Buying a home might be out right now, but you might have the cash to make improvements to the place you have.

Major upgrades requiring a contractor might give you pause, but a simple faucet upgrade, paint job or switch to energy-efficient lighting probably is manageable Ace Hardware, a fixture in nearly every neighborhood, is benefiting from that trend.

As home construction has declined, so have sales at big-box home-improvement stores.
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But Ace Hardware Corp., with its smaller-store format and focus on building long-term relationships with customers who do their own home repairs, reported revenues that were even with the year before in its most recent quarterly earnings statement. And Ace's quarterly net income was up 13.2 percent, to $33.4 million.


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