Best of Boston

2007 Best Hardware

Charles Street Supply Company

If you’ve got the project, they’ve got the product: More than 24,000 home-maintenance tools and supplies cram the shelves at this emporium of all things useful. Need an obscure garden tool? A specific brand of all-weather paint? The gregarious employees have a talent for putting their hands on it fast. The store’s old-fashioned setting is paired with an up-to-date outlook—it has, for example, one of the city’s best displays of eco-friendly compact fluorescent light bulbs—making it a primo resource for the modern home.

54 Charles St., Boston, 617-367-9046, charlesstsupply.com