A Little Maintenance Project

The manager has come up with a list of projects that need to be completed here at Leadville National Fish Hatchery. They range from small items like changing light bulbs up to major repair projects in the water treatment plant. While the list is intended primarily for staff, we have chosen a few items to work on ourselves.

Our first project was to repair and refinish a large sign describing the Evergreen Lakes Hotel that occupied the site in the 1880's.

We disassembled the sign so that we could bring most of it back to the shop. The display box below the sign  holds a number of artifacts that were found on site. This box needed some repairs.

We sanded down the main supports and re-stained them in place. Everything else got taken back to the wood shop.

The sign has several Plexiglas panels, but we were able to break it down into separate components so we didn't have to deal with getting stain where we didn't want it.

The bottom of the display box had artifacts glued to it. Staining this piece was a little more tedious, but Teri handled it with no problem. We also had to re-attach a few items that had come loose over time. 

We were able to finish and replace the main sign at the end of the first day. The display box needed to sit overnight.

The next morning we reset the display box, and checked this project off the list as "FINISHED". 

There are dozens of small wooden signs that need to be refinished, but this was the largest by far. It feels good to finish a project like this. 

Mark