I knew it was going to be bad, but I wasn’t prepared for how bad.
As I walked into Homebase for the final time on Saturday afternoon, it was like seeing an old friend’s house being cleared after they’d passed away in hospital. The place is unrecognisable, what was once a store that’s been in the backdrop for several key moments of my life now reduced to a desperate fire sale so extensive, they were even selling the staff lockers and microwave. Homebase last year announced it would enter administration, with thousands of jobs put at risk as it sought buyers for its portfolio of DIY and garden outlets across the country.
Some were snapped up by The Range straight away, some were bought by Sainsbury’s, and others were left unwanted for months.
One such store was my local, Leeds Moor Allerton. Several big branches elsewhere in the country had already changed to The Range while my local was left sat on the market, stock slowly dwindling.
When I visited on Saturday, it was the Homebase branch’s final day of trading and I was not prepared for how it would look. The place was stripped bare, nary a tin of paint to be found.
Staff were looking on forlornly as displays were ripped down, shelves were dismantled and the aisles themselves were taken apart.
It was just a giant empty warehouse, bereft of any branding, with a miserable selection of a few last items on a table near the front, like a sad jumble sale.
It was so desperate in there, people were buying the shelves themselves. Nothing was spared a price sticker. I saw one person buying what I can only assume was the microwave from the staff kitchen, since it was used and had no packaging.
Others were loading up on wooden boards from the displays, shelving units, and you could buy a set of staff lockers for just £20.
Apart from the fire sale on the fixtures and fittings, all they had left were a few bags of screws, a foam eaves filler, two replacement toilet cisterns and some metal house numbers.
Momentarily torn, I decided not to stockpile toilet spares, and I opted for two metal door numbers. I handed over the princely sum of 19p while the staff printed a waste of paper receipt – what am I going to do with that if they’re faulty? – and left Homebase for the final time.
This place furnished me and my wife’s first home together. It’s where she bought her Christmas tree every year since she was a child. It’s where we bought furnishings for our baby’s room just last year. I’m sad for the staff most of all of course, but we’ve lost something too, something intangible, emotional, which can’t just be replaced when the new Wickes takes its place next month.
