly housed boating retailer West Marine and is just four blocks away from the previous location, 229 W. North Ave.
Inside the new location. [All photos DNAinfo/Mina Bloom]
At the new location, customers can expect the same personal interaction the shop was known for. Folks who need a lamp rewired, a screen door fixed or a can of paint or two can still count on the neighborhood shop.
Most notably, the new shop expanded its Benjamin Moore paint section, a brand that isn't typically sold at big-box retailers like Home Depot.
Kim Tipre said that's one of the ways the independent shop sets itself apart.
"People like the one-on-one. They've always liked the feeling. It's sort of like 'Cheers' ... everyone knows your name."
She's also putting her other talents to use by setting up a corner dedicated to interior design. She ran her own business, Finishing Touches Interiors, directly adjacent to the previous location.
"We're more of a general store than a hardware store. We're cut from a different cloth," she said.
As employees shuffled around the shop unpacking boxes strewn across the aisles and helping customers on a recent afternoon, Kim Tipre dug up old photographs of her late husband and the original storefront in her cluttered office.
A picture of the original storefront in 1978.
Before renaming it Tipre Hardware, Joe Tipre started working at a hardware store at the same location when he was just 14 years old. He met Kim while he was working at that business.
When asked if she decided to reopen the shop as an homage to her late husband, she began to cry, recalling when he died from a sudden heart attack in front of her in February 2013.
"When that first happened I couldn't close because I had to have time to say goodbye. I had to keep the store open. ... [My son] Nick had the hardest time. He was down the street closing and he was having the hardest time."
Her husband "poured himself into the community. But it didn't have to be [within] those walls. It just was."
For the past six weeks her team has been at work moving the business, Kim Tipre said she's been able to "see a birth" rather than focusing on a loss.
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