After more than four decades running Cutchogue Hardware, Robert Molchan has sold the hardware store building to a window and door company that will be moving in soon.

It’s the end of an era for a business that started out in the King Kullen plaza (then the Key Food plaza) up the road in 1983. Ten years later, Mr. Molchan built the new store at its current location on Main Rd. and ran it for another 30 years.

Like many people who love what they do, the Mattituck native tried to retire in 2022, but it didn’t take.

“I want to go to chapter two of my life, where I want to do different things, travel a little bit instead of working, but I will miss the community,” Mr. Molchan said in an interview this week. “I have a lot of good friends, and it was a lot of fun.”

Mr. Molchan said he has always loved hardware.

“I have wanted to be in this business since I was a little kid,” he told The Suffolk Times in 2022. “And it’s been a very good business. But it’s time to move on.”

Mr. Molchan said this week that he never felt any rivalry with the other hardware stores in the area.

“We’re actually all friends,” he said. “When we didn’t have something, we’d send [the customer] to the next hardware store.”