Several years ago, some smart businessmen had an idea: Why not build a big store where a do-it-yourselfer could get everything he needed at reasonable prices? Then they decided, nah, the hell with it, let’s build a home center. And before long home centers were springing up, like herpes, all over the United States.

Home centers are designed for the do-it-yourselfer who’s willing to pay higher prices for the convenience of being able to shop for lumber, hardware, and toasters all in one location. Notice I say “shop for,” as opposed to “obtain.” This is the major drawback of home centers: They are always out of everything except artificial Christmas trees. The home center employees have no time to reorder merchandise, because they are too busy applying little price stickers to every object—every board, washer, nail, and screw—in the entire store. Once they’ve applied a round of stickers, they immediately set out to apply a new set, with slightly higher prices, to the same merchandise. This leaves them no time to learn about the products they sell, so it is utterly futile to ask them for help.

Let’s say a piece of your toilet breaks, so you remove the broken part, take it to the home center, and ask an employee if they carry replacements. The employee, who has never in his life even seen the inside of a toilet, will peer at the broken part in very much the same way that a member of a primitive Amazon jungle tribe would look at an electronic calculator, then say, “We’re expecting a shipment of these sometime around the middle of next week.”

So the bottom line is that home centers are even worse than lumberyards as a source for lumber. The only really good place to buy lumber is at a store where the lumber has already been cut and attached together in the form of furniture, finished, and put into boxes.

Chapter 3. Electricity: You Can Safely Do Your Own Wiring, Most Likely