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Keeping our restoration stalls clean, safe and orderly is a continual challenge. James Rasor reports here on the great job that our TRHA volunteers did today as they made significant progress on organizing this area for our busy winter restoration programme.

“The season is winding down and it is time to review what worked this year and what needs to be changed? This means house cleaning! The first two items on the list are the shop wood storage area and the tool module. We have many projects to do this winter and it is important that we know what our supplies are and how much is available as we rely on donations from the public to do most of our restoration work.

The wood storage: Every piece of wood is carefully kept and reviewed before it is deemed disposable. Every piece is reviewed, nails and screws removed from donated stock, and pieces are restocked in their appropriate place. Pieces are kept right down to 12″ long. To do this we have two rolling bins for short pieces 4 feet long and shorter, a small shelf for pieces 18″ to 12″ long, and a wall storage area for plywood sheets and large or long pieces of wood. This winter the storage for the long and over-sized pieces will be rebuilt to be more effective to store different sizes – the easier it is to sort through and see the wood supplies, the easier it is for us to to re-use wood and not waste larger pieces by cutting them up unnecessarily. This weekend we started the re-organization by removing all the wood from the wall storage and laying it out for sorting and accounting – a half day task at best. Next week we will begin to rebuild the wall storage area.

The tool storage: The tool cabinet module needs to be rebuilt to be more effective. The hardware and paint module are working fairly well due to labeling and items being replaced correctly after being used. The tool module has never acquired the tools we really need so it has been in flux most of the year. However, we know the direction we need to go in and after a couple of years of restoration we know the tools we need, so the module will be built to suit including labels and better storage solutions.

During our day of house cleaning we still managed to give a few tours to the public, including several families and to two police officers passing by.”

Posting and images by James Rasor