One thing about this place is that there is seldom a dull moment. Now, we enjoy our dull moments as much as anyone. The couch in the sitting area makes for a phenomenal mid-afternoon nap spot when the hustle-bustle of activity dies down. But, not much napping was happening this particular week.
First and foremost, its HOT … we did a bunch of muddy excavating in the back to grade out the green space last week, and now it is drying and hardening. Way more suitable for vehicular travel, and no more standing-water sinkholes to avoid. We’ll keep chipping away at it, and get some starter seed planted so we can play around in the grass for next year. We love the vast green space on the property, but it hasn’t been flat enough to use until now.
We mostly noticed how hot it was because one of our AC units died on us! Granted, it was probably the original unit when this addition was built nearly 20 years ago, and probably due to kick the bucket on us, but it chose a heck of a week to do so. New compressor and condenser ordered in incoming, setting us back $4500 (which feels like a GREAT time to remind everyone you can very easily donate at any given time, because this is going to hurt!) … in the meantime, we’ve got one little-engine-that-could unit teaming up with a series of box fans keeping it way better inside than out!
Speaking of donations: we received an incredibly generous anonymous donation earmarked for our window-replacement initiative, a full window! If you’re just joining us, we have 60+ enormous windows across the property, and the running average for replacement is $1000 … So, huge thanks to “Lulu” for knocking one out for us! She has also graciously offered to match up to four $500 donations, for a total of an additional $2000 …. netting us 4 additional windows! If you can find it in your heart to help here we have a wonderful opportunity to sneak a few more windows in before the end of the year!
We also received a donation of some older HP Color LaserJet printers! So now our letterhead looks official, and colorful, and prints soooo very fast. Making room to put one in our tech center, we took the time to setup a dedicated computer for 3D modeling alongside the Ender-3 3D-printer, and have been testing a calibrating that to get it back operational and usable! No more swap-the-memory card game here, we can just direct print to the machine!
I got to make something, finally. Down in the depths of the shop I made some boxes, with doors, that lock. It doesn’t sound like much when you put it that way, but we’re overflowing with awesome stuff , and the awesome people who frequent this place wanted some secure storage to keep their materials between classes, or just to avoid having to haul stuff between here and home. We added four lockable closets to store various crafting items to cut down on some of the clutter we’ve created throughout the space.
We took care of a huge backlog of un-hung art from local creators, too! Finding new and interesting places to hang some of the amazing works our members create is becoming a challenge! We almost have unified title cards for all the pieces for sale, so it should be more clear what is available for purchase. Come in sometime and browse our gallery of local art and see if there is anything you want to take home! We do a minimal consignment (10%), so the vast majority of money spent goes directly back to the artist. (Additionally, if you are interested in showcasing your work here, and are a local creator, we’d love to see it!)
Our sign was installed! More a story for an open-house/social night, but I’ve been trying to find a sign company that would actually show up and provide a quote for almost a year, but once we discovered and contacted Greeneville Sign Company it was over! They were prompt, communicative, and had our big beautiful sign up in a matter of weeks! Its official, we are here, and no longer appear to be McCarter Lumber Company from the outside!
We also held a board meeting and re-elected board members (adding a few new faces!), but we’ll post an update on that soon, introducing the new members as part of a larger effort to expand transparency … soon we’ll have a dedicated page to official documents, by-laws, meeting minutes, etc. Stay tuned!
Happy Making!