Maitri Hardware

Maitri Hardware is tucked into the ground floor of the Old Petit Mansion. It’s at 89/91 Sleater Road, right near Grant Road West. This building has been here forever, and you can tell by the high ceilings and the way the walls look. Our shop is C04. Inside, it’s floor-to-ceiling shelves packed with boxes of screws, hinges, and all sorts of metal parts. It smells like oil and iron in here. I spend a lot of time searching through drawers for that one specific nut or bolt someone needs. It’s a narrow space, so we have to use a ladder to reach the stuff at the top. Sleater Road is always moving, and the noise from the street comes right through the open door. We don’t have any fancy displays. People just come in and tell us what they’re trying to fix at home. Sometimes they bring the broken part with them so we can find a match. We do a lot of counting—counting nails, counting washers, counting change. It’s a lot of standing on your feet all day. The floor is old concrete and a bit uneven in spots. We keep a pot of tea going in the back. It’s a practical place for people who need to get things repaired. No bells or whistles, just a lot of hardware and some honest work in an old neighborhood.