Mountain View-Ace Hardware of Mountain — Attraction in Mountain View

This location was formerly an Orchard Supply Hardware for many years. OSH had previously expanded the store in the twenty-teens to a large format filling a niche between a typical neighborhood hardware store and a full-size Home Depot or Lowe's.

ACE renovated the layout once again when they took over, but kept the medium-large format with a garden center, power tool aisle, hardware section with a good variety of metric and specialty fasteners, work clothes, housewares, etc. They cut keys. The sell barbecues. They sell common project metals like mild steel and aluminum by the rod, tube, angle and sheet. They have a small-ish lumber selection but definitely have the essentials like 2x4 and plywood. They sell propane. They exchange 5 gallon water jugs.

Besides the inventory, there are lots of thoughtful touches in this store, like putting pickling salt next to the mason jars.

All that said, don't expect them to have everything for every project. Recent example, they don't carry scroll saw blades. Which is fine. That's not a tool most shoppers will be...

While they have most of what you need when it comes to tools, the shopping experience is absolutely miserable. I tried placing an order for pick up online; When I placed the order it said that it would be ready in 15 minutes. 15 minutes passes, 30, an hour, nothing. A couple more hours pass, nothing, I go to sleep. I wake up and it says that the estimate fulfillment time is 4 days! Absolutely unacceptable, so I cancelled the order and go into the store. I walked into a near empty store, with a few employees standing around a register just talking, it takes 10 minutes for an employee to unlock the item. I watched multiple employees walk past me while I was waiting for assistance (yes, I asked for assistance). I wasn't the only person waiting either, there were two other customers next to me also waiting for items to be unlocked. Remember that online order? It took nearly a week for them to refund that order, what a joke. Went to the Home Depot in Sunnyvale, and had no issues there. It's safe to say that I will not be spending my money with Ace...

The new ACE hardware that replaced Orchard Supply is really nice inside, but overall a rather disappointing experience. First and foremost, I have noticed that their prices are quite high. As an example, a package of JB Weld costs $9.00 at this ACE store, but it used to be $5 when it was an Orchard store. It can still be found for about 1/2 the price at places like Walmart or Amazon. The prices at the original Orchard were not the best either, but they were never this far out of line. Secondly, this ACE does not have the vast stock that Orchard had. Take PVC pipe for example, you could at one time buy various lengths (precut) at Orchard, for example 2 ft or 4 ft. They still had full lengths if that it what you needed. But this ACE only carries the full lengths (12 ft or something like that). They will cut it for you, but you have to wait around until they find someone to help you, a big hassle IMHO. Lastly, their hours are not great, they close earlier.. I will probably not be shopping there...