Radio Shack was the go-to for electronics back in the day for my Mom. I remember her picking up all kinds of gadgets even a computer. I never got to go to one when I was old enough they were gone and I believe Best Buy had surfaced then.
That's pretty cool that the women in your family are more "handy" than a lot of men I've known. I had a friend who was raised in apartments, and when he bought a home, he needed help with maintenance stuff I considered to be "basic." But I recall going in the crawlspace at the age of 10 with a blow torch and a hacksaw fixing frozen, busted pipes, while his father would pick up the phone and call the landlord. I still pull apart appliances to take one last shot at repairing them before I'll throw them away (but you can't get parts.) Transitioning between Radio Shack and Best Buy was Circuit City, at least out my way. But neither Best Buy nor Circuit City carried all those electronic parts (resistors, connectors, switches, etc.) or tools or soldering guns. Lowes now has a small electronics section, most with low voltage crimp connectors, wire ties, shrink tubing, etc. I believe they saw an opportunity when Radio Shack went under.
Circuit City was a bit on the expensive side. The one in Bangor closed shortly after we came to Maine in 2000, but I remember Circuit City in Texas.
I forgot about Circuit City never been to one though. Even though my grandmother married twice, my mother was the oldest of the daughters of the marriage to my grandfather. So I guess she picked up a thing or two from him and all her brothers. I'm the only one of her three daughters that is handy. I've been called 'the woman handyman' at the flea market.
Yeah, now it's best to go to shop a hardware store that carry the parts for those type of repairs. I had to go online for a new part for the handle of my fridge and had to order a whole kit just to get the part that I needed, jeez. I could have jimmyrigged it but I wanted it to look nice.
Radio Shack always, especially during Christmas, had some fantastic electronic stuff. And, while other stores didn't have component parts, they did. The only store I could ever think of, that was comparable to Radio Shack, was Fry's Electronics close to where we lived in So California.
Exactly, You can buy a radio or another electronic appliance at Best Buy but you could buy the parts that you needed to build one at Radio Shack. This may not have been true everywhere, but the person behind the counter at Radio Shack was usually a techie and knew something about what they were selling. People could not only get what they needed there in the way of components, but they could also get advice and talk tech stuff with the guy at Radio Shack. Later on, I think they started hiring minimum wage people who barely knew how to work the cash register.
Another downside to being in the boonies: The fan in my not-so-old (7 years) expensive fridge went out one day. I knew what the problem was (circulating fan). So I went online, got the Part#, called the nearest appliance store (an hour away) to make sure they had it, drove all the way out there, had the guy look up the part to verify the fit, drove home, went to install it, and the manufacturer had changed the design without changing the part number. The physical mounting was different, as were the quick disconnects for the wiring...yet they had the identical Part# molded into the housings. So there I sat with the wrong Part#, having wasted 2 hours, with another 2 hour round trip in front of me to try to get the right part and hope that nothing else was wrong. I ended up buying a new fridge. The appliance place let me mail the wrong part back to them for credit. Regarding your project and wanting things to look nice: This is why we do our own work, so it's done right and to our liking. If we mess up, we fix it and in the process learn how to do it right for next time.
RS used to be a good store. They bought out Lafayette Electronic way back when. I bought my second VHF ham radio. During the mid-90s. They opened a depot repair facility in LA. Since the stuff being repaired always traveled on the delivery truck there were no shipping charges. They they dumped us and then went under. Other companies filled the void, but it's not so handy.
I remember Radio Shack. We had one downtown. I don't remember getting much from there but my son just mentioned the other day that he needed some gadget and he wished that Radio Shack was still open.
I miss the old radio shack were they had kits and a good selection of electronic parts but now next to nothing. I remember building Heathkit projects they had a great selection on radio equipment and testing equipment. .
It was a good store for a long time. Even after they stopped selling amateur radio stuff I still bought solder and shrink tubing. Now I order everything from a lot and small parts store in Montana.