Chris and Linda Waring have sold their local Bolt Barn businesses in South Lismore and Grafton. The funny thing is they still work there running the store as they have done for the past 14 and a half years.

Life has been a rollercoaster ride for Chris and Linda Waring over the last seventeen months. You may remember Chris on 60 Minutes declaring he and Linda were done after the February 28 floods last year. The Lismore App spoke to the couple in May when they decided to keep the business going once the raw emotions had subsided.

The Building and Industry Supply Group is quite a large company that is in acquisition. They purchased Bolt Barn's buying group CSS, which comprised 75 members across 100 branches.

"We knew that there were quite a few members within the buying group in my situation," Chris explained, "Probably that stage of life where they wanted to get out completely or get cashed out and stay in the business. So they came back to us and said anyone who puts their hand up, we'll buy their business too."

Out of those 75 members, 17 decided to sell.

In Chris and Linda's case, they are still running Bolt Barn exactly the same way they did before the sale, nothing has changed.

"Once it was finalised, I just sort of sat there and went wow that's it."

"It's not as if I'm going anywhere yet. It's a good exit plan for us somewhere, we just don't know when we are going to leave the business. They want us to stay, they just want it to run the same as it always has. They don't want to make any changes."

"This is a good future for the staff and now it's good for insurance because they come under a bigger banner, so from July 1 we had flood insurance."

Chris thought that once the sale went through, and he and Linda were just employees, life might get a little easier, but the bedding down process has been more complex than first thought.

"Changing all the customer details on our books like bank accounts and credit accounts. All of a sudden, there is no account there any more as the details have changed and no matter how big a company is, they all want a form to sign so they can get paid. The admin side has been a challenge."

"I've got to tick a few OH&S boxes and I've still got to fix the building up a bit."

After 14 years of owning your own business, what has been the highlights?

"One of them is Grafton. We started with an empty shed down there and it paid for itself in 18 months. It will be doing the same figures as this place in a couple more years."

"The CSS Group has been a great group. I sit on the board and I've met a lot of people around Australia, it's been a good ride."

As for the future, travelling is on the horizon, maybe in 2024.

"I've always wanted to go to Europe," Chris said, "But I want to go for a while so two or three months rather than two or three weeks. Linda and I have had a caravan for a while, so we want to trip around a bit. We're both keen golfers and fishers, so there is plenty of stuff for us to do, grandkids too."

Although Bolt Barn has been sold, next time you walk into the building at 183 Union Street, South Lismore you will notice that nothing has changed. A familiarity that will comfort many.