Our local Expo Design Center will be closing soon:

Home Depot will shut down two of its high-end design stores, in Concord and East Palo Alto, and replace them with two more Home Depots.

Expo Design Center, which caters to a wealthier customer base than Home Depot, sells high-end fixtures to people mainly looking to remodel their kitchens and bathrooms.

The problem with Expo, IMO, is that it’s a very elaborate showroom filled with very expensive fixtures, but no real-world solutions. We go to look at how we would want to do a kitchen or bathroom or floor, and then consider how we can do it for one-tenth the price–seriously, Expo prices are beyond “pricey” and into “excessive”.

The EPA location shares a giant building with the neighboring Home Depot, so the company plans to make an even larger HD store out of the combined space. Should be interesting.