HOULTON, Maine — An Aroostook County man’s appliance repair and refurbishing business has drawn customers from more than 100 miles away since opening late last summer.
Lawrence Hardy, owner of Hardy’s Appliance Solutions on Bangor Street in Houlton, went on his first service call in August. By mid-September, he had 50 customers. Now, calls for in-home appliance service have grown faster than he could have imagined and he can barely keep refurbished appliances in the shop for more than a day.
Initially Hardy had 14 used appliances he refurbished and sold almost before he had them finished, he said.
“I had a man come from Sebec. He drove two hours and right past Home Depot,” Hardy said, referring to the man’s journey to purchase a three-year-old large capacity washer and dryer set for $575.
With only a handful of appliance technicians available in the state’s northern reaches, County residents are often at a loss after a freezer stops cooling or the oven no longer gets hot, because until recently there was no one available to help, he said.
Hardy had dabbled in appliance repair here, but his wife noticed that people were regularly looking for help with non-working stoves, refrigerators, washers and dryers on a local Facebook group, Houlton Talks. He decided last year to get certified.
Before opening his business, Hardy graduated from Fred’s Appliance Academy, an online appliance repair certification program, and he is certified for all appliances, he said.
Additionally he had to find a space to work and purchase tens of thousands of dollars of tools and equipment, he said.
Hardy, also an award-winning photographer with works in galleries around the world and throughout Maine and Boston, now offers in-home appliance repair and sales of refurbished electric and gas stoves, washers and dryers, coin-operated commercial laundry machines and refrigerators.
With hundreds of Facebook followers and five-star reviews of his work, Hardy is gaining word-of-mouth momentum.
Besides restoring appliances in his Bangor Street shop, Hardy travels all over the region on service calls. He just started offering over-the-range microwave installations and in the spring will also clean heat pumps.
A special project he is working on with a few friends is really important to him, he said.
He is refurbishing a large GE refrigerator he will donate filled with game meat donated by Nate Mooers of Howe Brook Outfitters LLC and Jayden Burpee of J & J Outfitters to either a veteran or Hunters for the Hungry, he said.
While Hardy loves meeting the people he has come to work with in his new business, one of his main goals is to get the idea out of people’s heads that things are just throw-away.
“There’s this idea that it’s not worth fixing, but that’s not true,” he said. “There are a lot of things worth fixing.”
