Old and Young Combine

The Shed participants (all 65 years or older) are working on relacquering small wooden chairs for a local child care centre.

Karen Bray is Team Leader of the Wattle Room for babies and toddlers at the Conyngham Street Community Children’s Centre. The small wooden chairs the children use are cleaned often and the lacquer was starting to wear away. “The little ones often spill food on the chairs and the worst culprit is wet Weet-Bix!” she says. “We have to scrub it hard and that wears away the lacquer. I drive past The Shed every day and started thinking maybe they could help.” Karen approached Shed Coordinator Evan Reay and he readily agreed to help.

Evan visits the Centre every Friday and collects two or three chairs and takes them back to The Shed then returns the following week to swap them over. “The group love it,” says Evan. “They are sanding back and re-varnishing the tiny wooden chairs for the children.”

The project has been so successful it will expand to include a few other similar chairs and tables in the rooms for older children.

The Shed volunteer Keith Karp says he thoroughly enjoyed doing the job for the children. He is a retired locksmith and used to “working with very small things”. The wooden chairs were polished and varnished and “came up really well”, according to Keith.

Pic: Two-year-olds Mabel and Frans with Shed volunteers Peter, Pat and Keith, Child Care Director Tessa and Educator Lucy.

Read more stories in Burnside Focus newsletter, out this week.