Volunteers Rob and Jason

Rob Park volunteer support, with Jason Wright Volunteer

The renovation of folding garden chairs and benches followed by the sheep hurdles.

Towards the end of summer and leading into the autumn of 2014 Jason, with my support finished the creation of the treasure chest with very good results.

It was time then to find another renovation project for Jason to work on. Charlotte Hollins came up with the idea that some folding garden chairs could do with a face lift and tidying up.

The aim was that other volunteers, as well as the wayfarers could use them to sit on when they took a break from the work they were doing.

Jason’s first task was to rub down, repair where necessary and paint up the folding chairs. The chairs were well weathered, they had some algae build up that was dried into the surface wood and due to getting damp, then drying out, and some of the ply wood was separating from its laminations.

Jason along with me supporting applied wood glue between the ply layers, clamping them shut with a few toggle clamps.
Some parts needed some reshaping prior to painting, so, we used some easy sand body filler to restore the profiles, after sanding them down nice and smoothly, Jason and I painted the chairs in a very nice wild thyme colour paint chosen by Charlotte. We were all very pleased with the outcome.

Next it was time take a look at the old very rustic benches which, had been out in the elements, through summers, winters and all the weather could throw at them. The task with these was to sand them down, removing as much algae as possible. This we did, and then we painted them up using a good quality fencing paint. It was necessary to move these benches into the far end of the Dutch barn to dry out somewhat prior to rubbing down and painting them. This proved very successful and the benches that were worthy of smartening up now look very well worth using.

Next it was the renovation of the Sheep hurdles for Ben, prior to when the lambing season got under way, these hurdles are often used to cordon off the orphan lambs along with a host foster ewe, so she could accept the lamb as her own, and sometimes on any farm we can have a ewe who had lost her own lamb, hence, the cycle goes on in the saving of lives, where otherwise a lamb could perish without the milk of a parent ewe!
The hurdles were in good general condition, but needed some TLC, some had already been repainted in green and others which still had a good galvanised appearance and protection and did not need any attention.

We got the other ones into the Dutch barn workshop, rubbed them down after a clean up and have repainted them in the same woodland fern green which Ben chose for the box trailer some time earlier, we had enough paint left to do this. The result was very good; Jason’s painting skills have developed allowing the paint to flow from the bristles as he smoothed out the surpluses under my direction. Jason has done so well in all of this.

Rob Park